Hard to stay focused...

The Wings, and Pistons, are running out the string, both having clinched the best record in their respective leagues last week. Both are trying to rest the regulars, avoid injuries, and find a way to maintain some intensity and focus for the imminent playoff-grind. Pistons bench lost a "heart-breaker" to the hapless Raptors last night, and tonight the Wings short-bench crew had to fight for the win in the last period, against the hapless Blues. With 8 seconds left, Shanahan fed his goal-total rival Zetterberg, wearing the "A" for the first time in the absence of the "lower-body tired" Chelios, a perfect pass that Z buries for the winner.

Furiously flicking back and forth between the game and "Apocalypse Now: Redux," the director's cut I've never seen before, I get back to the apocalypse just in time to hear the famous speech of Kurtz, delivered in a slightly-enhanced setting from the original cut. No matter, it's a thing of beauty, even if Coppola stole the whole thing from Joseph Conrad, without giving the latter his proper due, imho. Mistah Conrad, he dead. He can't sue!

Kurtz:

I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.

And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment.


Oh, yeah...we need a Kurtz to win against the insurgents. Or maybe, a slightly-mellower version.