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"We split up on April Fool's Day. So I decided to let the joke run for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with a sell-by date of May 1. May loves pineapple, and May 1 is my birthday. If May hasn't changed her mind by the time I've bought thirty cans, then our love will also expire."

CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994) dir. Wong Kar-Wai    

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Flora, 1989 [Jan Svankmajer]

I've seen this before, but I had always assumed that it was a small segment of something longer. Amazingly, 'Flora' says so much in just thirty seconds.

As the vegetable woman wastes away, tied to a bed almost within reach of the glass water that won't save her but would ease her suffering, it immediately brought to my mind the idea of an artist with rich, wonderful ideas that could enrich the world, constrained by the society that they are living in while their imagination atrophies.

At the same time, I thought of images of dumpsters behind restaurants and grocery stores full of food that is still edible but unable to be sold while people starve. Things that are destroyed as they are discarded so that they cannot be used. The resources we extract at alarming rates from our planet for profit and consuming for consumption's sake because that is how we have been conditioned.

I thought of all of the beautiful things and places in the world exploited for their beauty, overrun and mistreated by people who refuse to respect the world around them, tossing their trash and human excrement behind, not caring that they are turning Mount Everest into a landfill.

Finally, I thought of the song 'Disgustipated', the closing track on Tool's 1993 album 'Undertow'.

"These are the cries of the carrots. The cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day and to them, it is the Holocaust."

At first, I was thought that was a fun connection to make, but even then, the tense mantra of "this is necessary, life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life" immediately bummed me out. That feels like that is the real core of it, that life cannot exist without consumption. By existing in any capacity, we are extracting from the world around us. If there were equilibrium, we would be giving back to the earth in equal measure but we are taking so much more than we need and more than we could give back in a thousand lifetimes. At the same time, this refers to the way that the societal machine feeds on the people within for the profit of those in power or those with power. Life is being extracted and metabolized from the many for the benefit of the few.

We don't know why or where the vegetable woman is imprisoned, but the fear and compassion that you feel for her in the few seconds that you see her should haunt you.

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Ichi the Killer (2001) Takashi Miike

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Costumes designed by Michiko Kitamura for Ichi the Killer (2001)

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Music credits for Totally F***ed Up (1993)

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the doom generation, 1995

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Nowhere (1997) soundtrack cd

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Nowhere (1997)

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They were talking about this photo in an interview that I watched, just cracking up.

James Duval after shooting wrapped for Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997)

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SEVERANCE 2x03 | "Who Is Alive?"

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just got the call. fired. i was the DEI coordinator at Lumon in charge of making all the old men on the severed floor gay

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Bones and All Luca Guadagnino, 2022

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I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

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Stalker | dir. Andrei Tarkovsky (1979)

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Stalker (1979), dir. by Andrei Tarkovsky