a thread for mundane ironists

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7821

[b]tiny nietzsche

“I’ve got a theory” is code for some freaky weird shit you do that you think is prevalent in society[/b]

I’ve got a theory about that too.

dress for success. also murder

Blue jeans and a t-shirt.

there is a nihilist that never goes out

Actually, there are now two of them.

baby, it’s problematic outside

And cold.

if you wait long enough, a nihilist will solve themselves

Me? What comes after “for all eternity”.

I kinda always knew I’d end up your ex-philosopher

Or you’d end up mine.

7822

[b]Sharon Stone

I eat right, I sleep, I work out, I’m happy. I have a beautiful family, nice friends. I choose the good things. I choose the happy, healthy things. I don’t choose the bad, unhealthy, unhappy things.[/b]

Let’s all be like that!!

Always carry a book on a date so that when you get bored you can slip into the Ladies for a read.

I’m trying to picture it.

I drive with my knees. Otherwise, how can I put on my lipstick and talk on my phone?

I’m trying to picture it.

Men put me on a pedestal, then never come to visit.

Name one.

When I started acting, I was asked said, ‘What’s your dream?’ ‘What would you like to achieve?’ I would say, ‘Oh, I’d like to sit opposite DeNiro and hold my own.’ But, you never think it’s gonna happen.

Never in a million years, right?

I knew what I wanted to do even when I was a little girl.

She just looked in the mirror.

7823

[b]Robert Macfarlane

Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.[/b]

Unless they only travel there philosophically.

Before you become a writer you must first become a reader. Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write.

Including comic books, right Kids?

Books , like landscapes, leave their marks in us. Certain books, though, like certain landscapes, stay with us even when we left them, changing not just our weathers but our climates.

We’ll need the titles of course.

…a walk is only a step away from a story…

Even counting Kant’s?

We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most.

Not counting the assholes, of course.

Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss… We easily forget that we are track-markers, through, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete–and these are substances not easily impressed.

Yeah, I suppose that’s true.

7824

[b]tiny nietzsche

tell me when I am[/b]

Nope, not yet.

pick a kierkegaard. any kierkegaard

In that case, Soren.

it’s not that I don’t know what today is, I don’t. it’s that I don’t care anymore

Then what week, month, year, decade or century it is. Or, for us, millennium.

that dream where your teeth crumble except it’s your life

Don’t you just hate that one?

alexa, play something irrelevant to my existence

What happens if you ask alexa for a blowjob?

futures come and go

Let’s blame it on time.

7825

[b]Robert Pirsig

The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. A technology that produces debris can find, and is finding, ways of disposing of it without ecological upset. And the schoolbook pictures of primitive man sometimes omit some of the detractions of his primitive life - the pain, the disease, famine, the hard labor needed just to stay alive. From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress, and the sole agent for this progress is quite clearly reason itself.[/b]

Obviously, he hasn’t seen The Emerald Forest.

We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives.

And how pathetic is that?

If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There’s no evolution. Those species that don’t suffer don’t survive. Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are the closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be the precursors of social change. They’ve taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves and in their struggle to solve their own problems they’re solving problems for the culture as well.

Well, maybe just a little less suffering might work. Or at least not putting it up on a pedestal.

People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no “mean guy” who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

In other words, capitalism per se.

People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists.

So, every once in a while, climb a tree.

Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven’t got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there’s absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed. It’s bound to happen. Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption.

Next up: gumption and philosophers.

7826

[b]tiny nietzsche

if you love christmas parties, what the fuck is wrong with you?[/b]

And you do, don’t you?

you’re probably asking yourself what you did to deserve this great question

After all, I can’t think of a thing.

billionaires is the answer if your question is guillotines

Next up: millionaires is the answer.

honestly, I hate those whoville fucks too

Uh, who doesn’t?

we’ll have time to freak out when we’re dead

Lot’s of time probably. You know, if we’re still around.

suppressed memory or it didn’t happen

Of course that can get tricky as hell.

7827

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments

You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others.[/b]

Himself being the exception, he insisted.

It was always a cruelty to promise them equality, he said, since by their nature they can never achieve it. We have already begun the merciful task of lowering their expectations.

Here it’s all the way down to the objectives. Or the Kids even.

It was also shameful: when a shameful thing is done to you, the shamefulness rubs off on you. You feel dirtied.

For example, if you let it.

Torture is like dancing: I’m too old for it. Let the younger ones practice their bravery.

In other ways, though, it’s not like dancing at all.

Which way will the cat jump?

Which way will you make it?

Such a cruel thing, memory. We can’t remember what it is that we’ve forgotten. That we have been made to forget. That we’ve had to forget, in order to pretend to live here in a normal way.

From time to time, just cruel to be kind.

7828

[b]Julian Assange

Secrecy breeds incompetence because where there is failure, failure is kept secret. [/b]

You think?

If you look at the history of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political police.

Going back to, say, J Edgar Hoover?

If we are to produce a more civilized society, a more just society, it has to be based on the truth.

:laughing:

We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we’re very sure.

Of course: We’re sure about them, they’re sure about us.

Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. And investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful.

Right, and look at us today.

Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.

Just not my kind, eh?

7829

[b]tiny nietzsche

I don’t do drugs, but if I did, I’d do all of them[/b]

Just out of curiosity, how many are there?

all hands on dick

Hey, it’s a man’s world.

when you can’t see the ocean for the water

Talk about taking it to the extreme.

et tu, everybody?

In the multiverse for example.

sext: we need to talk

Is that even possible?

I got a letter from the government the other day. I opened and read it, it said they were suckers

No, we’re still the suckers, right?

7830

[b]Heraclitus

Religion is a disease, but it is a noble disease. [/b]

Or, if you prefer, ignoble.

If we do not expect the unexpected, we will never find it.

Like the unexpected takes that into consideration.

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Maybe, but I’ll take my chances.

I see nothing but Becoming. Be not deceived! It is the fault of your limited outlook and not the fault of the essence of things if you believe that you see firm land anywhere in the ocean of Becoming and Passing. You need names for things, just as if they had a rigid permanence, but the very river in which you bathe a second time is no longer the same one which you entered before.

This definitely going back to an understanding of existence itself.

Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within

Uh, ILP?

Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: “Present, they are absent.”

What of those who think and do not understand? What are they like, Kids?

7831

[b]Lynne Tillman

I’m trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence.[/b]

Any extraneous words here?

The idea of equality is misunderstood. I wouldn’t ever argue that everyone is the same, but that differences should not be hierarchical.

Of course there is reality to consider here.

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

With Coke though they’ll never die.

It’s easy, at this point in my life, very easy to write a beautiful sentence that’s meaningless.

Go ahead, try it yourself.

I learned I could be miserable anywhere in the world. I learned I really was an American.

That’ll do it.

Any writer knows that what’s left out is as essential, if not more so, than what’s there.

What should I leave out? :wink:

7832

[b]so sad today

it’s all fun and games until you’re born[/b]

Or, perhaps, it’s all fun and games until you’re conceived.

my expectations are low so that’s good

Remember when you had expectations?

it’s important to leave people more confused than you found them

So, how am I doing so far? :laughing:

whispers during sex, is life worth it?

More to the point: did she come?

me: fuck these assholes
also me: please love me

Sure, if you can get away with it.

creative director of worst-case scenarios

Just not here of course.

7833

[b]Norman Mailer

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. [/b]

Imagine then what that makes Communism.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

One word: Options.

I’ve made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.

Let’s decide. First [of course] by defining it.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Or here [glumly enough] posting.

I really am a pessimist. I’ve always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It’s something essentially splendid because it’s not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.

I recall when I was only that pessimistic.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Of course that’s where, among others, I come in.

7834

[b]Douglas Adams

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.[/b]

Just what we need, he thought, another smartass.

A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.

Well, I do still expect to die.

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

Naturally, it’s not available here.

The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.

You’d think we’d know that bu now.

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question ‘How can we eat?’ the second by the question ‘Why do we eat?’ and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?

Let’s pin down where we are.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Apocryphal, isn’t it?

7835

[b]Bob Dylan

We’re constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it’s not going to do anything for you.[/b]

Wonder bread or hot dogs.

I don’t really have a retirement plan.

Of course with a net worth of $180 million, he’ll likely come up with something.

Having hits buries a singer in the past. A lot of singers hide in the past because it’s safer back there. If you’ve ever heard today’s country music, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I think that I do.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

Tell that to the Grim Reaper.

A lot of people from the press want to talk to me, but they never do.

Anyone from the press want to talk to you?

Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that’s exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn’t be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who’s playing and who’s listening.

Would you like me to explain why?

7836

[b]so sad today

anxiety triggers:
failure
success[/b]

Me too. Only it’s the other way around.

i’m emotionally available but only if you’re emotionally unavailable

Me too. Only it’s the other way around.

I don’t feel at peace unless I’m torturing myself

No, that’s actually a real thing.

the consequences of my actions are annoying

Mine, on the other hand, are not annoying enough.

let’s fuck up my life

She means your life of course.

muting you is better than cumming

Maybe, but I’ll take my chances.

7837

[b]Jack Finney

…it occurred to me that professors must get so they unconsciously act the way people think professors ought to act.[/b]

Television. Either that or movies.

The sunlight lying on an acre of farm land weighs several tons, believe it or not.

Exactly: believe it or not.

I saw my father’s wooden filing cabinet, his framed diplomas stacked on top of it, just as they’d been brought from his office. In that cabinet lay records of the colds, cut fingers, cancers, broken bones, mumps, diphtheria, births and deaths of a large part of Mill Valley for over two generations. Half the patients listed in those files were dead now, the wounds and tissue my father had treated only dust.

And the lesson learned?

But it wasn’t till he’d been there nearly two weeks that one morning Paris and its people suddenly became more than a background for his vacation. He was sitting in a café, out on the walk, having a tiny cup of Paris-tasting, Paris-smelling coffee, watching traffic stream by, pleased as always with the countless people on bikes expertly threading their way between and around the cars and buses and trucks. Then a traffic light changed, the stream stopped and waited, and a man on a bike, one foot on the pavement, lifted his arm and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. And he turned real. In that instant he was no longer a quaint part of a charming background; he turned into a real man, tired from pumping that bike, and for the first time it occurred to my friend that there was a reason so many people picturesquely rode bikes through the heavy traffic, and the reason was to save bus fare and because they couldn’t afford cars. After that, for the few days that were left to him there, my friend continued to enjoy Paris. But now it was no longer an immense travel poster but a real city, because now so were its people.

And the lesson learned?

…the very moment you are caught, there is always a chance.

Of course that’s bullshit.

I wrapped his pistol in his cap, and with the butt of the gun—not the end of the butt, but the side—hit him hard on the head. You read a lot about people being hit on the head and knocked out, but you don’t read much about blood clots in the brain. In actual fact, though, it’s a delicate matter, hitting a man on the head.

You know, if it is an actual fact.

7838

[b]so sad today

i learned at a young age that it was safer not to express any needs so i don’t open up to people and then secretly feel abandoned: the musical![/b]

What, another one?!

being alive reminds me why i find it difficult to be alive

Yep, it’ll do that alright.

by happy i mean moderately depressed

I was once actually that happy myself.

hi, i’m my own worst enemy, nice to meet you

Unless of course I am.

i cannot, and i mean cannot, stress this enough: everything is stupid

She forgot this: and getting stupider.

cause of death: my mind

Well, naturally.

7839

[b]Neal Stephenson

Maybe this was all down to some supernatural effect, such as grace, that flowed through people’s lives even if they didn’t understand why.[/b]

Anyone here know for sure?

Ng Security Industries Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit #A-367 lives in a pleasant black-and-white Metaverse where porterhouse steaks grow on trees, dangling at head level from low branches, and blood-drenched Frisbees fly through the crisp, cool air for no reason at all, until you catch them.

What’s it cost tp join, he wondered?

Clyde had a theory that women had a book, a homemade, photocopied three-ring binder called “Surprising Things to Do in a Relationship,” which they passed around to one another, adding pages from time to time, hiding it under the bed. He figured that Desiree could run home tonight and add a new page.

Of course Clyde had lots of theories.

War did not just level, it plowed the field, raising the muck and sinking the stubble.

Having been in one myself, that’s close enough.

Markus’s mind jumped straight to the most obvious explanation: “Is the president nuking people again?”

It won’t be long now, will it?

This is a terrible country for old people. You put them away in horrible buildings that are completely shut off from life, and then do everything possible to keep them alive.

Not if you’re making the big bucks along the way.

7840

[b]Miles Davis

Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.[/b]

Who doesn’t?

I’m out there doing the best that I can. My lip is cut and I’m still playing.

Wow!

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

Here of course it’s philosophy.

I was minding my own business when something says to me, “you ought to blow trumpet.” I have just been trying ever since.

Here of course it’s philosophy.

I think the greatest sound in the world is the human voice.

Not even close, right?

Prince could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

So, who takes his place?