a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Herta Müller

To combat death you don’t need much of a life, just one that isn’t yet finished.[/b]

Not that it can be any other way.

No cities can grow in a dictatorship, because everything stays small when it’s being watched.

Back then maybe.

Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity.

Not that this actually worked of course.

Hey, not while I’m at my devotions, not so fast, the fat man said, inside the shithouse you’re communing with God, and outside you find that all hell’s broken loose.

The shithouse conundrum.

All of that piles on you so that, sooner or later, you cannot bear it anymore. And in that situation I started to write, because there was no other ways for me to express, except through the vicious cycle of words.

He thought: That’s me here.

We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.

Let’s pin down where it is here.

[b]God

This is a scary time for young men who commit sexual assault and want to get away with it.[/b]

Of course we’re still counting on Him to send them to Hell.

Thoughts and prayers are for shit.

Come on, even God has a bad day.

It’s getting to where men can’t do something awful without being accused of having done it.

Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way in Heaven.

Don’t worry America, everything will change after November 6, because that’s when the asteroid hits.

You heard it here.

Where the hell am I?

See, even He doesn’t know.

Never forget that for every public official who is stupid and awful, there are thousands of ordinary citizens who are also stupid and awful.

After all, how can you have one without the other?

[b]Lillian Hellman

You don’t always know how to do things when they’re happening.[/b]

If only from the cradle to the grave.

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

And when was there ever a time without scondrels.

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it’s a stinking way to create.

I’ll bet it is.

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody’s mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

Fortunately [or unfortunately] I don’t know what to believe.

You lose your manners when you’re poor.

Not that anyone around you notices.

I’ve always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I’ve not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced—although often I’ve had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there’s no nicer feeling in the world—what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can’t get that from a book. It’s a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you’ve done.

Let’s imagine others reacting to what we’ve done here.

[b]John Fowles from The Collector

I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.[/b]

That’s a stretch sure. Except the part that’s not.

I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren’t ashamed of being dull and little.

And now she’s been kidnapped by one.

It’s despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It’s despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It’s despair that so few of us care. It’s despair that there’s so much brutality and callousness in the world. It’s despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they’ve won a lot of money. And then do what you’ve done to me.

Of course as we know that doesn’t work.

When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies.

What happens to the stuff we post here?

he power of women! I’ve never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We’re so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we’re stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can’t stand ours.

Expect there to be exceptions.

I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can’t you understand? I don’t think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.

So, does that make the world better or worse?

[b]tiny nietzsche

shout out to our inevitable death[/b]

Or not maybe.

the enemy of my enemy has a point

Perhaps even a good one.

I woke up on the wrong side of postmodernism

Right, like there actually is one.

sometimes when I don’t understand something, I wish I had a dog

Or for that matter a parakeet.

the nihilist awoke before dawn. he put his abyss on

Of course that was always what Jim meant.

I was a teenage nihilist

When did it start for you?

[b]Colson Whitehead

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, because in the end, whatever goes down, whatever you get up to, your triumphs and transgressions, nobody actually understands what it means except for you.[/b]

That’s the other way to look at it.

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.

Didn’t Neil Young write a song about them?

Resentment was the hinge of her personality.

Not only that but it squeaked a lot.

The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death.

I know: this could never happen to you.

Everything in the garden is dying, that’s what time of year it is.

Right about now he thought.

All he felt now was envy. These people had expectations. Of the world, of the future, it didn’t matter–expectation was such an innovative concept to him that he couldn’t help but be a bit moved by what they were saying. Whatever that was.

I’ll tell you what, if you don’t ask me about mine I won’t ask you about yours.

[b]Viet Thanh Nguyen

But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.[/b]

Not unlike much of the logic here, he thought.

Not for the first time, I longed to tell someone that I was one of them, a sympathizer with the left, a revolutionary fighting for peace, equality, democracy, freedom, and independence, all the noble things my people had died for and I had hid for.

Not unlike those on the right.

But to a bureaucrat paper was never just paper. Paper was life!

Now it’s all ones and zeros.

One did not depend on marines for good table manners. One depended on them to have the right instincts when it came to matters of life and death.

Not that we should leave out the wrong instincts of course.

I was finally left with nothing but myself and my thoughts, devious cabdrivers that took me where I did not want to go.

Also, whether I could afford the fare or not.

The unseen is almost always underlined with the unsaid.

Either that or said to be seen from a particular point of view: ours not yours.

[b]so sad today

look, i hate myself as much as the next guy[/b]

Or, rather, she thinks she does.

bucket list:
go back to bed

Short and sweet.

i liked you better when you were imaginary

Really, imagine that of, say, me.

can I count on you to let me down?

Sure, if you pay me enough.

when i’m by myself i’m almost ok

I come close to that myself.

no i can’t just “get out of bed”

Cue the snooze button.

[b]Neil Gaiman

You are the nearest thing I have to life. You are the only thing I have left, the only thing that isn’t bleak and flat and gray. I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.[/b]

Among other things, how dumb is that?

America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe just about anything could happen in America.

Among other things, how dumb is that?

I don’t think it would be fun to write after inhaling art fumes. (What are art fumes?) No, I just make stuff up. It’s easier that way.

I’ll inhale your fumes if you’ll inhale mine.

When we consider that each of us has only one life to live, isn’t it rather tragic to find men and women, with brains capable of comprehending the stars and the planets, talking about the weather; men and women, with hands capable of creating works of art, using those hands only for routine tasks; men and women, capable of independent thought, using their minds as a bowling-alley for popular ideas; men and women, capable of greatness, wallowing in mediocrity; men and women, capable of self-expression, slowly dying a mental death while they babble the confused monotone of the mob?

Sure, maybe.

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.

On the other hand, why bring that up here?

You don’t discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is the gateway drug to other books you may prefer them to read. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Not counting those who read the really wrong things.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Belief means not wanting to know what is true.” Friedrich Nietzsche[/b]

So, do you believe this?

“The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.” Friedrich Nietzsche

True, there’s always often that part.

“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Well, not counting the hedonists perhaps.

“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.” John Locke

Any examples of this from the folks here?

“I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.” John Locke

Self-righteously even.

“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.” Epictetus

Not counting ILP of course.

[b]Dave Eggers

There’s nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions, because, at its core, it sets a bad example. Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart but which needn’t be reiterated.[/b]

If only we had an actual context, he thought.

It all meant something. Until it didn’t.

Or: It all meant nothing. Until it didn’t.

I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency.

Or: I cannot count the times I have cursed our reckless urgency.

We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, like, say, masturbatory habits, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself.

And then there are the folks on Jerry Springer.

Live long enough and you’ll disappoint everyone.

I think I already have, he thought.

I mean, all this stuff you’re involved in, it’s all gossip. It’s people talking about each other behind their backs. That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. And besides that, it’s fucking dorky.

Wow, this will stop them!

[b]Philip Larkin

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.[/b]

And then someday to another planet.

You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like ‘Finnegans Wake’ and Picasso.

Let’s start a new thread for that here.

I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.

If, after reading that, China would have you.

Most things may never happen: this one will.

My guess: For better or for worse.

Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.

How insulted should, say, Bjork be?

Sex is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.

Love for example.

[b]David Hockney

All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it’s got to be organized.[/b]

And this means exactly…what?

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.

And this means exactly…what?

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

My advice: Let’s not talk about it at all.

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.

Obviously: Define “nothing”.

Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like a pretty face.

Nothing subjective about that.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

Anyone here actually believe that?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“God has entrusted me with myself.” Epictetus[/b]

Of course anyone can claim that.

“No man was ever wise by chance.” Seneca

Or foolish for that matter.

“Art and revolt will die only with the last man.” Albert Camus

So, what are the odds it will be one of us?

“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” Albert Camus

Fascism for example.
Well, for some.

“Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.” Jean-Paul Sartre

He means essentially.

“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.” Jean-Paul Sartre

I’m through with that, he thought.

[b]William F. Buckley Jr.

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!”[/b]

And then, once in power, “full speed ahead!”

I had much more fun criticizing than praising.

Not unlike, for example, Gore Vidal?

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

The idealism of others in particular.

The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.

So, shall we cue Don Trump in this regard?

Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.

You can’t help but wonder what he thinks about that now. If you get my drift.

I catch fire and find the reserves of courage and assertiveness to speak up. When that happens I get quite carried away. My blood gets hot my brow wet I become unbearably and unconscionably sarcastic and bellicose I am girded for a total showdown.

Indeed, imagine then his reaction to “dasein conflicting, goods and political economy…in a No God world”.

[b]David Sedaris

You can’t brace yourself for famine if you’ve never known hunger.[/b]

Go ahead, try.

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

Who the hell started that anyway?

Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.

So to speak let’s say.

I won’t put in a load of laundry, because the machine is too loud and would drown out other, more significant noises - namely, the shuffling footsteps of the living dead.

Of course that goes without saying.

And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I’d remind him that these were pests—disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware.

Point taken?

I’ve become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It’s not “Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece” but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!”

There must be the equivalent of that here. Right, Kids?

[b]Werner Twertzog

Hurricanes should be named for notorious climate-change deniers.[/b]

Hurricane Don?

No, I shall not “rock” the sockless, skinny-jeans look, for fall, as you well know.

Then that makes two of us.

Most anteaters are misanthropes, as we all know.

Well, why wouldn’t they be?

It is important to let the natives know that you, personally, will kill Kinski.

You know, if you have the balls.

If you thought bowling alone was sad, just wait.

Let’s pin down things even sadder.

Solving global warming is quite simple: human extinction, which will attend to itself in due course. Nature will reconstitute itself in a few hundred million years: nothing really, in geological time.

Ever the optimist, isn’t he?

[b]Arthur Rimbaud

Whose hearts must I break?
What lies must I maintain?
Through whose blood am I to wade?[/b]

On the other hand, it’s only from the cradle to the grave.

The wolf howled under the leaves
And spit out the prettiest feathers
Of his meal of fowl:
Like him I consume myself.

Tell him that.

Now I am an outcast. I loathe my country. The best thing for me is a drunken sleep on the beach.

Unless of course you have access to heroin.

True life is elsewhere

Until you arrive and it’s not even there.

The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one–and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! …So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!

I’ll think about it, okay?

Morality is the weakness of the mind.

He means in this world.

[b]Susan Faludi

When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.[/b]

At least one.

The “feminine” woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will never grow.

And then one day she’s a Playboy Bunny.

Are you still as angry as you used to be? Julia, the World War II resistance fighter, asked Lillian Hellman in the biographical movie Julia. I like your anger….Don’t you let anyone talk you out of it.

Of course no one ever did.

The camera only documented what had been there all along, a marriage whose foundations, constructed from the cheap materials of convention and fear, had been buckling for years.

Of course they didn’t have Youtube back then.

All of women’s aspirations – whether for education, work or any form of self-determination – ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children.

That’s the biological part, isn’t it?

Here was a Jewish man-turned-woman making fun of Jewish men for not being manly enough.

Now that’s ironic.

[b]God

I look down on you. Satan looks up to you. And there you have it.[/b]

We’re all likely to be fucked then.

All dogs go to heaven. And from now on, that’s it.

He meant cats of course.

The performance of your favorite sports team is something about which I care tremendously.

Trust me: Not counting the [47-115] Baltimore Orioles.

Just because Jesus died for your sins doesn’t mean you should keep committing them, assholes.

Let’s see if that works.

If history has taught mankind one thing, I’d be stunned.

Especially if Trump is re-elected.

A few of you will end up killing all of you.

God willing of course.