The Arroyo

Let the trumpers trump a tune and the drummers play
'Everything you think you know, I've forgotten in a day',
Or, at least, that's what my cruel father used to say,
And drive me to the corner of a room to contemplate
The tiny chance it might be true;
That someone somewhere held such sway
Over all the paisley fractals,
The secrets of the atlas,
And most of all, the words, the esplanade of birds
And the discreet patterns of waves I thought I loved the most -
At least for one blue summer

I founded the clan, had dreams, and died before the wheat came in
I'm with Jesus now, a child in an infirmary
A moocher with all the slack I'll ever need, and it`s the Lord`s work I`m doing
Unplanned and tired before my time,
I search the arroyo for the last drops of summer water
The last discharge of our father
That was swallowed by the land before the cock had the slightest hope to crow

Only fools seek paradise, but this is a funny story
The fool doth weep in the offing but all are laughing when he is a-stage
We make love, and wars we wage
There are things of utmost significance about which we know nothing
We do as we are told
And the fool keeps forgetting

How do you suppose that we shall rest?

It takes aeons to dismantle the system
An age is a but moment to a system, or lesser still
Time does not merely discard the unwanted
The payments keep on coming
Days become nights and nights become blankets
The rhythm of dreams scratch into tomorrow like the specific ruts of analog reproduction
The baby is in the bath water
Who will pull the stopper,
Who can break the seal?

None but the lamb

Our hands are always open when the money pours in
We come because we are called
It's only a dream, after all - a dream and a drink of water
You, my friend, must say the word
How will I know the house before I go inside?
I'm all messed up, but I could eat breakfast three times a day

And thus we feast upon the fatted cow
Birds on the wing, the pregnant sow
Eat, drink and be wary
For tomorrow we die
And what is there to save us now?
We cry for so much water that we drown

'Everything you've ever seen I've lost in a single tear'
What is left but to reply, 'Goodbye my father dear'.
God is dead and dying still
I pray his tears my heart to fill
And when I dine, he'll foot the bill
And leave me millions in his will

And this is not a drill

Killing Time: Reflections on Kubrick's 'The Shining'

My most literate effort to date. I will probably add a few images, but the text is finito. I have not included many references, but I am glad to talk about the mysteries of The Shining any time that I happen to be awake of my own volition.

Dedicated to my friend Azazel, who shared with me one rainy night, my break through viewing.

Introit

Reality is a series of coincidences. Everything is, by definition, a coincidence, and for exactly this fact there are no coincidences. Da WWWiz somehow missed an email mixed in with some spam. Delivered on March 7th, I discovered it just this morning (March 11th). The sender was one Jeffrey Scott Bernstein, author of the superb Shot by Shot expose of the first act of Eyes Wide Shut.

I have had only one prior contact with Mr. Bernstein, about EWS as it happens, that took place in the autumn of 2008. I didn't think I would hear from him again, so I was delighted to discover his recent mail and chilled by the synchronicity of its content.

It seems that Mr Bernstein, like Da WWWiz these daze, is also in the grips of The Shining, perhaps permanently. Furthermore, the March 7th date of his mail to me reveals that he couldn't have known that I was lost in the same corn. Did he hear me crying in the night? Because Killing Time is to be an exploration of the elusive maze and meaning of The Shining it seems appropriate to begin with the thoughts of Jeffrey Scott Bernstein.

"(The Shining) is about loss, disappointment, failure, vanished time.. of the sadness and inescapability of patterns -- terrible father figures, replaying old terrible things, being haunted by the past. Truly, weirdly, I feel as if someone has died, and I am experiencing a strong mourning. How can anyone cope with such a mourning?"

How indeed, mein freund?

And yet Da WWWiz simply must cope. For me to cope is the panache of gallows humor, it is laughing, or at least smiling at the horrible, beautiful, resplendent truth. It is my last and only chance to weather the crossing in style. To cope, to dare to hope and finally to start having fun.

In the words of Country Joe, 'Whoopee, were all gonna die!'

Let's Begin.

What If God Was One Of Us?

In his speech to accept the D.W. Griffith award, Kubrick quipped that the myth of Icarus might be a primer to 'build better wings'. This notion is also a warning to students of Kubrick. Truly seduced by Stan, one is in danger of flying too close to a sun evermore perilous than the over-rated solar fire. Stan's sun is a Black Sun, cold and edgy as a razorblade. It can break you, cut you up, tattoo you. It can correct you - if you want it to, or not. This theme shall be clarified, but for now, please consider it as a caveat to the truth seeker: The Shining can fuck you up, if you pay attention to it. It conveys a hidden truth about the human condition. Namely, we are all dead. We have always been dead. Dead and awe-fully alone, eternally alone, each to each. Life is but the dream of being alive. Our lives are the longing to be alive.

And yet, this essay will attempt to prove the The Shining tells another and wondrous story. That we, even in our isolation and pain, are eternal points of light. All that shines, shines on. Such is the secret message of The Shining, and not merely proposed but proven beyond all doubt by Stan the Man.

It seems natural to ask how such a proof could be made. Da WWWiz will try to discover this herein, but if you are impatient for the simple fact then know this: Stanley Kubrick is Satan.

Now by my way of thinking, such a scandalous claim deserves a quick apology. When I say Satan I mean a real force of nature, a real being. A Real Mensch, not a metaphor or archetype. Of course I refer to the one and the same personality that tele-evangelists descry as the source of evil in the soul of man. I'll say it again. Satan is real.

But understand this, my belief in the legitimate material existence of this person is not also the acceptance of the myriad religious fractals that coruscate from his presence, past and present. Your ol' pal Da WWWiz worries that thanks to Satan`s tricks the only salvation is through Christ, but does not yield to the demand. I won't give in that anyone or anything ought to need saving. The need for redemption conceals a deficit in nature that I just can't acknowledge. Equally, I scoff at the pleasures of damnation. It's a Catch-22. I may be damned but I'll be damned if there is anything I can do about it.

I hope we understand each other, good reader.

Pre-School

The Shining is the Mother of All Mindfuck Movies and as such produces a wide range of intense and indepth analysis. Thusly, before I unravel mine own and total codex, I wish to touch on several researchers, the best of the best, that I may call upon to elucidate my thesis.

Bill Blakemore, Rob Ager, David Kirkpatrick, Johnny53, Jeffrey Scott Bernstein.

Blakemore

In a sense, Blakemore's Family of Man, was the one that started it all, and remains the most sought after after some 20 years. Bill's idea is that The Shining is the story of White Man's Penance for the genocide of the American Indian and obliquely, the bondage of Negro Slavery. I will confine my feelings about Blakemore to this blurb: if we consider that the movie in question is Tarot of Correspondances, and trust Da WWWiz, it is, it follows that Blakemore has learned the unique and separate meaning of one of its cards. The Tarot has 78 cards. The possible number of combinations is therefore 78! or as one would say, the factor of 78. This number is cosmic. Billion upon billions. The score, Stanley: Infinity and Blakemore: less than one.

Blakemore's theme is legit but callow, which goes to show that one can be 100% on the money and starkly short of the bulls-eye. For his claim that the film is a criticism and ad hoc atonement for the Euro-American Imperial expansion policies in the Americas, I can only manage to sigh. Stanley Kubrick was no critic of these atrocities, he was their very champion spokesman and design fellow. This will be illuminated in Killing Time, but let's start with this amuse-bouche: the films of Mr. K are celebrations, each and every one, of the dark delights of the darkest mind of the 20th century and their mysteries deep. Seriously fuckin' deep. Believe it, nizzy.

Next at bat, Rob Ager (heretofore known as Mr. Fuckstick - see here).

Ager is the Charlie Brown, or perhaps moreso the Charles M. Schulz, of my field of luminaries. Ager is a brilliant researcher in search of a thesis, but every time he kicks at the ball, Lucy tugs it out of reach. He balks at the grounded theory. I'm beginning to wonder if he has the belly for it.

I choose a specific example from the wide belt of Ager's ouvre. He has been intrepid enough to translate many of the Vietnamese phrases visible in Full Metal Jacket and one of them is a doozy. On a water tower no less, it reads, 'To Continuously Serve your Majesty, Satan'. Holy Shitstack, Batman! But Ager's reaction is polite. He wonders if Kubrick is commenting that War is Hell and so forth. He does not, perhaps at this point, can not recognize the signature of The Artist in the corner of the canvas. Ager is precociously sane. He seems unwilling to plunge into the murky depths that his work so longingly suggests.

Nevertheless, the wealth of knowledge and a some really good ideas make Ager's work a must for any diligent follower of the Great Svengali that is Stan. In his 20+ chapters on The Shining, he shows the pathway to many of its toughest mysteries, mainly by mapping a thorough topography of the movie and by the identification of many key symbols.

Two Big Thumbs Up (in Hell). I will reference him repeatedly.

David Kirkpatrick (if you follow this link, scroll to number 12 for the article in question)

Here is a juicy tidbit. Dave seems to think that The Shining delivers a Mcluhan-esque parable on the struggle to integrate the printed word and subsequent media into full human consciousness. The work in question is Mcluhan's Gutenberg Galaxy. Kirkpatrick is really onto something here, but fails to tune into Mcluhan's full revelation. Yes, Mcluhan's work was all about the humanoid/media interface, but the true thrust of Mr. M is that he was a Prophet of the Apocalypse. To miss this about Mcluhan is to miss him all over. The Shining is likewise quite concerned with the selfsame End of Time. We shall see.

And yet, The Shining is about media, that is: ALL media. The spoken word and its modes and tones, the printed word, TV and Cinema, and Advertising are proffered along side meticulous imagery as competing voices in this contrapuntus great and obscure. Let's compare Finnegan's Wake. Wake was central to Mcluhan's theory. Joyce's vexing Wake does for the languages of Babylon what The Shining does for the meta-textual and technical media. Where Joyce decodes the word in the mind, Kubrick opens the media of eye and resounds in the ear. And as Joyce concluded in his punishing fugue of the human tongue, so did Kubrick through his own exposition: we are all dead. Life is a ghostly masquerade. We are the Children of Cain and we have lost forever the Tree of Life. Big Whoop! For we dance upon the very burning edge of night and watch the World end... forever.

Party On, Dudes.

More to come on the Kubrick/Mcluhan/Joyce nexus. Big thanks to David Kirkpatrick.

Johnny53

The enigmatic rant of Mr. 53 propounds a theory brave and bold and Da WWWiz is on board. By analyzing the time code, number occurrences, character names, and aspects of imagery, he concludes that The Shining is a countdown to the End of the Mayan Calender. His research is profound and wide, drawing in particular on differences between King's novel and the film.

53's theory dovetails beautifully with mine own. The Mayan countdown is on and The Shining is the tale of the tape. It would appear we are on the brink of some type of cataclysm, a mass human sacrifice, maybe. The signs are all over the place these days, and they are all over this film.

Killing Time will put the Mayan theme into a classical perspective. As for Johnny53: read it.

Jeffrey Scott Bernstein

The aforementioned JSB has written about Kubrick with more elegance than any I have read. His words are like a glass of good champagne taken in a single draft. Perfectly intoxicating. Scintillating and effervescent. He is also subtle and funny.

Jeff is hypnotized by Kubrick's camera, and his observations are keen. He has classified an essential facet of Kubrick's imagery, namely, that it is rectilinear in design. This detail is fundamental to my codex for The Shining, for it unlocks the secret identity of Jack Torrance and by criminal association, unmasks the secret Stanley Cube-Brick.

A special thanks to Jeff. Stan Fans are encouraged to peruse him entire.

Killing Time

Who's Shining Whom: The Origin of Extra Sensory Phenomena

To completely decode we must understand the absolute nature of the supernatural events at the Overlook and elsewhere.

Here is a list of those events.

1. Danny's shine of the bloody room as he brushes his teeth
2. Danny's tete-a-tete with Halloran
3. The Twins in the rec room
4. The murdered Twins
5. Jack in Rm. 237
6. Jack's first meeting with Lloyd, the bartender.
7. The Ball in the Gold Ball Room and the Red Room Lavatory
8. Halloran's scary bedtime shine
9. Grady at the storeroom door (how is it opened?!)
10. Wendy's visions
11. The photo of Jack at the party

Firstly, it is fair to say that all of the events in The Shining are supernatural. This idea is a pillar around which much is built. During Danny's chat with the Chef, Halloran explains that many people can shine, although they don't know it or deny it. Kubrick is normalizing the art of shining. When we move our lips to speak, write and publish, watch TV and make movies we are shining. All communication is telepathic because when successful, it conveys the very substance of our minds.

Even so, some shine with more talent than others and Danny Torrance is a superstar. His vision, while he brushes, of the blood room, is not merely of his own destiny but of a universal constant - the castration of Uranus (more on this in the next blurb).

Danny's shine and talk with Halloran is a scene of master manipulation. Danny coaxes the Chef into spilling the beans, and fools Halloran into believing that his own talent to shine is more developed than that of his guest, who is just a kid. Bad move.

Both appearances of the Twins are the product of Jack's imagination. They emerge from both a) the content of Jack's novel project and b) Jack's sublimated and arch typical need to murder his family. Such claim will be verified when we look at the use of color coding.

ALL remaining phenomena are the active and malicious progeny of the mind of Danny Torrance. His revenge upon his stupid and banally malignant parents. Danny frees Jack from the storeroom, to lure him out into the maze and murder him. Notice how Danny tips off his presence to the axe wielding Jack as he pretends to hide behind the snow cat. Yup the little bugger planned it all. Stay with me and I'll prove it.

Archetypes: To Avenge Uranus

Danny's motivation for killing his father and scaring the living hell out of his oh so innocent mommy is capitulation for his repeated rape at the hands of Dad. As for Wendy, she knew about it and let it happen.

On Closing Day, Jack sits in the lobby, flipping through a Playgirl magazine as he finishes his coffee. This particular issue carries a cover point for a story about incest (thank you to Rob Ager and his trusty high-def pause and capture).

Put yourself in the Sistine Chapel, staring up at the Finger of God reaching for the finger of Adam. Genuflect, you fucking heathen! All righty, do you see it now? The divine contact on high is a Catholic convention. What you should see is Adam blowing off his Poppa. Recall that Danny crooks his finger from flaccid to erect when Tony speaks. Tony hides in his mouth and stomach as does the semen of his divine father. The name 'Tony' is NLP for 'Toe-knee', which is the position of the fellating bear seen in Wendy's vision near the end of the movie, as it is the position of all the children kneeling in church.

The Bear is analog to Danny. Danny is pictured throughout with a gaping mouth, as is the Teddy Bear he leans on during his examination by the Doctor. This model also illuminates the blood room vision. The elevator doors are Danny's mouth and its floor dials his wide eyes. The bloom of blood is the blood from his fathers wound. Danny has bitten off his father's penis. He has castrated him.

We can now decode the death of Dick Halloran, which was not in the novel. Dick is Jack's penis. Please note the change in the pitch of Hallorans voice when he first addresses Danny in the kitchen. 'Is it big enough for you?' asks Halloran, directly to Danny. And the casting of a black actor is key. Object X of occult worship is the severed penis of Osiris. Osiris is a BLACK God. Black God of the Nile. Kubrick has interlaced some pretty well hidden secrets of the Satanic mystery schools into The Shining. This murder also details the fact that Danny is, by this point, totally in control. He has lured Jack into castrating himself - by killing Dick - as a simulacrum to castration by fellatio. Danny's scream is the scream of a man who has just committed the first murder.

Let's look into the key archetypes.

Danny is Apollo the God of the Sun and Medicine. He is nicknamed Doc.
Jack is Satan. Saturn the creator of Time. Slayer of Uranus, his father, by castration.
Wendy is Isis the World mother. In the material world she can nurture but not intervene.

There is an astrological connection that is woven into the film, between Danny and the planet Uranus. One must realize that Apollo the healer is also Jesus Christ. Jesus tells of his second coming to follow into a house '...a man bearing a pitcher of water'. This is not astrotheological skulduggery as suggested in the movie Zeitgeist. It simply pinpoints the return of Christ to coincide with the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. Astrology pairs the influence of Uranus with the Age of Aquarius. This blends right into the talent of shining, as Uranus is also paired with both psychic power and with the appearance of instant mass communication, most notably TV, of which little Danny is quite fond.

In the light of these connections it seems natural that Danny, as Christ the Judge and Redeemer, would avenge the murder of the true God of the Heavens, Uranus, by the hand of his firebrand son Saturn. Especially since that same Saturn has been running a horrorshow of rape, incest and human sacrifice from the dawn of time.

Things get a bit rough here, because we are looking at a kind of loop or mobius strip. When Danny reaches out to touch the doorway to the forbidden Rm. 237, Kubrick is treating us to an homage to his 2001. In 2001, during The Dawn of Man sequence, one proto-human reaches first to touch the Monolith. Danny is this same ape, down through the ages. This ape becomes the first murderer, Cain, as revealed in 2001. The lineage of Cain traces all the way to Christ. Read the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, if you have any doubt (KJV). Also, Matthew connects Danny to Christ by Stan's use of the number 42. Danny wears a shirt with a prominent 42 and watches The Summer of '42 on TV, while his mother reads. In Matthew, Christ is counted as the 42nd generation of Abraham. Moreso, the 42 generations are divvied into 3 groups of 14. 3.14 is pi. Christ, at the end of the Revelation, declares himself 'the beginning and the end'. The Prince of Pi. And remember that Danny is the Bear: the Big Dipper, which is the Aquarian 'pitcher of water', is also called 'The Great Bear'.

Onto Jack as Satan. What must be understood is that Jehovah is a demiurge, a sort of half-god, whose power is stolen from another source. Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine, instructs that the true appellation of Jehovah is Satan. This idea explains the Gnostic description of creation as cruelly imperfect. Now that we know that god is Satan, the nature of original sin is within our grasp. All of creation is formed from the blood of the murdered Uranus. This is why, after bearing his first Children, Saturn eats them up. There is nothing else to eat. The full scope of the human orgy of cannibalism and incest must follow as night follows day. Saturn eats some of his children and, disguised in the night, rapes the others. The role of cannibalism is carried on by the Saturnine cults through the dual rituals of circumcision and communion. The incest is both oral and anal. On the Drive to the Overlook, Danny to Jack: 'I'm hungry'. Jack responds: 'Well you should've eaten your breakfast'. Kubrick is wickedly tricky here, because children do not ask their fathers for food, but rather their mothers. We are being clewed that Danny has become accustom to a certain salty snack from Daddy-o. What follows, as the Torrances roll merrily along, is a discussion about cannibalism. And later, listen to Jack as he chases Danny through the maze: 'I'm coming Danny, I'm coming. I'm right behind you'. O-sodom-mio!

As for Wendy, Kubrick gives us an iconic image of Wendy as Isis of the Tarot during her first private meeting with Jack, in the Colorado Room. Wendy is squarely framed by open draperies, like pillars, behind her. Wendy is bottomlessly loving, for she provides an eternal life to her subjects, but because of the gift to humanity of free will, she can not intervene. Her evenly meted love does not, however, appease Danny's rage, which he will unleash as a vision upon her. Wendy, her nose in a book or about her vacant chores, has overlooked the truly violent temperment of the human dance of death, sacrifice, sociology, incest and agriculture. Her vision is that of Jocasta, confronted at last by the Riddle of the Sphinx, but her fate seems kinder.

Now the fate of Jack is known, or is it? Most theorists agree that by the time we see him in the July 4th photo, Jack is trapped in his own Hell for all time. Da WWWiz proposes the exact opposite. Jack has been granted paradise. To really get this you have to at least consider the shocking arrogance of Christ. When he returns he not only judges but redeems. Everyone is judged, everyone is redeemed. Like the Buddha, who will delay his own enlightenment until mankind catches up, Christ must save everyone, even Satan.

Likewise, Danny has judged Jack and found him guilty. The sentence is death, to be sure, but Jack is resurrected into his own unending joys, and free from debt. Your money is no good here Mr. Torrance. All who knock are admitted and sooner or later, when it gets cold outside, everybody knocks. Danny shines Jack straight to into the heart of his own private Eden.

And what of Danny's fate. Well it is grim, but the little bastard will probably pull it off. The very rising sun is the herald of his previous success. As Wendy and Danny drive away in the snowcat, the Cross of His Crucifixion is seen fading into the mist on screen right. Tough breaks, kid. Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave, or so they say.

Time in a Bottle

There are many puns in the apparently cast-off dialog that resonate Jack's control of Time. To start, listen in on The Interview, as Jack greets Ullman. Jack claims to have made the trip out to the Overlook in three and a half hours, which Ullman praises as '...a very good time'. Three and a half hours can be read, on the clock, as 3:30, which is in turn 330. If one shrinks the zero in 330, we have the symbol for 33 degrees. Now we know that Jack is the ipsissimus of the Saturnine cults of Masonry, Catholicism, Judeaism, Islam, and all that other pagan bullshit. He is the master of Time. Saturn. Satan. New age my ass!

The power shifts when Jack enters the Gold Ball Room to meet the laconic Lloyd, the bartender. Jack jokes '...it's a little slow in here tonight' and later, when he discovers his wallet empty, declares himself '...tempo-rarily light'. The dark power of Time has moved into the house of the sun.

Lloyd is, of course, Danny. Danny is played by a young actor named Danny Lloyd. What..., you don't think that Kubrick would be so devious? You bet he would! The conversation between Lloyd and Jack is a virtual reversal of Jack's naughty behavior with Danny's innocent mouth. Listen closely to the dialog as Lloyd pours free poison down Jack's throat. Later, at the party, Lloyd will tell Jack that his money is no good. It's a literary money shot. Danny, acting as Lloyd, is refusing Jack's semen. And when Jack collides with Grady he is doused with Avocat. Grady is worried it will stain. Avocat is a creamy white liqueur made from eggs. Jack has been stained by the bartenders jizz, by Danny's cream-of-some-young-guy. Back at you Daddy-o!

It's is germane to stress that with the exception of Danny's vision of the twins, all of the Extra Sensory events are projected by Danny himself. If one should wonder 'Where does Danny derive the material for these phantasms?' The answer is clear: they come from the content of Jack's would-be novel. Danny shines Jack's plot and turns it against at him and later against Wendy.

Nothing Without Providence: Color Coding

Buckminster Fuller freak out alert! Johnny53 thinks that Kubrick's film is a deliberate reversal of the novel. He is right, in a way. Really the novel is crushed, melted, hardened and twisted without mercy into Stan's tale of the titanic struggle of Saturn with his bastard son, Apollo, the Christ. The metaphysical topography is akin to M.C. Escher.

53 points out that in the novel the Torrance's VW was red and the snowcat yellow. The film reverses this effect to establish the identities of Danny and Jack. The yellow VW carries Jack to the interview. The red snowcat carries Danny and Wendy away to safety. The VW is Jack's chariot, the snowcat is Danny's. The reversal is used because, at a critical point, Stan flips it back again, to indicate the change in power from Jack to Danny.

Jack is paired for the first part of the film, with the colors yellow and pale blue and Danny with red and full blue. Jack drives the yellow VW. Danny, racing around in his Big Wheel, wears a red sweater. Jack throws the yellow tennis ball. Danny throws red darts.

Consider the first appearance of the Twins. They wear Soft blue dresses and have flaxen hair. Later, they lay murdered in a blue and yellow papered hallway. It is the same hallway and color code that leads to the Caretaker's apartment. Please pay special attention to the way in which Jack is framed by these same colors of soft blue and yellow. We must infer that Danny's two visions of the twins are shining from Jack's mind both as his plan for the novel he is trying to write and as his dark intentions for his own family. Jack, whose shine is inferior to Danny's, is not aware that he is transmitting these apparitions.

Danny turns the tables during Jack's dream. When he appears with his injured neck he wears a blue and yellow Apollo sweater and Jack Wears a dark blue and shirt and wine red jacket. And Jack is right about Danny's injuries. Danny did it to himself. This is taught as a Gnostic mystery. Christ is responsible for his own crucifixion. He has to go unto the cross willingly. Recall that many pagan myths of early Christianity have Christ die upon the gallows. The framework of a gallows is like unto the Hebrew letter Tau, which itself means Cross. Danny's strangulation is at his own hand all right, and it sets off not only his judgment of humanity and the denizens of Hell, but also the ultimate redemption of the same. When all has become Hell what is there to redeem but Hell itself?

Rm. 237: The Way to a Man's Heart is Through His Dick

When Jack returns from his search of Rm. 237, he appears totally unphased. He is as cool as a cucumber. Mr. Rob Ager, in a mighty effort, attributes this to instant amnesia. But what if Jack is telling the truth?

Listen to the heartbeat that is counterpoint to Jack's confrontation with the beautiful woman that becomes the old hag, which takes place in Rm. 237. The heartbeat is calm and steady. It is Danny's heartbeat, the firm tempo of a master as he projects this horrific scene. But he does not transmit to Jack. Rather it is Halloran who receives the signal. This is because the message is delivered to Jack's penis. Many researchers and thinkers have labored to establish the connection between sex and death, so I will assume it to be taken for granted. It should also be apprehended that this connection is a side effect of the Saturnine influence. Because this delivery is a sexual response, Danny sends it to Dick. Jack sees nothing in Rm. 237. Not a damned thing.

And thanks to this grotesque signal, which carries the awful secret of sex, Halloran will be coaxed out into the open to complete Danny's plan for Jack's self castration.

It's just that simple.

Finnegan's Awake: Joyce, Mcluhan and the Mayan Countdown

When he made 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick presented a version of Joyce's Ulysses. It follows that he would also take a crack at Finnegan's Wake. His final version became Eyes Wide Shut, but Da WWWiz thinks that The Shining is a potent early draft. Consider the the ritual element to both films. When Wendy is treated to her vision, she is in essence stumbling into the same party as Doctor Bill's ribald romp in EWS.

The musical track that accompanies Jack as he drives up to the Overlook for his interview is called Dies Irae. The Terrible Day. The Day of Wrath. This is the same day as is foretold by the end of the Mayan calender, a moment on the precipice of extreme ritual. Murder is at the center of all ritual activity. It is inevitable, by the sublimation of sacrifice into staged media mock-ups designed by the church and promulgated through its vast media web, we will give way to the thirst for true blood. Because the Redeemer can not intervene directly, the perps of this sick charade must be saved at the exact moment they are ready to turn and devour each other, to live forever Apocalypse Now.

And who are these fiends of dark design. It is we my friends, all of us. Joyce and Mcluhan understood this. Stan pretty much proves it.

The Shining can also be seen as a war for the supremacy of competing media. TV kills the movie star, and the novelist too. I'm sure that if Kubrick had made AI, he would have tried to establish the inevitable triumph of mass digital media as harbinger to total Armageddon. Go figure.

Squaring the Circle

A little blurb to reinforce the character of both Jack and Danny.

Squaring the Circle is the Holy Grail of mathematics and obliquely, that of all science. To square the circle would be tantamount to the final calculation of pi. Accurately, squaring the circle is impossible before the final calculation of pi. This is because all lines and even those lines that form the edges of a plane or a solid must be inscribed by a larger circle. Please, dear reader, research this at your own pace. I recommend On the Subject of Metaphor, by Lyndon Larouche, which by the way, it is almost certain that Stan has read (see Ears Wide Shut at metaphilm and even better The Emporer's New Clothes, by yours truly).

Now it happens that the alchemical symbol for the Sun is a perfect circle. In 3d this becomes the sphere and, in 4d, the hypersphere. The Hypersphere enfolds reality, the whole she-bang. On the other hand the secret symbol of Saturn is that of the Cube or Square.

Jack is Saturn, the square and Danny the circle. Christ, undivided, is the supreme deity, the sphere. I call upon J.S. Bernstein, who remarks on the rectilinear nature of Kubrick's camera. And Kubrick was obsessed by boxes (take a look at the documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes). By the use of his eye and by his own habits, Satan-ley Cube-brick entrains that he himself is Saturn. Beyond Jupiter, we will search for our final proof.

Did he who made the lamb make you?

Just who is Tony anyway?

Let's ask Rob Ager. Mr. Ager makes a simply marvelous observation about the hidden purpose behind The Making of the Shining, a DVD special feature that can also be seen on Google video. He extends that Kubrick controlled the content of The Making to overlay his own persona onto that of Jack Torrance. Ager scores a real hit here. I'll say it again, take the time to read his exegesis.

Deeper into this discovery and we are astounded. Kubrick was known to tell that during filming, he was careful to shield Danny Lloyd from the horrors and soul of the plot. This is slight of hand by Stan. Who among you, gentle readers, can buy it that stroking the blade of a butcher knife while repeating '...redrum, redrum...' like some repulsive mantra would not have an effect on the kid, Danny Lloyd. Kubrick lies, but there is a method to his deception. He is unmasking Tony.

During the 'redrum' scene Danny is being shielded by Tony's persona, as he claims ownership all of the shocks to Danny's psyche. Seeing the murdered twins in the hallway, Tony reassures Danny Torrance, '...it just like pictures in a book Danny, it isn't real'. Is this the same promise made by Stanley to the actor Danny Lloyd? Yer darn tootin'!

Tony is Stanley Kubrick. Some cameo. Kubrick has eased his fearful symmetry into his film, to shield his young actor, one would hope, from the certain metaphysical hobgoblins that must surely follow his performance. Look for Stanley's eyes peering in through bland and cluttered props. Childrens art and cereal boxes. Tony the Tiger.

It is he, the authentic Saturn, that burns so brightly in the forest of the night. Stanley Kubrick. Demiurge. Architect of Hell and glowering genius. A beautiful man.

And what about Danny, the little brat. We must remember his sacrifice. We must, at least until we get good and drunk, and for one moment of mindless blissful happiness, we forget.

As for Da WWWiz, I'm just killing time.

Pax Exeunt

Important note to readers, if you are just coming across this article on its own, you might be interested that the ideas above are examined in more depth and with some fundamental rethinking, here.

Coming Soon!

To my loyal readers

Hi y'all.

Da WWWiz has not up and died. No dear friends, it's much worse. I'm in the grips of that fucker Kubrick again. This time at bat: The Shining. I have altogether too much of my heart, soul and wallet, not to mention a good deal of my well being, grappling with this mind bending Master Work of distilled Evil. I've never been happier.

I have come to accept the nature of my affliction. Da WWWiz is an emotional opportunist. If I don't feel it, I just can't communicate. Living on cheese and onion sandwiches, gin and Dr. Pepper, Chesterfield Kings. I search the night for the next horrible flying roll to descend and block my precious moonlight.

Now it happens I turn again to Kubrick. For the lovers of the cinema art, Kubrick is 'the man'. To call upon the accolades of Jack Nicholson, Kubrick 'was totally conscious'. Da WWWiz is no ordinary Kubrick fan, but I am not obsessed with the man. Given the specific gravity of my own place and time, Kubrick is a natural choice for access to a wider orbit of thought. He is on par with Plato, Da Vinci, Newton, Roerich, Blavatsky or Crowley. He is an painter, composer and philosopher. An Alchemist and a un-swervingly cruel task master. To me he is a defacto mentor with all the warm fuzzies of a Jesuit priest. Uncle Screwtape. Maybe I am obsessed, but everything I learned, I learned from Kubrick.

I'm totally fucked.

Nevertheless, I soldier on fearful and unafraid. Sometime soon now I will complete an epic, multi-valent alcoholic rant on the 'The Shining' called 'Killing Time', which I shall proclaim a total codex to 'The Shining' and the one satisfying interpretation of Kubrick's overlooked masterpiece.

Give me a week or so...

Da WWWiz iz owt.

Pax Vo-biscuit.