The Equalizer

 And NO, Control can't be M or Q as they are MI6 where Control is American. 

And McCall is NOT Solo as Solo is American. Solo retired, moved to London and became Albert Stroller (think about it)

As someone will bring it up - this is set after the Connery Bond retires. Moore was still Bond in London when Equalizer was setting up in New York. In this version, "James Bond 007" is the alias used by that agent at that time. When "Connery" retires and moves to New York, "Moore" becomes Bond. (Forgetting about Lazenby of course). So maybe Robert McCall (a Scottish name) was Connery-Bonds REAL name all along.

Those who have seen The Rock may have heard the theory that John Mason is Connery-Bond, captured and disavowed, replaced by the Moore-Bond and left in US prison.

The Equalizer

 McCall was a retired Intelligence Officer, deliberately British, so people have enjoyed speculating who he may have really been during his career - Bond, Steed, or even Callan, same actor playing what is really the same character. 

But yes, if McCall is the retired CONNERY Bond (think about it) then Control is Felix, still in the Service and now very senior. Even if it isn't literally them, that's kind of who they are based on

Stephen King The Stand

 If you look at his next several books, Christine and Firestarter which are standalone. Cujo, in which its speculated that the killer dog is the killer deputy from Dead Zone. The stories in Nightfall, which include the ones that appear in Cats Eye, Children Of The Corn, and a short story set at the start of the flu outbreak from Stand. IT, his next magnum length book, set it Derry, another Maine town, nothing to do with Roland's world. Yet at the same time the DT series are being released, Drawing Of The Three, Waste Lands. Back in this world, we start to see The Shop appearing and being referenced more in the books.

It is massively unfair that Stu goes home to see his baby grow up and Larry doesn't. They died for no reason.

Flagg

 Flagg is the Man In Black from Dark Tower. 

In Roland's world, the World Moved On, there are "thinnies" to alternate versions of our world, or what version of it Mr King is working in at that time. The Stand was a very early book, as was The Gunslinger, and Eyes Of The Dragon, the other book in which Flagg appears.

 If you look at his other early works, Carrie, Salem's Lot, Shining, Dead Zone, the four stories in Different Seasons which include Shawshank and The Body (Stand By Me), he hadn't really started making a lot of those connections that you see in his later works. Roland's world really was a different story set in a different world at that time. The only connections at that time were that a lot of stories were set in Maine, and more of them were being set in, or connected to, Castle Rock. 

The Stand was the first early book where the character leave the East Coast and march west, and it is a post apocalyptic brave new world. The next tie he tried this post apocalypse approach was in Cell, the first post-Roland book, written after completing the last DT.

The Stand

 What makes no sense, and I thought this since I first read the abridged book in 1980, is why did Glen, Larry and Ralph have to die? 

They are "sent West", Stu gets a pass by breaking his leg so Tom can find him and escort him safely back to Fran, the other 3 end up in Vegas. It was never clear what they are expected to do, so you are waiting for some divine deus ex purpose and something they actually DO that resolves things a purpose. But no, they get captured and banged up. Glen gets shot in his cell. Larry and Ralph get taken out for execution. Then Trash turns up  with the missile and blows the town up killing Flagg and all the  "evil" people. Which would have happened anyway. 

So why did they have to go West just to die in the bomb blast with the baddies? Them being there did nothing to make Trash turn up with the bomb. They died for nothing. Same with the 3 "scouts"- the judge and her who just went there and got killed, they didn't learn anything or bring anything back. Tom got out alive, finds Stu, then the bomb goes off. The whole point of the exercise was what? Five got sent there to die for nothing.  All they had to do was to stay in the Frees one, and Trash turns up with he bomb and blows up Vegas. Problem takes care of itself. 

This is the one thing that always bugged me about this great book and it's film.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Proverbs of Hell

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

A dead body. revenges not injuries.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword. are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

The Addict:

 

"Now, I think it was a Brit named Sir Robert Walpole who coined the phrase, "All men have their price."

 Now, I happen to agree.

 Although my point of view on the matter's changed.

 See, I used to think my price would be money or diamonds or gold. You know? 

Well, imaging my surprise when I realized that my price has become a needle in the arm."

 

Somebody once told me that if a stoplight turns red before you can cross, your life changes forever.

 I'll buy that it changes but, just 'til the next morning. 

Then it's a whole new deal.

 

In life only one thing is certain, apart from death and taxes: 

No matter how hard you try, no matter how good your intentions, you are going to make mistakes. You are going to hurt people. You are going to get hurt. 

And if you ever want to recover, there's really only one thing you can say. Forgive and forget That's what they say. 

It's good advice, but it's not very practical. 

When someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back. When someone wrongs us, we want to be right. 

Without forgiveness old scores are never settled. 

Old wounds never heal, and the most we can hope for is that one day we'll be lucky enough to forget.

Addiction

 

we see addiction every day. 

It's shocking how many kinds of addiction exist. It would be too easy if it were just drugs and booze and cigarettes. 

the hardest part of kicking a habit is wanting to kick it. I mean, we get addicted for a reason, right? 

Often, too often, things that start out as just a normal part of your life at some point cross the line to obsessive, compulsive, out of control. It's the high we're chasing, the high that makes everything else fade away. 

The thing about addiction is it never ends well, because eventually, whatever it is that was getting us high stops feeling good and starts to hurt. 

Still, they say you don’t kick the habit until you hit rock bottom, but how do you know when you’re there? 

Because no matter how badly a thing is hurting us, sometimes letting it go hurts even worse.

The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth

1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

The Nine Satanic Statements

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!

Most of my friends ...

Were strangers when I met them

Scars

 

People have scars. 

In all sorts of unexpected places. 

Like secret road maps of their personal histories. Diagrams of all their old wounds.

 Most of our wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. 

But some of them don't. 

Some wounds we carry with us everywhere and though the cut's long gone, the pain still lingers.

 What's worse, new wounds which are so horribly painful or old wounds that should've healed years ago and never did? 

Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us where we've been and what we've overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. 

That's what we like to think.

 But that's not the way it is, is it? 

Some things we just have to learn over and over and over again.

 

Disappearances happen in science. 

Disease can suddenly fade away, tumors go missing, 

 open someone up to discover the cancer is gone. 

It's unexplained, it's rare, but it happens. 

Call it mis-diagnosis, say we never saw it in the first place, any explanation but the truth. 

That life is full of vanishing acts.

 If something that we didn’t know we had disappears, do we miss it?

 

At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody. 

So this thing where we all keep our distance and pretend not to care about each other, it's usually a load of bull. 

So we pick and choose who we want to remain close to, and once we've chosen those people, we tend to stick close by. 

No matter how much we hurt them. 

The people that are still with you at the end of the day, those are the ones worth keeping.

 And sure, sometimes close can be too close.

 But sometimes, that invasion of personal space, it can be exactly what you need.

 

Many people don't know that the human eye has a blind spot in its field of vision. 

There is a part of the world that we are literally blind to. 

The problem is, sometimes our blind spots shield us from things that really shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes our blind spots keep our lives bright and shiny.

 When it comes to our blind spots, maybe our brains aren't compensating. Maybe they're protecting us.

Guilt

 

 Guilt never goes anywhere on its own, it brings its friends - doubt and insecurity. 

 the fact is, most of us do harm all the time. 

Sometimes even when we're trying to help, we do more harm than good. And then the guilt rears its ugly head. 

What you do with that guilt is up to you.

 We're left with a choice. 

Either let the guilt throw you back into the behavior that got you into trouble in the first place, or learn from the guilt and do your best to move on.

Time

 

For even the strongest of us it seems to play tricks. Slowing down. Hovering. Until it freezes. Leaving us stuck in a moment, unable to move in one direction or the other. Time flies. Time waits for no man.  Time heals all wounds. All any of us wants is more time. Time to stand up. Time to grow up. Time to let go. Time.

Sin

 

In life we are taught that there are seven deadly sins. 

We all know the big ones... gluttony, pride, lust.

 But the sin you don't hear much about is anger. 

Maybe it's because we think anger is not that dangerous, that you can control it. 

My point is, maybe we don't give anger enough credit. Maybe it can be a lot more dangerous than we think. After all, when it comes to destructive behavior, it did make the top seven. 

So what makes anger different from the six other deadly sins? 

It's pretty simple really, you give into a sin like envy or pride and you only hurt yourself. Try lust or coveting and you'll only hurt yourself and probably one or two others. 

But anger, anger is the worst... the mother of all sins... 

Not only can anger drive you over the edge, when it does you can take an awful lot of other people with you.

Game

 

A good basketball game can have us all on the edge of our seats. 

Games are all about the glory, pain and the play by play.

 And then there are the more solitary games. The games we each play all by ourselves. The social games, the mind games. We use them to pass the time to make life more interesting... to distract us from what's really going on. 

There are those of us who love to play games, any game. And there are those of us who love to play a little too much. 

Life is not a spectator sport. Win, lose, or draw, the game is in progress whether we want it to be or not. 

So go ahead... argue with the ref, change the rules, cheat a little, take a break and tend to your wounds. But play. Play. Play hard, play fast... play loose and free. Play as if there's no tomorrow.

 Okay, so it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game

... right?

 

Okay, so, sometimes even the best of us make rash decisions. 

Bad decisions. Decisions we pretty much know we're going to regret the moment, the minute, especially the morning after. I mean, maybe not regret, regret because at least, you know, we put ourselves out there. 

But...still. Something inside us decides to do a crazy thing. A thing we know will probably turn around and bite us in the ass. Yet, we do it anyway. 

What I'm saying is...we reap what we sow. what comes around goes around. It's karma and, any way you slice it...karma sucks. 

Like I was saying payback's a bitch. 

One way or another our karma will leave us to face ourselves. We can look our karma in the eye or we can wait for it to sneak up on us from behind. One way or another, our karma will always find us. 

 No matter how hard we try we can't escape our karma. It follows us home. 

I guess we can't really complain about our karma. It's not unfair. It's not unexpected. It just...evens the score. 

And even when we're about to do something we know will tempt karma to bite us in the ass...well, it goes without saying. 

We do it anyway.