a thread for mundane ironists

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7801

[b]André Aciman

I wish I had one friend I wasn’t destined to lose.[/b]

Two words: Mere mortal.

Think of the pain before the pain.

How dumb is that, he thought.

This was a time when I intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for my return journey; instead, I ate them.

With or without regret.

I began reluctantly to steal from the present to pay off debts I knew I’d incur in the future.

Well, until you run out of future of course.

What did one do around here?
Nothing. Wait for summer to end.
What did one do in the winter, then?
I smiled at the answer I was about to give. He got the gist and said, ‘Don’t tell me: wait for summer to come, right.’

In other words, thank god for the spring and the fall.

You are the only person I’d like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense.

Never met anyone like that myself.
You?

7802

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments

You pride yourself on being a realist, I told myself, so face the facts. There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated. You’re a judge, so you are the educated, like it or not. They won’t want you around.[/b]

Let’s look for it here, okay?

We can’t always do what we want, said Zilla gently. Even you.
And sometimes we have to do what we hate, said Vera. Even you.

Coming and going, they gotcha.

The ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman.

Well, not always anyway.

…you could believe you were living virtuously and also murder people if you were a fanatic.

By, for example, calling them terrorists.

That birthday was the day I discovered that I was a fraud. Or not a fraud, like a bad magician: a fake, like a fake antique. I was a forgery, done on purpose.

Which birthday for you?

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated.

It’s almost a necessity these days.

7803

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.” Billy Wilder[/b]

Anyone here actually have one?

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.” Leonardo da Vinci.

On both sides of the revolution let’s say.

"I know that I exist; the question is, What is this ‘I’ that ‘I’ know. “ Rene Descartes

He just didn’t pursue this far enough, did he? :wink:

“The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.” Arthur Schopenhauer

And that’s before you get to the Kids.

“Before Elvis there was nothing.” John Lennon

He means Bob Dylan of course. If not himself.

“Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.” Edgar Allan Poe

Unless of course it is exactly the opposite.

7804

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

The material object of observation, the bicycle or rotisserie, can’t be right or wrong. Molecules are molecules. They don’t have any ethical codes to follow except those people give them. The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine’s always your own mind. There isn’t any other test.[/b]

And not just motorcycles.

One thing about pioneers that you don’t hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers.

Let’s run this by Native Americans.

I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away. I’m looking for the truth.” And so it goes away. Puzzling.

Are you puzzled?

If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you.

Does Nature know that?

Some things you miss because they’re so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don’t see because they’re so huge.

The forest for the trees, the trees for the forest.

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.

Not counting the objectivists. Right, Kids?

7805

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel[/b]

Trust me: not all limitations.

“He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.” Homer

That’s practically obligatory now.

“Lived experience can never be fully resolved into concepts, but its dark tonality accompanies all conceptual thought.” Wilhelm Dilthey

Or surely something like that.

“The knife of historical relativism…which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.” Wilhelm Dilthey

Well, maybe someday.

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” C.G. Jung

They must have had Kids back then too.

"Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.” Homer

Your words, not mine. But their words especially.

7806

[b]Julian Assange

What we know is everything, it is our limit, of what we can be. [/b]

What’s that say about everything we don’t know. Or even can’t know.

If you see the rhetoric from coming out of the Democrats is that they’re pro-civil liberties, and an important part of civil liberties is respect for the First Amendment and the rule of law, and that has broken down under the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton was part of that process.

Like they can’t rationalize it.

That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.

Mine too. Well, without the platform of course. Unless you count here. :wink:

Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism.

And that’s a good thing, right?

There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation.

What’s that tell us about the deep state then? The real one, not the one from Fox News.

The best type of government comes from a government that is scrutinized by the people when they have true information about our governments, major corporations, other power actors in society.

Like one will ever actually exist.

7807

[b]Heraclitus

Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears. [/b]

Hear! Hear!

It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant; by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.

It would have to be that way, wouldn’t it?

Knowledge is not intelligence.

Let’s prove that, Kids.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

We’ll need a context, of course.

Nothing is, everything is becoming.

Then you die. And just be nothing at all for [some suspect] all of eternity.

The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself.

Going all the way back to…what exactly?

7808

[b]Werner Twertzog

So woke that I am cancelling myself.[/b]

Not to worry, I’m getting there myself.

The planet Venus once had an advanced civilization, I am told. But it was lost to climate change.

Hint, hint.

Professors and students encouraged to check out more library books, permanently, to make room for larger food court.

How about a food court here?

Academic freedom is a great privilege of the unemployed, as we all know.

Of bums and hobos too.

So then Mr. Churchill bowed to me, even though I was but a child, from Bavaria.

I guess it’s possible.

Exercising in the gymnasium of the sublime. Before I die, my six-pack abs will become eight-pack abs.

I guess it’s possible.

7809

[b]Lynne Tillman

I think it’s true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don’t understand what people are going through.[/b]

You know, when that’s even possible.

That’s why our comics are important: they’re pointing things out and laughing at the same time. There have been horrible, horrible times in history. They’re mostly horrible times. But not to laugh? Not to find humor in something like dark optimism/bright pessimism - I think that’s sad, frankly.

Let’s just say there are lines to be drawn.

I don’t think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, “Your characters aren’t likeable.” It’s not about your character winning a popularity contest. That’s not the writer’s job.

The more unlikeable the better I always say.

Desire is a word I’m tired of. I’ve been living with that word for years. Yes, of course, we’re all desiring machines. I have sometimes wondered what people would want, if there were no advertising. And death, what other subject is there? It’s the subject. It’s our subject. It’s the great human dilemma, that we die and know we will.

And then those who desire to die.

I’m the author of my own misery.

Unless of course you count all the others.

Ulysses pissed me off. When Molly Bloom just says, “Yes I said yes I will Yes.” And I’m thinking, You should be saying no, Molly. How about no? Saying no is great.

Imagine then being able only to say maybe.

7810

[b]Abbie Hoffman

It’s too late. We can’t win, they’ve gotten too powerful. [/b]

Imagine then his reaction to Trumpworld.

Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual.

I know that mine is.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

Then came the greatest legacy of all the decades that followed.

Action is the only reality; not only reality, but morality as well.

You know, if there is one.

Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps.

Well, maybe a little more.

To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

For example, back when that really meant something.

7811

[b]Werner Twertzog

I whined to my mother that I was hungry, and she handed me an axe and pointed to the mountains.[/b]

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Superhero movies are always fascist, and often funded by the U.S. State Department, as we all know.

Well, they are made for Kids, right?

Yes, but this time, it really is the apocalypse.

You know, if this time we’re lucky.

Dear America: Your elections have always been rigged.

Two words: 1] crony 2] capitalism.

I never have shot an actor, but a director must be ready to do so.

Or, here, with posters, moderators.

The will that has been broken and repaired is more beautiful than one that has never been so tested.

We’ll need a context of course.

7812

[b]Douglas Adams

In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.[/b]

How else to explain, among other things, the pyramids.

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.

So, would you like me to train you?

Capital Letters Were Always The Best Way Of Dealing With Things You Didn’t Have A Good Answer To.

Starting with, for example, Dasein.

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.
Is there any tea on this spaceship? he asked.

Or, for others, heroin.

My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.

Go ahead, tell that to the judge.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.

You know, going back to a complete understanding of existence itself.

7813

[b]Bob Dylan

I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something. [/b]

Right, like here, all things being equal.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

Among other things, it lets you know you aren’t dead yet.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Let’s think of a few.

I play these folk acoustic concerts and I ask myself, ‘Would you come see me tonight?’ and I’d have to answer truthfully, ‘No, I wouldn’t come. I’d rather be doin’ something else, really I would. That something else is rock… The words are pictures, and the rock’s gonna help me flesh out the colors of the pictures.

Enough said? Finally?

Truth is like a waterslide—only fun when it’s slippery and wet.

Until we start stacking up the casualties.

Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.

And look at him now. About to join them.

7814

[b]Jack Finney

She wasn’t actually a girl you’d turn around and look at again, and remember, I suppose; she wasn’t actually pretty, I guess you’d have to say. But after I’d talked to her a few times, and had a Coke date once, when I ran into her downtown-then she was pretty.[/b]

You either get this or you don’t. And that includes me.

And that, my friend, is how the world ends. On the edge of a precipice, with one foot over the edge, it stops, turns and goes back, leaving an empty earth of birds and insects, wind, rain and rusting weapons.

Come on, really, what are the odds?

You live in the same kind of grayness as the filthy stuff that formed you.

Into which you sure as shit will return.

But a doctor learns, because he has to, not to worry actively about patients until the worrying can do some good; meanwhile, they have to be walled off in a quiet compartment of the mind. They don’t teach that at medical school, but it’s as important as your stethoscope.

Next up: the doctor’s bill.

Anyway, there’s a time and place for everything, and while this may have been the place, it wasn’t the time.

Not to mention the other way around.

Labor-saving technology was supposed to give us more leisure time, but a greater percentage of our waking hours is spent in work or work-related tasks than ever before, as we spin like squirrels in exercise cages, desperate to keep current with change and therefore employable.

Or, rather, something like that.

7815

[b]God

The Bible is a great moral code until you start to read it.[/b]

Let’s pin down the confusion here.

The problem with government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is the people.

Among other things then, we’re fucked.

All good things must come to an end.
Bad things though, they can go on forever.

Of course we will all be long dead and gone.

Most irons aren’t made of iron, which ironically is both ironic and unironic.

A God thing, right?

INDIA
1,300,000,000 people
330,000,000 gods
780 languages
No sense of humour

Yo, Zinnat!!

Next time just dogs.

Well, dogs and cockroaches.

7816

[b]Existential Comics

Plato watching a puppet show: “this is fucking bullshit. this is fake as shit. those aren’t even real people. how am i the only one who sees how fake this is??”[/b]

You tell me: Does this make sense?

Bill Gates made his money by extinguishing free software and forcing us to pay him a tax just to turn our computers on. This was only possible because the State was ready to violently enforce his “intellectual property”.
He didn’t created a computer revolution, he destroyed one.

You tell me: Does this make sense?

It really isn’t helpful to the left to make edgy jokes about how you want to “guillotine” the rich.
When you talk about guillotining the rich you should be 100% serious.

Let’s decide if this goes too far.

the thing that people don’t get about bees is that they are not monarchists. using language like “queen bee” is nothing but revisionism. bees are marxist-leninist-maoists and they do not have a queen they have a chairman

Do the bees know this?

Being an adult is great, because you get to do whatever you want. Unfortunately, what you mostly want to do is zone out while you watch the same show you’ve seen for the 30th time because you are so fucking tired all the time.

Either that or post here.

The lesson from Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat is that the corporate media needs to be dismantled, because they’d rather see fascists run the country than have to pay their interns a living wage or have their taxes go up 5%.

Let’s run this by MagsJ and Maia. :wink:

7817

[b]Susan Choi

I didn’t grasp that desire and duty could rival each other, least of all that they most often did.[/b]

Anyone here fail to grasp that?

Thoughts are often false. A feeling’s always real. Not true, just real.

You settle for that or you don’t.

They were all children who had previously failed to fit in, or had failed, to the point of acute misery, to feel satisfied, and they had seized on creative impulse in the hope of salvation.

What some of us do here no doubt.

We are ghosts of ourselves, and of others, and all of these ghosts appear perfectly real.

Let’s define “real”.

To David, love meant declaration. Wasn’t that the whole point? To Sarah, love meant a shared secret. Wasn’t that the whole point?

Yes.

Why is solitude so fucking hard to achieve?

For you maybe.

7818

[b]Sara Zarr

That’s how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I’m still waiting. [/b]

I’m still not waiting anymore.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.

No, try, really try to understand that this time.

I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.

The serial killer for example.

The kind of life I want is to be a person who would get a personal note every day.

And not, for example, a pink slip.

You were never what I wanted to forget.

Let alone remember?

…don’t mistake a new place for a new you.

But don’t underestimate it either.

7819

[b]Neal Stephenson

No one thought about the big picture for a few thousand years. We were all scrambling to survive.[/b]

What they’ll be saying here in a few thousand years, right?

I hadn’t known that, I said. I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.
There might as well be, Arsibalt said, but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs.

Sugar water?

Tav started it, Aïda said. He ate his own leg. Soft cannibalism, he called it. Legs are of no use in space. He blogged it. Then it went viral.

The future is coming!

This is a very odd conversation, Dappa observed. On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest conversation I’ve ever had, and seven being the oddest conversation I have in a typical day, this rates no better than five, Daniel returned.

Or here:
This is a very odd post, Dappa observed.
On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest post I’ve ever read, and seven being the oddest post I have read in a typical day, this rates no better than five, Daniel returned.

Why do they believe that?
Because we are hackers, Csongor said, and they have seen movies.

Not much that isn’t applicable to.

The Victorian era was an age of superlatives and larger-than-life characters, and as far as that goes, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse fit right in: what Victoria was to monarchs, Dickens to novelists, Burton to explorers, Robert E. Lee to generals, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse was to assholes. The only 19th-century figure who even comes close to him in this department is Custer.

Any assholes here, Kids?

7820

[b]Miles Davis

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.[/b]

Cue Terence Fletcher?

If you’re going to drop behind, you have to keep it there.

So, is there the equivalent of that here?

I never thought that the music called “jazz” was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

And that was back then.

He sounded to me like he’s supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

Wouldn’t want to have been him, right?

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.

Sure, this might be true.

Jazz musicians feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

Improvised as they are.