Cogito Ergo Sum

Cogito Ergo Sum, in English I Think Therefore I Am is a philosophical statement used by Rene Descartes. In fact Descartes's original statement was in French (Je Pense Donc Je Suis) from his work Discourse On Method, not in Latin. Well, I know it's rather easy to take a look at any maxim and dismiss it as stupid. Sadly, for my part Cogito Ergo Sum as an argument is as invalid as St. Anselm's Ontological Proof. I prefer and appreciate Kurt Godel's approach on that matter but this whole issue is out of our area. So have you noticed before? Most of the time, our detective seems to be very preoccupied, deeply absorbed in thoughts. Honestly what are you thinking about Bobby? World peace? Fermat's Last Theorem? Dirty dishes in the sink? Oh well, I've been thinking about one thing all the time. You know that birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it! Let's do it! Let's... Please fill in the blank.

For more please check the link: The Thinking Man. And by the way happy holidays to all!

The Odd Man and The Sea

As far as I remember while exploring a crime scene on the shore of Coney Island Bobby says 'I hate beaches' in the episode Depths (S07E05). But in another episode we see him playing with the scale model of sailing boats and almost immediately Alex Eames reinforces his tendency by saying: 'If it's not the cars then it's the boats' (The Murderer Among Us - S03E07). Let me figure this out; so you like sailing but you can't stand beaches. Pfff! There are marinas for it.

Awww... Aren't you as pretty as a cuddly toy:) Please just look at that sweet, innocent, almost childhish expression on his face. Could he be any cuter? And to cap it all he's still damn sexy, admittedly! Mrawr! For God's sake Bobby; how can you do that? In btw I might have written before, I'm pretty fond of sailing as I'm pretty fond of my independence. So my dear detective, for a change, let's aboard, let's jibe, let's broach reach, let's luff, let's heel, let's port tack... If you've adrenalin insufficiency let's join Volvo Ocean Race! If you like good old stuff let's go fishing! Whatever the trim you like; as long as you're by my side anything goes for me:)

Don't get him wrong! He's talking about the fish he's caught:) Sounds fishy?

And what if you're odd? That makes two of us:) You're damaged, you're different, you're rare, you're out of this world; you are downright... something else. You're totally unique. You shouldn't be concerned about this, not at all. Well then let it rip Bobby! This little fool loves you just the way you're:)

I am what I am. That's all that I am. (Popeye The Sailor Man)

Smells Like Keen Spirit

Bobby is keen, that is for sure. Besides he has a keen sense of smell. Before I begin let me clear one thing; it is certainly unethical and inappropriate to identify a disorder by appearance. Hence hypothetically speaking; in medical terms, heightened sense of smell is called hyperosmia. It's a sensory disturbance and related to the conditions hyposmia (decreased ability to detect odors) as well as anosmia (inability to detect odors), but much less common. The genetic basic of enhanced odorant remains largely unknown and is seen in patients with Migrainous Neuralgia, Addison Disease, epilepsy seizures-Grand Mal attacks-(aura before Status Epilepticus) and tumors. As a disorder of the central nervous system, specifically neurology deals with its diagnosis and treatment but sometimes hyperosmia can also be psychosomatic. In particular psychosomatic hyperosmia is more likely to develop in people who have a Histrionic Personality (characterized by conspicuous seeking of attention with dramatic behavior. In Freudian terms; Hysteria). Because of that, psychiatrists may also be involved in clinical research of the disease. So far I know, dysfunction in temporal lobe of the cerebrum is responsible for excessive keenness to smell. I'm interested in the subject because the pshycopharmacology used in the treatment of epilepsy is also applied to the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder on occasions along with antidepresants and atypical antipsychotics. Oh well, whatever it's Bobby, I can cure you:) Just say the words.... But all that aside, time to time our detective fails to detect certain odours. For instance; in the episode Posthumous Collection (S04E02) Bobby finds a residue in the crime scene and smells but somehow can't decribe it. Eames in return replies: 'A smell that you don't know!' Maybe it's just one of those days, who knows? Anyway as Somerset Maugham said once ' Your beauty is an ectasy, it's as simple as hunger. There's really nothing to be said about it. It's like the perfume of a rose. You can smell it and that's all'. Unfortunately we can watch it from a distance and that's all.

The Moment When A 'Nosy' Detective Lost His Sense Of Smell

Bobby's Got A Gun

At the end of November, Columbia University held a panel discussion to present the latest book of Gilles Kepel titled Beyond Terror and Martyroom. In general Kepel, world famous expert on Middle East talked on the emergence of the Islamist political movements while interpreting the neoconservatives nightmares after 9/11. Well, yes, no doubt, he's academically talented and sophisticated but the thing is; you must have bumped your head real hard to read his books on the plane as the titles of his books are Jihad, Terrorism, Radical Islam, Al Qaeda, Allah In The West etc. In general he concluded that with the rise in terrorist acvitiy in the USA, personal protection has become a matter of survival and people has begun to buy all sorts of PDWs excessively ignoring the fact that counter terrorism is in the end a kind of self sacrifice terrorism.

Anyway as we know Janie's Got A Gun, is about a girl named Janie taking revenge on her father after being sexually abused, is one of the few Aerosmith songs to deal with a heavy social issue like gunshot victims. Certainly I don't approve guns but here we're talking about an NYPD major case detective. And under all circumstances Robert Goren is dead or gun -I should say- sexy and hypothetically speaking it really doesn't matter whether he carries a S&M, Glock, Beretta, Colt or a Hello Kitty doll in his hand:) Therefore don't get mad at me but he looks stunning with a gun in his hand. Let's see his 'weapons' one by one: First, his switchblade, second, a toy gun and third, his real gun. Please don't miss 'Get Ready, I'm Taking It Out!', 'Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?', 'Melt, In The Name Of My Gun' pictures of our detective, right below the first collage. Ah, btw, Sigmund Freud once said that 'A fear of guns is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity'. I love that tiny, little, psycho-jello 'pervert':)

Robert Gesture

First of all, let's talk about that famous John Gesture. In the 1990s authors L. Picknett and C. Prince wrote two books in which Leonardo Da Vinci held centre stage. The first, Turin Shroud: In Whose Image? argued that the Turin Shroud was a medieval photograph, likely engineered by the Florentine educated painter and engineer. The second, The Templar Revelation argued that Da Vinci’s paintings contained specific clues towards an underground stream which held a reverence for Mary Magdalene and specifically John the Baptist. Not to mention, along with the book The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail; the second hypothesis formed the backbone for bestseller The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Anyway you can see the gesture below in St. John The Baphist (1513-1516) painting of Da Vinci. You can also catch the same gesture in other paintings like, Madonna Of The Rocks - Louvre (1482-1486) and The Last Supper (1495-1498).

Allright, let's get physical and follow Bobby's finger now; left, right, up, down, forward! Again left, right... Oh, no, unfortunately this routine doesn't cover any In n Out exercises.

More and more and more... Robert Gesture

Anatomy Of A Murmur

Ahhhh, ah! When you lean forward to whisper in someone's ear, do you have any idea about what's going on with my body my dear detective? A life-threatening arrhythmia! In medicine, it's called myocardial infarction, the death of heart muscle from the sudden blockage of a coronary artery by a blood clot. Tachycardia, hypertensive, infectious, toxic or idiopathic whichever, cardiomyopathy associated with injury to heart muscle (cardiogenic shock) causes chest pain (angina pectoris) and chest pressure sensation. Due to coronary atherosclerosis; if blood flow is not restored to the heart muscle within 20 to 40 minutes, irreversible death of the heart muscle is beginning to occur. And muscle continues to die for six to eight hours at which time the heart attack usually is complete. So what's a sensible way of saying it plainly? Please read between the lines Bobby; it's killing me and it's not that softly.

Out And Out

Once again he's dressed to kill, he's breathtaking and he's chasing criminals along busy streets:) For more pictures please check the link: Outdoor Bobby 2

A Chair With A View

Off all the chairs in the world, do you have to find the wrong ones all the time my dear detective? After all these chairs, how about spending some time in mine? Oh well, it's right near my bed, isn't it? Think about it. We order pizza (*sigh* I'm the worst cook at best), drink some Sauvignon Blanc, talk about anything you want. What's the worst that could happen? Doink! Doink! You are the detective, figure it out. End up in bed? I'm just thinking aloud: Pas de chance!

The Day Robert Goren Stood Still

I don't like re-makes. I've always preferred Spoorloos instead of The Vanishing. And this also applies to Abre Los Ojos, Insomnia, Nattevagten, Hitcher, Changeling, Funny Games, Sleuth (please don't touch my Murder By Death!) and to all J-Horror movies. Speaking of Far East genre; after Pak Chan-Wook's Oldboy Hollywood is re-making Kim Ji-Woon's A Tale Of Two Sisters... It's just a matter of time to hunt down Kim Ki-Duk's Bad Guy:) Anyway as far as I'm considered Robert Wise has always been the director of cult classic movies. Nevertheless I don't wanna sound prejudgemental about the re-make of The Day The Earth Stood Still but for God's sake; giant glass spheres attacking NY?! Gort! Klaatu barada nikto! Yeah, whatever you say Klaatu!

For the past two years, Robert Goren went through seriuosly tough times. First her mother passed away. The same day he found out that his real father, Mark Ford Brady was a serial killer (Endgame - S06E21). And the very next year he had to put up with the death of his brother Frank Goren. Later on Bobby learned that Frank was killed by Nicole Wallace, presumably (Frame - S07E22) not to mention, his mentor Declan Gage was a trueborn jerk! So this must be the day Bobby stood still. Ah, the people around you, ah! They don't know or realize how fragile you are, do they? My dear detective; you know it well: Homo Homini Lupus. (First attested as Lupus Est Homo Homini, the sentence was drawn on by Thomas Hobbes in De Cive section of Leviathan as a concise expression of his view of human nature). And may I remind you the famous line of the dialogue from Jean Paul Satre's No Exit (Huis-Clos): 'Hell is other people' (L'enfer c'est les autres). The thing is; Satre's always preoccupied with human's inauthenticity as a social being, with the banality and mediocrity of life lived in the eyes of other people, he agrees heartily with Dostoyevski that it's impossible to olve your fellow man if you have much contact with him. The bottom line is; unfortunately we, or in other words, self consciousness needs the other to prove /display its own existence. What a masochistic desire to be limited in the briefest form, isn't it? Others need the suffering of us in order to exist and vice versa. But that's life. C'est la vie. Yes Bobby, you've come a long way but now let's go ahead. Eh bien, continuous... (the curtain line from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot). So; for God's sake! USA Network authoritatives; what happened to our Season 8?! In between please look at the pictures of Mark Ford Brady and Declan Gage below. Am I the only one who see the resemblance between two father 'figures'?

The Man Who Mistook His Cigar For A Pipe*

From the first season episode Art (S01E02) we learn that our 'ubermensch' detective has a taste in art. Let's remember what he really thinks about art in general:

(Robert Goren and Alex Eames are gazing at a Monet)
Alex Eames: It's beautiful.
Robert Goren: Yeah...Impressionists are too pretty.
AE: Right. You probably like those sweaty, naked people in the next room.
RG: Lucian Freud. As a matter of fact, I do.
AE: You can't put that stuff in your home. You can't live with it.
RG: Well, I'm not interested in living with it. I'm interested in... thinking about it.

(Champlain Museum Of Art Troy, New York)

Well then, let's think about Lucian Freud. Lucian Michael Freud, internationally acknowledged as one of the most important artists working today, is a British painter of German origin and also the grandson of Sigmund Freud. He came to UK in 1931. Freud's early paintings are often associated with surrealism. After 1950's he began to paint portraits including the fellow artists Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon. The publicity-shy portrait painter is one of the best known British artists working in a traditional representational style, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989. Also in May 2008, his 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold in NYC for 33.6 million dolar, setting a world record for sale value of a painting by a living artist. For the works of Freud, please click: Lucian Freud Online

As an obssesive art collector, his grandfather Sigmund Freud, in his valuable collection Art And Literature including the subjects Shakespeare's Hamlet, Michelangelo's Moses, Hoffman's Sand Man, Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov etc. describes art as the only human endeavour that can bypass the intellect to manifest an approximate accompolishment of one's desire. The underlying assumption is that everyone resists revealing contents of the unconscious. Though Sigmund Freud once said 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!', he points out that along with dreams and free association, art is the way to unveil the darkness of unconscious and to express the destruction of libido. As we can clearly see in the works of Lucian Freud, it's a spontaneous effort to unchain imagination from the reality principle/superego/concious control. Consequently Robert Goren is interested in the art that helps him grasp the functioning process of Lucian Freud's brain rather than the art itself and this attitude alone helps us derive the hints of Goren's unconscious. According to Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto (1969) art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his conciousness and it's man's metaphysical mirror. Hence she believes that by looking at what sort of concepts a man enjoys seeing/thinking, you can accurately judge the state of his soul. Lucian Freud's works have always been deprecated as cruel, violent and shocking and being an outsider, being shunned by society labelled his destiny. Robert Goren once confessed that he had felt ashamed because of his mother's mental disorder (Anti-Thesis - S02E03) and additionally defined himself as an outsider (Graansha - S02E21). In medicine, this situation is called homeopathy: Similia similibus curantur.

Let's get back to that cigar issue! Rene Magritte, a Belgian surrealist, in his painting The Treachery of Images, showing a pipe that looks as though it's an advertisement, wrote below the pipe 'This is not a pipe' (Ceci n'est pas une pipe). It seems a contradiction but it's exactly true as the painting is not a pipe, it's an image of a pipe and this perspective brings us back to Platon's Allegory Of The Cave statement (Similarly another philosopher Michel Foucault discusses the paradox of the painting in his book This Is Not A Pipe). As a conclusion; art is the painting of the unconscious. On the conscious level you may see an image of a cigar at a glance. From beneath the surface, your unconscious level controls and guides all aspects of your cognition. By the virtue of it; a cigar is not just a cigar, perpetually it has the potential of being a pipe (Speaking of art and as far as I'm considered, I like the works of MC. Escher ).


*The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1990) Oliver Sacks