The main character of Trainspotting, Mark Renton, is eloquent enough to persuade you that self-destructing with injected narcotics makes more sense than the middle class grind of sleep, commute, work, ad nauseum. His deftness with words is showcased when, in the film, he lambastes the people of Scotland for submitting to English rule: It's shite being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by. We're ruled by effete assholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference.
I adore Trainspotting the film but the novel is a higher work of art. The foundation for the greatness of both works is Renton's character. The film gives us a passing account of him. It focuses on his transformation from a junkie scraping by in Edinburgh to a Londoner trying to claw his way into the middle class. The novel gives a complete description of Renton's personality, world view, and family.
In it, we learn that, growing up, Renton was ashamed of his younger brother, a spastic who was sent away to an institution. He felt a mixture of hostility and contempt for his older brother, Billy, who regularly beat him up until he earned Billy's respect by stabbing a bully at school. This incident and Billy's reputation as a hard man caused the thugs of Leith to give Renton wide berth.Renton's family, on his father's side, is Protestant and militantly Unionist. On the mother's side, they're Catholic and favor Scottish independence. Billy takes after the father's side, joins Her Majesty's Service, and is killed by Republican forces on a patrol in Northern Ireland. At the wake following the funeral, Renton drunkenly comes on to his cousin. His advances enrage his Unionist uncle, Chick, who attempts to throw Renton out:
--Listen son, if you don't get oan yir fuckin bike, ah'm gaunnae tan your jaw. If it wasnae fir yir father thair, ah've done it a long time ago. Ah don't like you son. Ah never huv. Yir brother was ten times the man you'll ever be, ya fuckin junky. If you knew the misery yuv caused yir Ma n Da ...
--You can speak frankly, ah cut in, anger throbbing in my chest but nonetheless contained by a delicious glee that comes fae knowing that ah've upset the cunt. Stay cool. It's the only way tae fuck a self-righteous bastard over.
--Oh ah'll speak frankly aw right, Mr University smart cunt. Ah'll knock you through that fuckin waw. His chunky, indian-inked fist was just a few inches from fae ma face. Ma grip tensed oan the whisky gless I wis haudin. Ah wisnae gaunnae let the cunt touch us wi they fuckin hands. If he moved he wis gittin this gless.
Ah push his raised hand aside.
-If ye did gie us a kickin, ye'd be daeing me a favour. Ah'd jist huv a wank aboot it later on. We University drop-oot smart cunt junkies are kinky that wey. Cause that's aw you're worth, ya fuckin trash. Yir also takin a wee bit for granted. Ye want tae go ootside, just say the fuckin word.. Ah gestured at the door. The room seemed tae shrink tae the size ay Billy's coffin, and be populated only by masel n Chick. But thir wir others. People wir looking roond at us now.
Renton reduces Chick to fodder for a pervert's sexual fantasies. The contempt is impeccable. Renton's contempt first reached artistic heights at the wake when a minister of the British government extends condolences for Billy's death:Some ruling class cunt, a junior minister or something, says in his Oxbridge voice how Billy wis a brave young man. He wis exactly the kind ay cunt they'd huv branded as a cowardly thug if he wis in civvy street rather than on Her Majesty's Service. This fucking walking abortion says that his killers will be ruthlessly hunted down. So they fuckin should. Aw the wey tae the fuckin Houses ay Parliament.
Here, Renton seems to view Scottish nationalism as a viable program that might bring about an independent Scottish state. This contrasts with his rant in the film in which he calls the Scottish servile trash, which suggests that hopes for independence are futile.
Since films are short and visually oriented, Trainspotting the film can't depict Renton's personality with the art and the depth of the novel. Because Renton's character is the nucleus of both pieces, the novel is superior to the film, just as an original of a painting is superior to a reproduction.
The opposite holds in the case of the film and novel versions of Fight Club. Palahniuk fails to give his characters personality in the novel. The film, by shifting the focus to the compelling chain of events described in the novel, and away from the deficient characters, is stronger than the novel.
The October 2008 issue of Outside Magazine describes a physical training program that Ann Hodel, a former NCAA ski racer, devised for downhill snow sports. This weekend, I split my old program into two days and added exercises she recommended. I had more fun in the gym than I'd had in years.
Upper Body
Pull-ups: 50-62 reps, 7 sets. In June, I started using the Schwarzenegger method - doing at least 50 reps of pull-ups, regardless of the number of sets required. Since then, total number of reps I do has increased from 40 to around 60.
Push-ups: 60-100 reps, 3-4 sets. I added push-ups at Hodel's suggestion. I haven't worked on my chest in a year. The last time I did my shoulder joints felt like they would dislocate when I lowered a barbell to my chest. Yesterday, I did 25 clean reps on the first two sets and failed completely at rep 15 on the third set. My chest muscles have been burning since then.
Standing Barbell Military Press: Around 26 reps on heavy days, up to 60 reps on light days. This exercise requires you to extend your arms over your head while standing. The motion builds up the deltoids and back muscles.
Bent Over Barbell Rows: 30-50 reps, 3-4 sets. I start with the 45 pound barbell or the bar and quarters and work up, on heavy days, to 185 pounds.
Good Mornings (alternative to barbell rows): 16-24 reps, 3 sets. I start with the barbell and work up to 135 pounds. You place the barbell across your shoulders as if you were doing squats and bend forward until your torso is as close to parallel to the ground as you can stand. It builds up the lower back and the hamstrings. Like dead lifts, Good Mornings can blow out your lower back unless you keep your back arched.
Lower Body
Squats: 48-60 reps total, 12 reps a set, 4-5 sets. I added this at Hodel's suggestion. When I last did squats in August 2003, it felt like the exercise would make my right knee explode and spray synovial fluid all over my gym's mirrors. Tonight I worked up to a reasonable but taxing 210 pounds. The exercise felt great - the deep movement lit up my calves, hamstrings, quads and glutes. I didn't feel the slightest twinge in my right knee. I may be able to do this exercise safely at moderate weights.
Plyometric Jumps: I discovered this exercise thanks to Hodel. You stand next to a platform or box that is a foot above the ground, jump onto it sideways, and jump off sideways, as many times as you can in 60 seconds. Switch sides for the second set and stand facing the box for the final set. Jumping sideways involved a lot more coordination than I thought. Jumping onto the box when facing it required less dexterity. But at that point my legs were cached. I could get into a rhythm with the front jumps, but not the sideways jumps. My quads and lungs were begging for respite two thirds of the way into the second set. I did 39 right sided jumps, 35 left sided jumps, and 49 forward jumps.
Barbell Bicep Curls: 5 sets, 25-50 reps. I include barbell curls because the bicep assists in pull-ups by taking the strain off the latissimus dorsi.
It seems to be often believed that, if you admit that [ethnic groups differ from each other], consistency requires that you try to murder entire races of people. I do not know what one can say of a belief as ridiculous as this, except that it is extremely ridiculous. Take my example of long-distance running, Ethiopians, and Eskimos. Like most other people, I am not a fanatical enthusiast for long-distance running. But suppose I were: would consistency then require that I try to extinguish the race of Eskimos, and multiply the number of Ethiopians?
David Stove, Against the Idols of the Age
"Holy God Almighty," I declared after Luke pointed out that we had almost finished slogging through the marsh below Mt. Evans' west ridge. Several times my feet had sunk into the mud past my ankles. I was tired and filthy.
"Holy God Almighty," if spoken reverently, expresses gratitude to God for providing relief from discomfort, despite the fact that the Almighty himself caused the discomfort. The man who feels gratitude to God for ending suffering that God caused must see himself as deserving of punishment. The Puritans impressed this attitude on school children. The letter J in The New England Primer is accompanied by an image of Job's suffering and this rhyme:Job feels the Rod
Yet blesses GOD.
Calling God merciful for limiting the suffering He inflicts is laugh-out-loud nonsense. But there is a grain of validity in this religious attitude toward suffering: we should strive to grasp that life is valuable even when we have to confront pain, adversity, and set backs.
One of these days the cold bright light of science & reason will shine through the cathedral windows & we shall go out into the fields to seek God for ourselves. The great laws of Nature will be understood--our destiny and our past will be clear. We shall then be able to dispense with the religious toys that have agreeably fostered the development of mankind.
Winston Churchill
I came across this quote in Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War, by Patrick Buchanan. Buchanan tries to refute the notion that, by resisting Hitler until the U.S. and U.S.S.R. entered the war, Churchill single-handedly saved the world from Nazism. In Buchanan's view, Nazi Germany had neither the means nor the desire to dominate the world. Churchill's refusal to negotiate with Nazi Germany only ensured that the Eastern European nations that Britain went to war for in the first place would spend the next 50 years under the rule of a totalitarian state as murderous and evil as Nazi Germany. Buchanan persuaded me that Churchill's reputation as a military strategist and the savior of civilization is undeserved. His book also makes clear, with quotations like the one above, that Churchill was a god-like writer.
Guilt. -- Although the shrewdest judges of the witches and even the witches themselves were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, this guilt still did not exist. This is true of all guilt.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 250
Guilt means the state of having committed a crime or wrong. It also means the feeling of remorse or culpability for a real or imagined wrong. Nietzsche obviously is not denying that people engage in conduct that is against the law or that people often feel remorse for their conduct.
Nietzsche is suggesting that the intellectual foundation for the feeling of culpability is false. Religious people feel remorse for engaging in conduct that they believe has been proscribed by God. This type of remorse is founded on the mistaken assumption that God exists and that God has commanded people to refrain from certain acts.
Nietzsche also is challenging the sense we get that, if we had it to do over again, we would not commit the wrong that's troubling our conscience. This type of remorse is founded on the mistaken assumption that one's conduct is determined by a transcendental core personality that is not constrained by cause and effect. In reality, our behavior is dictated by physiological processes within our brains. If a situation in which we did a wrong presented itself again, with every last atom in the same state it was in the first time around, we would commit the same wrong again.
Guilt causes us unnecessary distress by insisting that we could have lived up to our moral standard and not committed the wrong. Contrary to guilt, we did not commit the wrong voluntarily or lightly. The brute force of cause and effect compelled us to do so.
