Plus sa vie est infâme, plus l'omme y tient; elle est alors une protestation, une vengeance de tous les instants.

—Honoré de Balzac

(The more contemptible his life, the more a man clings to it; it thus becomes a protest, a retribution for every moment.)

I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGMA 95:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work," as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.

Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY

Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995

On behalf of DOGMA 95, Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg

This was the definition of today…

Rule 240 is a term describing what individual airlines will do for late or stranded passengers, in the event of delays caused by airlines. The term refers to a federal requirement before airline deregulation in 1978. The major airlines have filed "conditions of carriage" with the U.S. Department of Transportation guaranteeing their respective "Rule 240" provisions. These provisions vary from airline to airline, and generally apply only to delays that are absolutely the airline’s fault, such as mechanical delays, and not to "force majeure" events such as weather, strikes, or "acts of God."

Summaries of "Rule 240" policies for a few airlines can be found in the Consumerist.com and SmarterTravel.com articles in the references section.

Source: Wikipedia

Karen Eliot is a name that refers to an individual human being who can be anyone. The name is fixed, the people using it aren't. The purpose of many different people using the same name is to create a situation for which no one in particular is responsible and to practically examine western philosophical notions of identity, individuality, originality, value and truth.

Anyone can become Karen Eliot simply by adopting the name, but they are only Karen Eliot for the period in which they adopt the name. Karen Eliot was materialised, rather than born, as an open context in the summer of 1985. When one becomes Karen Eliot one's previous existence consists of the acts other people have undertaken using the name. When one becomes Karen Eliot one has no family, no parents, no birth. Karen Eliot was not born, s/he was materialised from social forces, constructed as a means of entering the shifting terrain that circumscribes the "individual" and society.

…which showed the total impermanence of any values, shook the validity of any conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness.

At the same time, the Theatre of the Absurd also seems to have been a reaction to the disappearance of the religious dimension form contemporary life. The Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish.

Indeed, it was anti-theatre.

Language had become a vehicle of conventionalised, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface.

http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm

fate, luck. Yup, this is the word the epitomizes the famed Indian fatalism.
www.subir.com/rushdie/glossary.html

A Turkish and Arabic word for fate, expressing the attitude that human effort cannot change the predestined course of events. [EI]
www.embassy.org.nz/encycl/k2encyc.htm

Destiny or Fate concerns the fixed natural order of the universe. It is the invincible necessity to which even the gods must accede, as the Sibyl of Delphi confessed. Destiny is fate, personified in Greek culture by the three Moirae (called the Parcae by the Romans), with a Nordic counterpart in the three Norns. The "doom of the powers" in Norse mythology is Ragnarok the battle which even Odin must inevitably face, at the end of the world.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(fate)

Kismet is a robot at MIT intended to demonstrate simulated emotion. Some critics consider it an ELIZA-style device which relies on clever pattern recognition and output to fool users into thinking the machine possesses intelligence that isn’t really there. It is the project of Cynthia Breazeal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(robot)

Kismet, also known as Paragon and Her is a superheroine in the Marvel Universe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(comics)

Kismet is an network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system for 802.11 wireless LANs. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g traffic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(program)

(Islam) the will of Allah
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Kismet is a musical written in 1953 by Robert Wright and George Forrest, adapted from the music of Alexander Borodin.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(musical)

Kismet is a Finnish chocolate bar produced by Fazer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(chocolate_bar)