Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Blade Runner (1982): Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) is a replicant, a bioengineered, biorobotic android, who is being hunted by Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford), a Blade Runner cop who's job is to retire rogue "skin-jobs." The year is 2019, a future in which our science is pushing back against it's creators. In the final moments of the film, perched atop the canopy of a post-apocalyptic urban landscape, Deckard has his final moments with his prey turned hunter...

Roy Batty: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die." [exeunt]

Richard Deckard: "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life... anybody's life... my life. All he'd wanted was the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do is sit there and watch him die."

Neo-Noir Cinema: I fell in love with cyberpunk when I graduated from middle school to the time of disenfranchised angst that is adolescence. I am not sure when I first saw it, but Blade Runner rained down upon my imagination like futuristic nuclear rain and drowned me in a love of the dark sci-fi that would come later, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Gattaca, 12 Monkeys, Dark City, City of Lost Children, and so many more. Although I was moderately tantalized and intimidated by Pris' (Daryl Hannah) thigh crushing fight with Deckard, and terrified by the sheer maniacal taunting and power by Roy, it was the repeated use of the extreme close ups and close ups of eyes that for 35 years has been what I cherish most about the film...

Proverbs 30:17: "The eye is the window to the soul":  Perception / reality, android soul, lens vs. mirror, intimacy and coldness; the eye is the object theme that Ridley Scott returns to scene after scene. Whether reflecting the urban landscape, being used as a test of humanity, or bringing us to the intimacy of emotion in a sea of indifference and coldness, Scott uses eyes in this film that way Tarantino uses the F-bomb and bullets, frequently and without mercy. The dark grey & black sets lit by hazy sunsets or neon lighting make many characters eyes pop in almost inhuman ways, and makes one wonder if it is intentional when occasionally certain characters eyes are allowed to languish in dull shadow. The eyes in this film haunt me and I have been thinking about whether androids dream of electric sheep ever since. On October 6 producer, Ridley Scott returns with Blade Runner 2049! I cannot wait...

Duct tape, hot glue, and tin.

Duct Tape repair on boots from the 20th century 

Pot Metal Blow Out Tin Repair on '07 Toro

"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in - And stops my mind from wandering - Where it will go":  So much depends on the quick fixes that aren't done right or with the correct tools and that make the things work in an only partial way of course. So much depends on the time time potentially saved to fix something else in a half-assed way when we jump right in and wing it. So much depends on the mistakes we make in our haste and sloppy impatience as we stumble through the repairs of our lives...

"I'm filling the cracks that ran through the door - And kept my mind from wandering - Where it will go": Sometimes I might spend days researching, planning, and learning to do a job right. Working at it such that the outcome just has to be as I hope as I invest time and money and effort and hope in a solution. And sometimes the learning is incomplete and those plans go awry and the job gets botched...

"And it really doesn't matter if
I'm wrong I'm right - Where I belong I'm right - Where I belong.": So every once and a while I just use duct tape, or hot glue, or a piece of tin. Sometimes I just wing it. And sometimes winging  it gets me a victory.

"I'm taking the time for a number of things - That weren't important yesterday - And I still go - Ooh ooh ooh ah ah": It reminds me that sometimes the solutions are simple things, incomplete things, messy things. Sometimes the "fix" is just a "mend" that doesn't impede the momentum of living. Sometimes I think it might be the right thing to just show up and see what happens...

Cereal ratios...

There is something poetic about the proper ratios found a simple bowl of cereal in the morning. Dry, plain Cheerios filled almost to the top of a simple white ceramic bowl. Two heaping teaspoons of dark brown sugar—trying so much to be tablespoons—lumped near the center, on top. 1% milk-fat milk poured over the sugar to coax it down into the bowl while the Cheerio line rises to just the top edge of the bowl. Perfect.
And a book.
And a teaspoon.
And a desire to coordinate the approach of the spoon to the mouth without the seemingly obligatory drip of milk below the lower lip that needs to to be repeatedly cleaned with an up-flick of the left index finger.
The process would be easy if it weren't for the book—held beyond the bowl to avoid any splashes and spills; it would be easy if all that was concentrated on was the slow approach of the spoon to the mouth coordinated with the eyes and with the mind; but the eyes are somewhere else—perhaps reading about motorcycle maintenance—and the mind is trying to do too many things before benefitting from the perfect cup of coffee that comes later.
And about halfway down, the ratio become wrong. The milk outnumbers the O's (or is it Oh's?). Another pour of the cereal to just cover the surface of the now partially exposed milk, followed by the slow turning over the the mix like a gardener mulching.
And all is right again.
The ratio might be corrected even one more time before the final bowl-tilt-slurp is performed to finish off the meal. No waste!
And then on to the perfect cup of coffee...