the_unlettered_tellurian

An altercation with my sales head sent me on an online rampage, resulting in the discovery of this excellent performance by Alec Baldwin in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross.

A partial transcript (from IMDb) of this video…

Blake: You’re talking about what.You’re talking about… Bitching about that sale you shot, some sonofabitch who don’t wanna buy land, some broad you’re trying to screw, so forth. Let’s talk about something important. They all here?

Williamson: All but one.

Blake: I’m going anyway. Let’s talk about something important. Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only. You think I’m fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I’m here from downtown. I’m here from Mitch and Murray. And I’m here on a mission of mercy. Your name’s Levine? You call yourself a salesman you son of a bitch?

Dave Moss: I don’t gotta sit here and listen to this shit.

Blake: You certainly don’t pal, ’cause the good news is – you’re fired. The bad news is – you’ve got, all of you’ve got just one week to regain your jobs starting with tonight. Starting with tonight’s sit. Oh? Have I got your attention now? Good. “Cause we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. Get the picture? You laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money, get their names to sell them. you can’t close the leads youre given you can’t close shit. You ARE shit. Hit the bricks pal, and beat it ’cause you are going OUT.

Shelley Levene: The leads are weak.

Blake: The leads are weak? Fucking leads are weak. You’re weak. I’ve been in this business 15 years…

Dave Moss: What’s your name?

Blake: Fuck you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? You drove a Hyundai to get here. I drove an eighty-thousand dollar BMW. THAT’S my name. And your name is you’re wanting. You can’t play in the man’s game, you can’t close them – go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you fucking faggots? A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING. A-I-D-A. Attention, Interest, Decision, Action. Attention – Do I have you attention? Interest – Are you interested? I know you are, because it’s fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks. Decision – Have you made your decision, for Christ? And Action. A-I-D-A. Get out there – you got the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don’t walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They’re sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it? What’s the problem, pal?

Dave Moss: You – Moss. You’re such a hero, you’re so rich, how come you’re coming down here wasting your time with such a bunch of bums?

Blake: You see this watch? You see this watch?

Dave Moss: Yeah.

Blake: That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much’d you make? You see pal, that’s who I am, and you’re nothing. Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here – close! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can’t take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don’t like it, leave. _I_ can go out there tonight with the materials you’ve got and make myself $15,000. Tonight! In two hours! Can you? Can YOU? Go and do likewise. A-I-D-A. Get mad you son of a bitches. get mad. You want to know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes BRASS BALLS to sell real estate. Go and do likewise gents. Money’s out there. You pick it up, it’s yours. You don’t, I got no sympathy for you. You wanna go out on those sits tonight and close, CLOSE. It’s yours. If not you’re gonna be shining my shoes. And you know what you’ll be saying – a bunch of losers sittin’ around in a bar. ‘Oh yeah. I used to be a salesman. It’s a tough racket.’ These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they’re gold, and you don’t get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They’re for closers. I’d wish you good luck but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it. And to answer you question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to. They asked me for a favor. I said the real favor, follow my advice and fire your fucking ass because a loser is a loser.

You can read some more quotes from the movie at IMDb.

Found this article on hedge fund manager Peter Thiel from Clarium Capital Management. It appeared in the January 2007 ‘Hedge Fund’ special issue of Bloomberg Marketsmagazine.
Apart from giving brief details of Peter’s background and a glimpse into his personality, the article gives a perspective on his investment strategies and a broad overview of the bets he’s placed.

Peter was listed in the “Whippersnappers – Legends in the making” category in this 2007 New York Magazine special feature ranking some of the best hedge-fund managers.

On interesting bit of info I found in the article is that Peter Thiel happens to have executive produced of the 2005 movie Thank You for Smoking. Didn’t know about that before!

Just finished watching Thank You For Smoking…again for the nth time…and again the predictability of the frames helped my mind waver off to something else…remotely connected to the movie…rather remotely connected to  the main character in the movie…sorry…remotely connected to the class of professionals symbolized by the main character in the movie.

I love the way Nick Naylor, the spokesperson for Big Tobacco in the movie, wards off any danger – no matter how remote – that could cause the slightest irritation to his benefactors. His arguments seem to bring down the sanest of reasons put forth by the smartest of people. He can complicate even the simplest of conversations, and make the most complicated of issues sound like they are the smallest of problems…”humanity should not even be worried about them!” is what you feel when dearest Nick replies using deceptively simple, yet carefully crafted, sentences to everybody’s “serious” questions.

His character suddenly reminded me of something written by Arundhati Roy in one of her essays (or was it a book?) titled Power Politics.

As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought. ‘Language is the skin on my thought,’ I remember saying to someone who once asked what language meant to me. At the Hague I stumbled on a denomination, a sub-world, whose life’s endeavour was to mask intent. They earn their abundant livings by converting bar graphs that plot their companies’ profits into consummately written, politically exemplary, socially just, policy documents that are impossible to implement and designed to remain forever on paper, secret even (especially) from the people they’re written for. They breed and prosper in the space that lies between what they say and what they sell.

This lady has some style…look how elegantly she describes these corporate creatures who make a killing by shoving us ordinary peoples as far away from reality as possible!

Just finished watching The Bourne Ultimatum for the nth time…man do I need to get some better movies or what!

Anyways, coming back to the post… the more I watch the movie, the more I know what’s coming in the next frame, so the more I have started focusing on other things…and here’s what struck me suddenly.

Everything else about the CIA’s “firepower” seems ok, except for the amount of data that the agency is shown to have access to in the movie. I mean, look at it. the movie shows them as having not just good old physical access using ground support…they have been shown to have almost real-time access to almost any kind of electronic data… phone calls, emails, everything!

Is it really possible to have such high levels of electronic eavesdropping currently? Do agencies really have the computing power to compare all sorts of electronic transmission against a set of keyword-based alerts on a real-time basis? Also, do they currently have the authority to do such things? Across international boundaries?

Now that’s a whole bunch of nasty questions cropping up in my head…and i don’t think I can stop thinking about them till I find at least some answers…so…I guess I should start with some existing reference books.

It’s been a long time since I read that good old book lying on my bookshelf – Database Nation – think it should be a good starting point!