Sunday, February 01, 2009

You've got to get mad

It's 6 in the morning and I can't sleep anymore.
Anyway, at the end of your life, you can sleep all you want.
Was thinking.........
Heath Ledger is getting a posthumous Oscar nomination for his role in The Dark Knight, surely the Movie of the Year for 2008. Strangely enough, the last time someone was posthumously nominated, it was for this movie called Network in the year 1976.
I also remember that Patrick Teoh quoted from this movie some time back. Rightly so. It's brilliant and for all of it's brevity, it packs a heck of a punch.
The quote below is applicable to us even today. Read it and you'll catch the drift. It was a heck of a performance.

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!'
So I want you to get up now.
I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.
I want you to get up right now and go to the window.
Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'
I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

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