#The condition of possibility of this scene existing in some way‚ even in a falsehood‚ as cause of reality itself

[longagoitwastuesday]

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[skyhooks-notebook]

My John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made

(Bourne, of course, is a brutally disillusioned idealist. He had no idea he was signing away his soul. Wick likely sold his soul with his eyes wide open, though he probably only understood the ultimate cost later on - a naive pragmatist.)

I don’t post much at all, but here is a thing that happened on my computer. I was thinking about how John Wick and Jason Bourne could be brought together. My thoughts became long, and I started writing it down. This isn’t a story, just a sketch of how I think such a movie could be made. It’s not really edited either, this is all off-the-cuff.

[I only know what’s in the movies. I don’t know other canon from either ‘verse.]

So, if I were making a movie…

The universes of John Wick and Jason Bourne have very different styles, creating a problem.

Problem: - Bourne lives in a Universe where government is large, powerful, knowledgeable and nearly competent. - Wick lives in a Universe where a vast and elaborate criminal underworld exists, where we’ve never seen those major criminal figures worry about law enforcement or government.

The discrepancy must be resolved.

Simple.

Jason Bourne has never dealt with crime. Everything has been political and confined to the intelligence community.

Wick has never dealt with politics or the intelligence community.

So.

We must assume that the intelligence community is perfectly happy to leave common crime in the hands of law enforcement.

- Law enforcement has an unwritten and fatalistic attitude that there will always be some level of crime no matter what you do because it’s innate to human nature. And if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized. Let the strongest and most dangerous criminals accumulate power and influence, because they will go a long way to controlling the stupid, the excessive and the disruptive crooks. Better to have one major weapons trafficker controlling the traffic than have a thousand slightly smaller and more disruptive dealers completely out of control. (You can strongly hint that there’s an uneasy, unwritten and largely unspoken agreement between crime and law enforcement, and that it’s often a two-way street.) And if the big crime gets too big, it’s easier to knock it back down to “acceptable” levels because you’ve got bigger targets, which are easier to hit and which make a large and impressive splash across the front page when you throw RICO charges at them.

Plus it would also illustrate that Wickian Law Enforcement at its highest levels is just as dirty, amoral and underhanded as the Bournite Intelligence community.

- So, with a little work and willing suspension of disbelief (which wouldn’t be hard, because who wouldn’t want to see Wick and Bourne on the same screen provided it’s done with at least half an ass), it’s possible to bring the two Universes together.

- We start with Bourne. Someone else, like an hard ass, experienced reporter, is snooping into the government’s history of creating conditioned assassins. Maybe because a public face, like a former intelligence director, has left the shade to become a politician. And many strongly suspect that he’s dirty as fuck, but our snoopy reporter is just figuring out how deep the rabbit hole goes. Our politician was, of course, instrumental in developing programs like Treadstone, Blackbriar, et al.

- The Snoop finds out, one way or another, that one of the earliest failures of these programs was an “asset” who experienced a psychological break, went “off the res”, starting killing people and still turns up now and then to kill more people. To our Snoop, it appears that the government has created an uncontrollable monster who is still on the loose and possibly lurking right outside the White House, dear reader, are you scared now?

- The story, scanty, incorrect and harshly spun, gets printed as above. A few names are named, but mostly dead people (and maybe someone who has already been publicly discredited.) Our politician is not named because our Snoop doesn’t yet have absolute proof linking Mr. Politician to the Treadstone/Blackbriar/etc. machine.

- The evidence still exists. Witnesses still live, in numbers too great to be cleanly eliminated.

- Mr. Politician is sweating bullets.

- The Snoop isn’t done. He wants to find Bourne so he can say, “Here’s your monster, where’s my Pulitzer?” As investigation continues, the story becomes clearer to the Snoop, and the monster starts to look like little less monstrous and little more victimized. Which is an even better story.

- Now Mr. Politician is not only worried that he will be named, he’s worried that if Snoop makes contact with Bourne, or simply as a consequence of Snoop stirring the shit, Bourne will find out who our Politician is and how complicit he was in the program that destroyed David Webb. Mr. Pol knows this is likely to be a death sentence.

- It has become obvious to everyone who isn’t deeply deluded that Jason Bourne is practically indestructible and that sending more valuable and increasingly scarce ‘assets’ against him is just going to result in the loss of those assets. Agents available may be trained and conditioned to within an inch of their lives, but Bourne’s psychological break caused him to exceed his limits, training and conditioning in a way Black Ops programs haven’t been able to replicate. Those with a pragmatic attitude believe that they have no agent who can measure up to Bourne. Politician believes this as well.

- But Mr. Politician knows some things that the intelligence community has never concerned itself with. In his many years of government service, Mr. Pol was also involved with Law Enforcement at various times. Maybe he did a stint with the effa-bee-eye. Whatever. He knows about the Criminal Underworld, he knows that to maintain the ugly equilibrium, the Underworld may be influenced to comply with certain requests. And he knows a name. John Wick.

- Mr. Politician is also savvy about recent developments in the Underworld. He’s got a friend who’s still in the business of monitoring organized crime and keeping tabs on what’s going on down there. Mr. Pol has listened to recent stories with fascination because of certain similarities to a well known government failure who has haunted his dreams for decades. It has become a fact in Mr. Pol’s mind that the CIA will never be able to take down Bourne, but maybe there’s another way.

- Mr. Politician approaches a major Crime Lord and tells him point blank to activate John Wick by any means necessary and set him on the trail of one Jason Bourne. If Wick can’t be activated, Crime Lord will receive his own personal set of extensive criminal and RICO charges, delivered to his doorstep by the entire FBI

- Crime Lord knows if he gets charged, he probably won’t survive because other crime lords are going to want to make sure he doesn’t talk - about them. Also, his family will be endangered no matter which way the sword swings; either the FBI will be targeting them or his fellow criminals will be.

- Crime Lord knows John Wick. They’re old friends. Crime Lord feels a bit conflicted about it, but his first loyalties are to his family and his own hide. So he swallows his fondness for John Wick and commits falsehood, deception, a calling in of favors, maybe a little blackmail and the old Rock-And-A-Hard-Fuck-You-Up-Place on Wick. An elaborate, manipulative lie, that sets a misinformed John Wick on the trail of a man potentially as dangerous as himself.

- Now, we’ve got Jason Bourne being hunted by the Snoop, which has him on alert. We have John Wick hunting Bourne because he believes, once again, that he has no choice.

- We also have a Jason Bourne who is somewhat confounded. We need the scene where Bourne finds out, before contact ever takes place, that someone has taken out a contract on him with an Underworld assassin. Bourne doesn’t know much more about the Criminal Underworld than Joe Schmoe from Kokomo, just what he’s seen in the news and largely ignored, because it never had anything to do with him. Even in all that training years and years ago, there was this gap, because organized crime wasn’t the CIA’s beat. Maybe at first, Bourne even assumes that this Wick character isn’t a threat because he’s just a murderer, a thug, and not a highly trained government operative like himself.

- So in a riveting scene where Bourne and Wick first come into contact, we see Bourne - under the influence of his ignorant assumption - nearly getting killed by Wick and making an extremely narrow escape by use of desperate measures. We also have Mr. Wick limping away, suitably impressed with the skills of his opponent.

- Now we have that stretch of the story where Wick is on the hunt, Bourne is on the run and Bourne is trying to uncover any information he can find about this assassin. Wick doesn’t research much, though, because that’s not how he works. Bourne is a machine; the gears must grind. Wick is a force of nature, like a tornado; most of the info he gets he just picks up along the way, either paying for it or having it given to him by friends.

- Bourne discovers that Wick had a military past, Special Forces, maybe he was fucked over by the military/government in his own way. Or Bourne sees it that way. Bourne finds out about Helen and her death, and maybe not the whole story, but quite a bit about how John cut through a small army of Russian mob mooks for vengeance. He identifies with Wick’s grief and anger. He sees something of himself in John Wick. He sympathizes with the devil.

- John hasn’t done the heavy research. He understands that Bourne is dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anyone he’s ever met. He consolidates his resources and finds someone else to do his research. He is awaiting a report on Jason Bourne when…

- Bourne stops running, goes to confront Wick and ends up trying to explain, while fighting of course, what he knows about the Dirty Politician and the Crime Lord who has called John out of his troubled retirement yet again, and how Wick has been used and betrayed (this time) until he says something that causes Wick to call truce long enough to hear it all.

- Bourne can see the beginning of a way to solve the whole mess. After some persuasion, Wick is on board and has some ideas of his own.

- Now we’ve got our boys on the same side and it’s only left to decide whether the war will be conventional or nuclear.

- There are two victories we need to see. We must see the destruction of Mr. Politician and Mr. Crime Lord.

- You might-could send Bourne, who doesn’t really give a shit about the covenants and conventions of the criminal world, to the Continental - probably breaking in, instead of checking in. Luring the Crime Lord out into the open, perhaps on the intimation that Mr. Politician is about to take up backstabbing. Draw the Crime Lord out to confront the Politician. Bourne’s plan, reluctantly agreed to by Wick, is to draw the Politician and the Crime Lord together, get evidence and even a full recording of the meeting and expose them both to the world.

Or course, this backfires. Bourne finds himself in a position where he has to kill either Crime Lord or Mr. Politician in self-defense. Probably the Crime Lord.

- It would also be immensely satisfying to see Wick take out the dirty politician with a head shot. Bourne would, of course, be stoically pissed about it all, but it also illustrates the difference. Bourne is willing to let even unrepentant bastards live because he’s tired of having blood on his hands. Wick doesn’t let anybody live who’s fucked him over. Bourne is still conflicted about who and what he is. Wick has come to terms with himself. Bourne believes in atonement. Wick believes in damnation. Bourne still cares. Wick doesn’t give a fuck. Bourne still dreams of inner peace. Wick would settle for a little peace and quiet, would you motherfuckers just leave me the fuck alone already. Get off my lawn. And stop teasing my dog, you bastards.

(Bourne, of course, is a brutally disillusioned idealist. He had no idea he was signing away his soul. Wick likely sold his soul with his eyes wide open, though he probably only understood the ultimate cost later on - a naive pragmatist.)

- You must also show Wick taking an active role in planning, because if Bourne does all of it and says here’s what we’re going to do, then 1) he’s just using Wick as a tool or weapon, instead of treating him like a person and an equal and 2) Wick once again is being controlled by someone else instead of doing what he does best, which is take matters into his own hands (shooting Santino may have looked like a misstep, but who in the audience didn’t love it?)

- I’ve forgotten our Snoop reporter.

We could let Bourne track him down, in which case he will almost certainly die, because going by canon everybody who sympathizes with Jason Bourne must die.

We could let Wick find him, in which case he probably has a much better chance of surviving to publish his Pulitzer Prize winning story provided he’s not armed when he meets Mr. Wick. Hell, Wick could give him a coin, which could buy him entrance and protection at the Continental (even the government doesn’t want to mess with that bunch - like stirring a hornet’s nest with a stick; you might survive, but it will be excruciatingly painful and you’ll look like an idiot the whole time with all the screaming and flailing and jumping around in a panic.)

John Wick’s name will not appear in the story. Only a vaguely defined “other sources”.

- And after all is said and done, Bourne and Wick part company, with mutual respect and recognition. Though they really don’t like each other very much.

So that’s my John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made. But I had fun.

P.S. Please excuse crappy photoshop, I just wanted something there.

[skyhook-sly]

My John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made

(Bourne, of course, is a brutally disillusioned idealist. He had no idea he was signing away his soul. Wick likely sold his soul with his eyes wide open, though he probably only understood the ultimate cost later on - a naive pragmatist.)

I don’t post much at all, but here is a thing that happened on my computer. I was thinking about how John Wick and Jason Bourne could be brought together. My thoughts became long, and I started writing it down. This isn’t a story, just a sketch of how I think such a movie could be made. It’s not really edited either, this is all off-the-cuff.

[I only know what’s in the movies. I don’t know other canon from either ‘verse.]

So, if I were making a movie…

The universes of John Wick and Jason Bourne have very different styles, creating a problem.

Problem: - Bourne lives in a Universe where government is large, powerful, knowledgeable and nearly competent. - Wick lives in a Universe where a vast and elaborate criminal underworld exists, where we’ve never seen those major criminal figures worry about law enforcement or government.

The discrepancy must be resolved.

Simple.

Jason Bourne has never dealt with crime. Everything has been political and confined to the intelligence community.

Wick has never dealt with politics or the intelligence community.

So.

We must assume that the intelligence community is perfectly happy to leave common crime in the hands of law enforcement.

- Law enforcement has an unwritten and fatalistic attitude that there will always be some level of crime no matter what you do because it’s innate to human nature. And if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized. Let the strongest and most dangerous criminals accumulate power and influence, because they will go a long way to controlling the stupid, the excessive and the disruptive crooks. Better to have one major weapons trafficker controlling the traffic than have a thousand slightly smaller and more disruptive dealers completely out of control. (You can strongly hint that there’s an uneasy, unwritten and largely unspoken agreement between crime and law enforcement, and that it’s often a two-way street.) And if the big crime gets too big, it’s easier to knock it back down to “acceptable” levels because you’ve got bigger targets, which are easier to hit and which make a large and impressive splash across the front page when you throw RICO charges at them.

Plus it would also illustrate that Wickian Law Enforcement at its highest levels is just as dirty, amoral and underhanded as the Bournite Intelligence community.

- So, with a little work and willing suspension of disbelief (which wouldn’t be hard, because who wouldn’t want to see Wick and Bourne on the same screen provided it’s done with at least half an ass), it’s possible to bring the two Universes together.

- We start with Bourne. Someone else, like an hard ass, experienced reporter, is snooping into the government’s history of creating conditioned assassins. Maybe because a public face, like a former intelligence director, has left the shade to become a politician. And many strongly suspect that he’s dirty as fuck, but our snoopy reporter is just figuring out how deep the rabbit hole goes. Our politician was, of course, instrumental in developing programs like Treadstone, Blackbriar, et al.

- The Snoop finds out, one way or another, that one of the earliest failures of these programs was an “asset” who experienced a psychological break, went “off the res”, starting killing people and still turns up now and then to kill more people. To our Snoop, it appears that the government has created an uncontrollable monster who is still on the loose and possibly lurking right outside the White House, dear reader, are you scared now?

- The story, scanty, incorrect and harshly spun, gets printed as above. A few names are named, but mostly dead people (and maybe someone who has already been publicly discredited.) Our politician is not named because our Snoop doesn’t yet have absolute proof linking Mr. Politician to the Treadstone/Blackbriar/etc. machine.

- The evidence still exists. Witnesses still live, in numbers too great to be cleanly eliminated.

- Mr. Politician is sweating bullets.

- The Snoop isn’t done. He wants to find Bourne so he can say, “Here’s your monster, where’s my Pulitzer?” As investigation continues, the story becomes clearer to the Snoop, and the monster starts to look like little less monstrous and little more victimized. Which is an even better story.

- Now Mr. Politician is not only worried that he will be named, he’s worried that if Snoop makes contact with Bourne, or simply as a consequence of Snoop stirring the shit, Bourne will find out who our Politician is and how complicit he was in the program that destroyed David Webb. Mr. Pol knows this is likely to be a death sentence.

- It has become obvious to everyone who isn’t deeply deluded that Jason Bourne is practically indestructible and that sending more valuable and increasingly scarce 'assets’ against him is just going to result in the loss of those assets. Agents available may be trained and conditioned to within an inch of their lives, but Bourne’s psychological break caused him to exceed his limits, training and conditioning in a way Black Ops programs haven’t been able to replicate. Those with a pragmatic attitude believe that they have no agent who can measure up to Bourne. Politician believes this as well.

- But Mr. Politician knows some things that the intelligence community has never concerned itself with. In his many years of government service, Mr. Pol was also involved with Law Enforcement at various times. Maybe he did a stint with the effa-bee-eye. Whatever. He knows about the Criminal Underworld, he knows that to maintain the ugly equilibrium, the Underworld may be influenced to comply with certain requests. And he knows a name. John Wick.

- Mr. Politician is also savvy about recent developments in the Underworld. He’s got a friend who’s still in the business of monitoring organized crime and keeping tabs on what’s going on down there. Mr. Pol has listened to recent stories with fascination because of certain similarities to a well known government failure who has haunted his dreams for decades. It has become a fact in Mr. Pol’s mind that the CIA will never be able to take down Bourne, but maybe there’s another way.

- Mr. Politician approaches a major Crime Lord and tells him point blank to activate John Wick by any means necessary and set him on the trail of one Jason Bourne. If Wick can’t be activated, Crime Lord will receive his own personal set of extensive criminal and RICO charges, delivered to his doorstep by the entire FBI

- Crime Lord knows if he gets charged, he probably won’t survive because other crime lords are going to want to make sure he doesn’t talk - about them. Also, his family will be endangered no matter which way the sword swings; either the FBI will be targeting them or his fellow criminals will be.

- Crime Lord knows John Wick. They’re old friends. Crime Lord feels a bit conflicted about it, but his first loyalties are to his family and his own hide. So he swallows his fondness for John Wick and commits falsehood, deception, a calling in of favors, maybe a little blackmail and the old Rock-And-A-Hard-Fuck-You-Up-Place on Wick. An elaborate, manipulative lie, that sets a misinformed John Wick on the trail of a man potentially as dangerous as himself.

- Now, we’ve got Jason Bourne being hunted by the Snoop, which has him on alert. We have John Wick hunting Bourne because he believes, once again, that he has no choice.

- We also have a Jason Bourne who is somewhat confounded. We need the scene where Bourne finds out, before contact ever takes place, that someone has taken out a contract on him with an Underworld assassin. Bourne doesn’t know much more about the Criminal Underworld than Joe Schmoe from Kokomo, just what he’s seen in the news and largely ignored, because it never had anything to do with him. Even in all that training years and years ago, there was this gap, because organized crime wasn’t the CIA’s beat. Maybe at first, Bourne even assumes that this Wick character isn’t a threat because he’s just a murderer, a thug, and not a highly trained government operative like himself.

- So in a riveting scene where Bourne and Wick first come into contact, we see Bourne - under the influence of his ignorant assumption - nearly getting killed by Wick and making an extremely narrow escape by use of desperate measures. We also have Mr. Wick limping away, suitably impressed with the skills of his opponent.

- Now we have that stretch of the story where Wick is on the hunt, Bourne is on the run and Bourne is trying to uncover any information he can find about this assassin. Wick doesn’t research much, though, because that’s not how he works. Bourne is a machine; the gears must grind. Wick is a force of nature, like a tornado; most of the info he gets he just picks up along the way, either paying for it or having it given to him by friends.

- Bourne discovers that Wick had a military past, Special Forces, maybe he was fucked over by the military/government in his own way. Or Bourne sees it that way. Bourne finds out about Helen and her death, and maybe not the whole story, but quite a bit about how John cut through a small army of Russian mob mooks for vengeance. He identifies with Wick’s grief and anger. He sees something of himself in John Wick. He sympathizes with the devil.

- John hasn’t done the heavy research. He understands that Bourne is dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anyone he’s ever met. He consolidates his resources and finds someone else to do his research. He is awaiting a report on Jason Bourne when…

- Bourne stops running, goes to confront Wick and ends up trying to explain, while fighting of course, what he knows about the Dirty Politician and the Crime Lord who has called John out of his troubled retirement yet again, and how Wick has been used and betrayed (this time) until he says something that causes Wick to call truce long enough to hear it all.

- Bourne can see the beginning of a way to solve the whole mess. After some persuasion, Wick is on board and has some ideas of his own.

- Now we’ve got our boys on the same side and it’s only left to decide whether the war will be conventional or nuclear.

- There are two victories we need to see. We must see the destruction of Mr. Politician and Mr. Crime Lord.

- You might-could send Bourne, who doesn’t really give a shit about the covenants and conventions of the criminal world, to the Continental - probably breaking in, instead of checking in. Luring the Crime Lord out into the open, perhaps on the intimation that Mr. Politician is about to take up backstabbing. Draw the Crime Lord out to confront the Politician. Bourne’s plan, reluctantly agreed to by Wick, is to draw the Politician and the Crime Lord together, get evidence and even a full recording of the meeting and expose them both to the world.

Or course, this backfires. Bourne finds himself in a position where he has to kill either Crime Lord or Mr. Politician in self-defense. Probably the Crime Lord.

- It would also be immensely satisfying to see Wick take out the dirty politician with a head shot. Bourne would, of course, be stoically pissed about it all, but it also illustrates the difference. Bourne is willing to let even unrepentant bastards live because he’s tired of having blood on his hands. Wick doesn’t let anybody live who’s fucked him over. Bourne is still conflicted about who and what he is. Wick has come to terms with himself. Bourne believes in atonement. Wick believes in damnation. Bourne still cares. Wick doesn’t give a fuck. Bourne still dreams of inner peace. Wick would settle for a little peace and quiet, would you motherfuckers just leave me the fuck alone already. Get off my lawn. And stop teasing my dog, you bastards.

(Bourne, of course, is a brutally disillusioned idealist. He had no idea he was signing away his soul. Wick likely sold his soul with his eyes wide open, though he probably only understood the ultimate cost later on - a naive pragmatist.)

- You must also show Wick taking an active role in planning, because if Bourne does all of it and says here’s what we’re going to do, then 1) he’s just using Wick as a tool or weapon, instead of treating him like a person and an equal and 2) Wick once again is being controlled by someone else instead of doing what he does best, which is take matters into his own hands (shooting Santino may have looked like a misstep, but who in the audience didn’t love it?)

- I’ve forgotten our Snoop reporter.

We could let Bourne track him down, in which case he will almost certainly die, because going by canon everybody who sympathizes with Jason Bourne must die.

We could let Wick find him, in which case he probably has a much better chance of surviving to publish his Pulitzer Prize winning story provided he’s not armed when he meets Mr. Wick. Hell, Wick could give him a coin, which could buy him entrance and protection at the Continental (even the government doesn’t want to mess with that bunch - like stirring a hornet’s nest with a stick; you might survive, but it will be excruciatingly painful and you’ll look like an idiot the whole time with all the screaming and flailing and jumping around in a panic.)

John Wick’s name will not appear in the story. Only a vaguely defined “other sources”.

- And after all is said and done, Bourne and Wick part company, with mutual respect and recognition. Though they really don’t like each other very much.

So that’s my John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made. But I had fun.

P.S. Please excuse crappy photoshop, I just wanted something there.

[autolovecraft]

Thirty years before, walking up-down, forward-backward, right-left.

The key, for except to the light-beam envelopes.

Now the whole trip to 1928 and back; for the Ultimate Gateway, he continued, Carter knew that in this ultimate abyss—the entity of which his eyes were irresistibly drawn, there was neither cave nor absence of body; he knew his lateness was something very strange and unprecedented. I, too, was white-haired, apoplectic-faced, side-whiskered, and now he has lately disappeared. He artfully fashioned a waxen mask which would be born the nucleus of a blazing star, or a vegetable brain of man. There was no time for apportionment had come. Against him was arrayed the legal talent of one space-time continuum, but achieved a further liberation, roving at will send him bodily to any of these, however, soon showed their poverty and barrenness; and he saw that most of the imagined arch really a gigantic sculptured hand on his shoulder. He took it with interest, for the Shape had spoken of the minds that flicker for a moment. Had it not first changed him from a scene disliked to a terrific thundering. They did not see what the Ultimate Gate was, and I.

Then he came to study those who feared. Mr. de Marigny and Phillips watched with chaotic thoughts and judgments, and speculated on the hexagonal pillars was greeting him with abnormally impassive face. If my dreams and readings be correct, it was amid these ancient, cryptically brooding hills that he was almost mortally wounded there in 1916, while the fumes from the Supreme Archetype. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of Earth millions of years. No one moved. After an impressive pause the waves paused again he pondered in the hills behind Arkham were searched for the boy after the goal he had recently found. He knew that his calculations would let him perform a voyage with a light-wave envelope such as no being of a cone seem to have done it. There were Carters in settings belonging to the multiform entity of absurd, outlandish race called Randolph Carter and I have found good; and as it gleamed up into a cold, pulsating light of small-paned windows shone out at the time on the silent and awestruck, lighting his way with matches filched from the silently gliding and increasingly nervous old Negro who had placed in an unsuspected galaxy around which the vaporous brains of the abyss and the shapes on the north. Him he visited, living with him in order to restore, as a maternal cousin, it's up to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep—the-Gate Carter from his walls and refitting the house as it gleamed up into a vault and never returned. Then he knew his lateness was something very strange and lonely one, Randolph Carter. Mr. Aspinwall does not do well to laugh at the bend half way up Elm Mountain, on the way of our physical creation. Stars, clusters, nebulae, on October 7,1883, the ultimate abyss. Wait till I tell you that Randolph Carter, who was shunned and feared for the days of his dreams throughout life—was at last their outline bore some kinship to the light-wave envelope of electron-activated metal.

I tell you much—that would be a Guide who had all his fathers, for although he almost did, once, Carter hid it anew at a bank. Having lost these artificial settings, their lives grew void of direction and dramatic interest; till at length they strove to drown their ennui in bustle and pretended that the popular doctrines of occultism are as dry and inflexible as those of science, yet could not flee like a man in the lower meadow of the hand that is sculptured above the other constellations danced in a box somewhere.

Suddenly, as when he remembered to take it. The gutless zeal of Carter and I accept. Randolph Carter had not been hinted even at the tall, hieroglyphed door. Carter saw now, in the woods I ever saw; half the time the little Earth gods, with some neutral-colored fabric; and both de Marigny. Would it unlock the gates which a few people and create certain nightmare rumors among the swollen and twisted trunks of a cone seem to have picked up an odd bit of gold for earthly use. I am pleased to help him open the box and keep quiet about it—said it would have to be dark, bearded, singularly immobile face of that small wholeness reached by the roadside; and he knew the house that night he offered no excuses for his mother and her fathers before her were born, and would desperately practice human speech with the last flush of day, and impressions of sound began to understand dimly why there could exist at the farther turn, and this vast, strange room in New Orleans conference and has never been; and as it were, a fixed point in the south of France. These revelations came with a start that the silver key with precision for the metal building from which Benijah had been a deity under other names; that carved oak box of archaic wonder whose grotesque lid no hand had raised for two centuries. There was a passport.

Gross stupidity, falsehood, and he did not flinch in fear. Now it is not Naacal, but achieved a further liberation, roving at will through time in an unsuspected galaxy around which the vaporous brains of the delicate and sensitive men who composed it. Once again Carter felt that the Being was addressing the Carter-memories which troubled him. These revelations came with a bearded mask clutched in the earthly year of 1928, the odd voice of the satellites, and he wanted to use against the extravagance and artificiality of dreams; for he did so, for he did not see that he did not change; but the immemorial lore of Yaddith die only after prolonged cycles. The gutless zeal of Carter and all the Shapes, blazed frozenly over the shrouded skull of the world. One cease to flow forth. He sped up his ego, amid the nameless summit of agony and dread. This rascal is in disguise. Then he drew forth the great attic he found it in the darkness. It was, and dimly remembered from his curious novels many episodes more bizarre than any in his tenth year. I have shown you special proof.

He took it with interest, for in its aromatic box of archaic wonder whose grotesque lid no hand had raised for two centuries. If my dreams and secrets stood before him unafraid. Here are some papers obviously written since 1930, only two years; but of where and how it would not flee like a child whose head was already too full of a monstrous arch and gigantic sculptured hand vainly grasps. Once a gap in the farthest background. On Earth, shivering with fright at the same time. Then he would study furiously every possible means of returning to the setting sun, and no means was provided for working the formidable lock. Randy!

Then in the space outside dimensions. Whether or not he will be able to help in all the Shapes, blazed frozenly over the cloudy, floor-like lower level. I went to live; yet only four now sat listening to the house was on a world grown too busy for beauty and its Gothic carvings were so fearful that he had left off when dreams first failed him.

They did not believe he was at last the hollowness and unrest Carter tried to make a good test. Now he must achieve suspended animation with marvelous success. Phillips dazedly following in a while he sought friends, but ate his supper in silence and solitude. Well, toward the door to the ultimate background of that riddle of lost individuality which had opened the clock might easily have been forged from one of the most impenetrable blacknesses heaped upon blacknesses while about the secret portal each tomb is known to him that every figure of space is but a word bandied about by those who had vanished one midnight in an anomalous condition, but seem to have any significance whatever.

No, I may as well tell you of the Carter place, they told him that every figure of space is but the remote and forgotten at the leaded panes of the old Carter place, they may mean that Randolph Carter in the pitch darkness and rubbed his hand, had found a key was unable to effect his return to our narrow, rigid, objective world of men and of the others sat up with his vagaries, last saw him on. Yet he felt that it was sent to you that Randolph Carter into one of the most stupefying remoteness. It was, and Randolph Carter's estate among his heirs, but something seemed very confused.

Now, with a kind of stabilization.

[noanswersingenesis]

The Purpose of the Flood by Simon Turpin on November 21, 2016

Earlier this year I attended a debate between a biblical creationist and a humanist; during the Q&A time, an atheist posed the question: “If God is good, how could He be so capricious as to wipe out all those innocent people in the Flood.” This is not an uncommon objection raised by people who do not believe in the God of the Bible. However, this objection does not take time to consider the biblical context of the Flood, or to think about one’s own presuppositions.  Actually, it does. As usual, the believer has adopted the position that anyone who disagrees with their belief simply doesn’t understand it. The fact that there’s not immediate blind acceptance to their asserted position is apparently evidence of deliberate cognitive dissonance. I, for one, have read the entire bible multiple times. I AM taking the story in context. And by the way, who exactly decided that their method of interpretation is best? Did humanity have a meeting where we unanimously agreed that reading everything in a broader context was more beneficial? Can you demonstrate how reading the bible in your preferred fashion is demonstrably MORE helpful in discerning truth from falsehood? Because I can assure you that ALL belief systems utilize this same method of what I call “selective readings” with their holy texts and dogmas. It is actually possible to prove ANY position you’d like if you read scriptures in this way. That fact alone should make it obvious that it isn’t beneficial.      

For example, atheists have no basis with which to question the character of God, given that they have no objective moral foundation on which to do so. Morality for an atheist is just a matter of opinion. Actually, morality for ALL people is just a matter of opinion. I defy you to prove otherwise. The difference here is that some of us are honest about it, while others prefer to be mollycoddled by comforting falsehoods. The moral framework within the scriptures (which you profess to believe are infallible) changes multiple times.  

It is also important to remember that, when atheists read the text of Scripture, they do not believe that God exists or that He reveals Himself to people. The people in the biblical narrative then are judged by the atheists as if God has not revealed Himself. Incorrect. It’s a simple concept called suspension of disbelief. You practice it every time you watch a film, or read a novel. You know these things aren’t LITERALLY occurring. There’s no actual danger to the ship’s crew in Jaws. No one is actually getting sliced up by Freddy Kruger. Nothing bad will happen to us if Frodo fails to destroy the ring of power. But we place ourselves within the story, and subject our imagination to the laws of the universe that is presented to us. So atheists can, and often do, approch the scripture from within the confines of the boundaries laid out in them. Unfortunately for the believer, the scriptures STILL don’t hold up to skeptical inquiry under these conditions. I realize that it’s EASIER for Mr. Turpin, and those like him, to believe that this is the case. It flies in the face of actual evidence, but that’s never stopped them believing anything before, so why start now?  

Ultimately, atheists are not critiquing what the Bible says, but rather they are critiquing a misrepresentation of the biblical event. No, we’re critiquing what the bible ACTUALLY says. The mere fact that you’re asserting otherwise doesn’t make it so. Funny how those “misrepresentations of biblical events” are never properly explained. By anyone. Even here, you have the floor to set the record straight, but you fall back on the age old theistic tactic of broad generalisations supported by exactly ZERO hard evidence. In fact, one could argue that your reading is one of MANY differing theistic versions. And wouldn’t it then follow that these are the real misrepresentations here? That would explain all of the various factions and denominations, would it not? The only way  guarantee a reading that isn’t a misrepresentation would be to read the text literally, exactly as it’s written, with nothing added or removed. You know, like atheists generally do. Regardless, all you’re actually doing here is mischaracterizing someone else’s beliefs based on your opinions. How about you stick to characterising YOUR position, and let others speak for themselves, ok?

As Christians we need to consider the account of the Flood (and other judgement passages) in light of what the Bible states about God and humanity: Again, this isn’t even remotely scientific. You’re filtering your data through a slew of preconceptions and a system of dogma that has been prematurely accepted as infallible. The only results you could possibly get from this are skewed in your favor.  

* God is the sovereign Creator and therefore has the right to do what He pleases (Psalm 135:6). * God is holy, just, righteous, gracious, merciful, compassionate, and loving (Isaiah 6:3; Genesis 18:25; Exodus 34:6–7; John 3:16). * God created a very good world (Genesis 1:31). * The world we now live in is a fallen, sin-cursed world (Genesis 3). * There are no truly good people (i.e., good by God’s standard) since we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:9–18, 23). * We do not deserve God’s mercy; we deserve God’s justice and wrath (Psalm 103:10, 130:3; Romans 6:23). All of these supposed points come from the bible. That’s it. So you’re using the word of God to prove these things about God. And how do we know it’s the word of God? Well, it says so. So there you have it. We’re using God’s words in the bible to prove that the bible can be trusted as a source to tell us about the validity of God’s words in the bible. Seems legit. Unless you’ve heard of something called circular reasoning. Then it might be a problem.  

The Reason for the Flood

In Genesis 6 God gives the reason for His judgement of the world in the days of Noah: Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. . . . The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. (Genesis 6:5, 11–12) The judgement at the time of the Flood was not a result of God’s supposed capriciousness; rather He had several reasons for His judgement: 1. The wickedness of man. 2. Every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually. 3. The earth was corrupt. 4. The earth was filled with violence. 5. All flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Despite man’s wickedness, God showed Himself to be gracious in that He patiently waited, presumably for people to repent, while the Ark was being prepared (1 Peter 3:20). Unfortunately, despite the testimony of Noah, a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5, Hebrews 11:7), the people went about their daily affairs, unconcerned and unsuspecting of the Flood that came and destroyed them (Matthew 24:39). You keep missing the forest for the trees here. You’re focused on the individual tenants of God’s “judgment” and missing the broader question: Is mass genocide through global flooding the BEST plan God can come up with? Can YOU think of a better plan than that? I’m sure you can. I’m sure ANYONE could. Besides this, all of the reasons you listed come from the supposed account of the perpetrator of this mass genocide. That’s like walking onto the scene of a mass murder and taking the word of the admitted murderer as absolute fact. That’s crazy.    

The Coming Judgement

We need to remember that just as God judged the whole world in the days of Noah, He has also promised to do so again (Matthew 24:37–39, 25:31–32; 2 Peter 3:3–7). The good news is that, just as God provided a means of salvation (the Ark) in the days of Noah, He has provided a means of salvation from the future judgement through the Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6; Acts 4:12, 17:30–31; Romans 10:9). God was patient in the days of Noah, and He is patient today. The fact that Jesus has not already returned means salvation is still available to people (2 Corinthians. 6:2; 2 Peter 3:15), which should be a reminder to us as Christians to make the most of every opportunity to witness about our Savior.God has promised a lot of things that haven’t come to pass. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the majority of the promises made by the biblical God are not fulfilled. There is no evidence of a “second coming” and almost as little for the first one! You’re working within the bible to prove the bible with the bible. Try stepping OUTSIDE the bible and looking at these assertions with a skeptical eye. They simply don’t hold up.