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The Merging of Kim Kardashian and Soren Kierkegaard in TNY

Trash and popcorn dropped by fleeing theatergoers littered the parking lot of the Century 16 Theater in Aurora, Colo. The shooting took place during the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises,” the latest Batman movie. Credit: Bob Pearson/European Pressphoto Agency

Are the makers of The Dark Knight Rises responsible for the massacre at a movie theatre in Colorado?

12 Are Killed at Showing of Batman Movie in Colorado

According to some reports the masked shooter said “I am The Joker” before he opened fire. The shooter was going for his PhD in neuroscience so his actions can’t be attributed to ignorance (he knew Batman was fiction).

Do you think Batman should be held accountable?

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Every country has, along with its core civilities and traditions, some kind of inner madness, a belief so irrational that even death and destruction cannot alter it…In America, it has been, for so long now, the belief that guns designed to kill people indifferently and in great numbers can be widely available and not have it end with people being killed, indifferently and in great numbers.

Read One More Massacre by Adam Gopnik in TNY.

Yes, but why do they reach for the guns?

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN

We go to a quiet café to get some peace and naturally the last available table is next to a guy with a voice like a bullhorn. He’s alone, a fact that doesn’t stop him from producing enough noise for ten. He’s on his cellphone, talking in a voice that vibrates with the sense of its own importance. Perhaps he imagines that everyone in the place is dying to hear him so he’s doing them all a favor by killing their eardrums.

Loudmouth has the manner and inflections of the educated class, and the air of borrowed entitlement that wafts from the flunkies of the rich and powerful. (The rich and powerful do not have to announce that they are.)

Wait: he drops the name of an important person. We’re so impressed. He repeats it several times, in case the people in the next building didn’t hear it.

Why did we leave our iPod at home? Oh right, we thought we should listen to humanity. Well it’s not as if humanity can hear itself, it is braying like a donkey in a blender. Though the novel we are reading is delightful, we cannot help but absorb the details of the loud man’s conversation. Yes this is a loud city, but You Do Not Prevent Us From Reading.

We look his way several times to convey our disapproval at his one-man noise pollution campaign. He does not lower his voice. It is likely that he interprets our stares as admiration for his power, influence or looks, the unprepossessing types being the most convinced of their resemblance to Brad Pitt. His associates join him and it is established that his loudness was not due to a weak mobile signal. He’s just a rude, inconsiderate ass, and that’s an insult to the ass.

We’ve had it. There is one Samuel L. Jackson badass in this joint, motherfucker, and that’s us. Don’t be fooled by this girly dress because under it is a giant dick that will bitch-slap your skull in half.

“Miss,” we call the waitress, “Are there tables free on that side?” She says yes. “Then we’re moving there,” we say, pleasantly but loudly. “IT’S QUIETER.”

Silence falls over the next table. Ah, so you know we mean you. Come on, asshole. Give us an excuse. Bring on the vocabulary showdown. Words of five syllables or more!

From that point, conversation is conducted at a much less obtrusive volume.

All photos courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures.

1. Understand that by reading past this sentence you may be exposing yourself to information that could spoil your enjoyment of The Dark Knight Rises. While care is taken not to reveal plot turns, twists and plants, mere mention of the words “turn”, “twist” and “plant” may encourage you to watch out for these narrative gimmicks and interfere with regular viewing. It’s probably best that you stop reading this right now.

1.1. In fact we recommend that you refrain from reading any reviews of the Batman movie until you have seen it.

1.2. They all die, okay? They all die!!

1.3. We told you to stop reading.

Read The Dark Knight Rises: Everyone will call it Occupy Gotham, our column this week on InterAksyon.com.

Forgot to mention: Plenty of hot guys in small roles.

Some studies have indeed shown that the right hemisphere seems to be involved more when we have an Aha! flash of insight. For instance, one study found that activity was greater in the right hemisphere when participants solved a task via insight, rather than piecemeal. Another showed that brief exposure to a puzzle clue was more useful to the right hemisphere, than the left, as if the right hemisphere were nearer the answer.

But insight is just one type of creativity. Telling stories is another. One of the most fascinating insights from the split-brain studies was the way the left hemisphere made up stories to explain what the right hemisphere was up to – what Gazzaniga dubbed the “interpreter phenomenon”. For example, in one study, a patient completing a picture-matching task used their left hand (controlled by the right hemisphere) to match up a shovel with an image of a snow storm (shown only to the right hemisphere). The patient was then asked why he’d done this. But his left hemisphere (the source of speech) didn’t admit to not knowing. Instead, it confabulated, saying that he’d reached for the shovel to clear out the chicken coup (the picture shown to the left hemisphere was of a bird’s foot)…

Why the Right-Brain, Left-Brain Myth Will Probably Never Die by Christian Jarrett in Psychology Today.

Who should star in a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Photograph by Mario Sorrenti for W

Dakota Fanning as Baby Jane and Elle Fanning as Blanche.

At 18 Dakota has the world-weary air and killer acting chops of a woman four times her age. Noel points out that in Man On Fire where she played the little kidnapped child, she carried on as if Denzel Washington were her leading man. “Dame Judi Dench, watch out!”

At 14 Elle has the glamour and self-possession of a Hitchcock blonde, Ricky observes.

Sign them up.

Read Let’s go ahead and cast the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? remake in BoingBoing.