a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Evelyn Waugh

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.[/b]

He’ll just leave it to our imagination.

Evelyn Waugh: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William?
Sir William Beveridge: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it.
Waugh: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do.

Let’s choose sides.

The human soul enjoys these rare, classical periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves - the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleepwalker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outside eye. We get borne along, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a side street, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, outdistance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shall never share.

Yep, that’s how it works alright. And whether you know it or not.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

On the other hand, what’s pretty next to beautiful?

Of course those that have charm don’t really need brains.

On the other hand, what’s charm next to beauty?

Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.

Hordes and hordes of them no doubt. Just like down here.

[b]Marjane Satrapi

In any case, it’s the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves![/b]

That and sheer stupidity.

I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn’t even know anymore why I was living.

Not many familiar with that, are there?

Listen. I don’t like to preach, but here’s some advice. You’ll meet a lot of jerks in life. If they hurt you, remember it’s because they’re stupid. Don’t react to their cruelty. There’s nothing worse than bitterness and revenge.

Some no doubt will beg to differ. In other words, not just me.

The revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don’t turn, it falls.

Pick one:
1] fortunately
2] unfortunately

To be the mistress of a married man is to have the better role. Do you realize? His dirty shirt, his disgusting underwear, his daily ironing, his bad breath, his hemorrhoid attacks, his fuss, not to mention his bad moods, and his tantrums. Well all that is for his wife.

You know, if she puts up with it.

War always takes you by surprise.

The one I was in did.

[b]Sam Shepard

When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.[/b]

In other words [now] from the cradle to the grave.

I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. … The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius.

Not counting the end of course.

Those are the most monotonous fuckin’ crickets I ever heard in my life.

On the other hand, it’s not like they have much choice.

She refers to her past as the time before she was "blown away.”

Not only that, but it can come from almost any direction.

When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.

That’s how I started out alright. And look at me now.

…and in that wink I understood there might be grown men in this world who actually get a spark out of life.

He [meaning me] wondered: When’s the last time I winked?

[b]The Dead Author

Existentialism 101

  1. Kierkegaard: fear.
  2. Nietzsche: pain.
  3. Kafka: despair.
  4. Heidegger: angst.
  5. Sartre: nausea.
  6. Camus: Sartre.[/b]

More shit from Dead White Guys?

Is there hope?
Schopenhauer: No.
Nietzsche: No.
Cioran: No.
Camus: No.
Spengler: No.
Adorno: No.
Kafka: Yes, but not for us.

See if you can spot the outlier.

As hard it is to live without hope, as easy it is to mistake despair for it.

I’ll get back to you on this.

What should we become?
Adorno: Mature.
Nietzsche: Kids.
Heidegger: Ourselves.
Arendt: Thoughtful.
Wittgenstein: Anything but philosophers.

No, Nietzsche doesn’t mean our Kids.

The irony of American history is that most of what presidents did that was within the law was worse than what they did to break it.

Cue the military industrial complex.

Pop philosophy: What’s the meaning of life?
Analytic philosophy: What meaning?
Continental philosophy: What life?

Let’s put them in the proper order.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

Quoting her mother: The trouble with a book is you never know what’s in it until it’s too late![/b]

In other words, by then you are already corrupted.

That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

Or, better still, your own tuba.

Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating.

Including the parts that really are fiction.

Wallowing is sex for depressives.

Man does that take me back!

I looked out across the Ocean, and determined to drown myself. I was up to my chin when the shout came, and I will never forget it. Never. For it seems to me that any hope in life is such a shout; a voice that answers the silent place of despair. It is silence that most needs an answering — when I can no longer speak, hear me.

Nope, no shout yet this week month year.

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story – of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives…

Not to fret, there’s still hope you’ll actually understand this some day.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them.[/b]

There’s always that to consider. Here, for example.

…that every day should be a fiesta seemed to me a marvelous discovery…

Well, not counting the folks who can’t afford it.

Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.

Leading eventually [for some] to a paragraph or two.

I try not to borrow.
First you borrow. Then you beg.

Or first you beg.

Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.

Works for me. You know, whatever it means. Nothing probably.

She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.

In other words, in this world, it’s always never nothing.

[b]Peter Sloterdijk

Above all: only grant the suspicion that sport is a pastime for the most stupid as much space as it deserves, do not misuse it as a pretext to drift further in your customary state of self-neglect, distrust the philistine in yourself who thinks you are just fine as you are![/b]

So, you tell me: Does the shoe fit?

As in the days of the first Merovingian, who pledged allegiance to the cross because of a victorious battle, today’s children of the banalized Enlightenment are likewise meant to burn what they worshipped and worship what they burned.

That was before postmodernism. You know, obviously.

Consequently, immune systems at this level can be defined a priori as embodied expectations of injury and the corresponding programmes of protection and repair.

I’ll bet that, like me, this never once occured to you.

Give up your attachment to comfortable ways of living - show yourself in the gymnasium…prove that you are not indifferent to the difference between perfect and imperfect, demonstrate to us that achievement - excellence, arete, virtu - has not remained a foreign word to you, admit that you have motives for new endeavours!

In other words, do exactly as he does.

In truth, philosophy is the mode of thought shaped by the most radical form of prejudice: the passion of being-in-the-world.

On the other hand, what he ever embodies is being-in-the-word.
For example:

Something is indeed returning today - but the conventional wisdom that this is religion making its reappearance is insufficient to satisfy critical inquiries. Nor is it the return of a factor that had vanished, but, rather a shift of emphasis in a continuum that was never interrupted. The genuinely recurring element that would merit our full intellectual attention is more anthropological than ‘religious’ in its implications - it is, in a nutshell, the recognition of the immunitary constitution of human beings.

Go ahead, you tell me how “being-in-the-world” is encompassed here.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.[/b]

You can imagine my problem with that. Or, I suppose, maybe not.

He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it was an excellent idea. Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.
What he did was put the fear of God into them.
More precisely, the fear of Crowley.
In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn’t look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. Say goodbye to your friend, he’d say to them. He just couldn’t cut it. . .
Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.
The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.

For some, no doubt, a true story.

Not only are there no happy endings, she told him, there aren’t even any endings.

Well, not counting that one of course.

You don’t have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right.

Anyone here ever actually done that?

You musn’t be afraid of the dark.
I’m not, said Shadow. I’m afraid of the people in the dark.

Them and the monsters. When for example, you can tell them apart.

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

And not just the faithful.

wrong thread

wrong tread

wrong thread

[b]Terry Pratchett

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.[/b]

Okay, Kids, is this true?

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

Trust me: I’ll let you know when I find Him.

It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever, he said. Have you thought of going into teaching?

Not counting philosophy professors of course.

Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It’s the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.

That and the hole you put it in.

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Take death for example…

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.

Unless of course you show them the money.

[b]George Bernard Shaw

We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women’s hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them.[/b]

In other words, maybe we shouldn’t.

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

But only until Don Trump drains the swamp.

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

That is one way to look at it.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

That is one way to look at it.

I have defined the hundred percent American as ninety-nine percent an idiot.

Hell, even I wouldn’t go higher than ninety-five percent.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.

Tell that to the wage slaves.

[b]Joseph Heller

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.[/b]

Let’s decide if it has gotten even worse.

Well, he died. You don’t get any older than that.

Or is this more complex than it sounds.

There’s nothing mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?

Not to worry: Someday He’ll tell you.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

Must be millions of us by now.

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it’s going your way. When it isn’t, don’t call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

One example:
Destiny: the Trump campaign
Injustice, treachery or simple bad luck: the Trump administration
You know, so far.

You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.

Not only that but practice makes perfect.
Well, most of the time.

[b]tiny nietzsche

nihilism is just another word for nothing left to lose[/b]

You know, from the cradle to the grave. After that, his guess is as good as ours.

cnn: grand jury
msnbc: grand jury
fox: are hotdogs tacos?

cnn: impeachment
msnbc: impeachment
fox: lock her up!

baby’s first conspiracy theory

5 will get you 10 it involves Don Trump.

AP: trump tells boy scouts to work on their “fuck models” badge

And then to change their name to Trump Youth.

You know who else liked political rallies after gaining power?

Surely we can pin that down.

It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s winter.

You know, where they have winter.

[b]Zoë Heller

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. [/b]

You can’t help but wonder if anyone has ever managed to actually reconcile the two. Or, rather, I can’t.

There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness might have been realized.

Oh, yeah, he thought, I can imagine it.

…what is romance, but a mutual pact of delusion?

Come on, we all know there must be exceptions.

But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don’t know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can’t bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you’re a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don’t know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin.

He wondered: How many here – just here – dare not to go there?

Always mind the distance between your dreams and your reality.

Just don’t actually try to measure it.

…elegance loses its power in the presence of the properly stupid…

Let’s file this one under, “lots of things do”.

[b]Jasmine Warga

You know, Zellie, there are enough broken things in the world. You shouldn’t go around breaking things just for the fun of it.[/b]

For some however that’s just not enough.

He was fucking sad. That’s it. That’s the point. He knows life is never going to get any different for him. That there’s no fixing him. It’s always going to be the same monotonous depressing bullshit. Boring, sad, boring, sad. He just wants it to be over.

Let’s file this one on, “I’'m working on it.”

Maybe the sadness comes just before the insanity.

Sure, but only if you’re lucky.

…because never in my life have I ever been picked when there was another alternative.

That will do it. Whatever that will do.

Something inside me clicks. It’s like I’ve spent my whole life fiddling with a complicated combination only to discover I was toying with the wrong lock.

And what if that’s philosophy?

He’s no longer the person I want to die with; he’s the person I want to be alive with.

Have you ever even come close?
Me neither.

[b]Malcolm Gladwell

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.[/b]

On the other hand, let’s not get carried away here.

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.

Gee, what do you think the implications of that might be?

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.

Isn’t that why we’re here? Aside of course from the Kids.

A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you’ll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We’re friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble.

Anyone here then my friend? :wink: :laughing: :wink:
Or, sure: :laughing: :wink: :laughing:

Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.

Let’s pin down what 20% of us here do.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

Could this really be possible?!!

[b]Arthur Koestler

It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.

It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.[/b]

I know: This will be true of all the Revolutions but yours.

The fact is: I no longer believe in my own infallibility. That is why I am lost.

Believe it or not, this will not even occur to most of us.

The ‘gallows’ are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

Unless of course it is a symbol of justice. And not just for Texans.

When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man’s awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong.

If not terribly wrong.

Some of the greatest discoveries…consist mainly in the clearing away of psychological roadblocks which obstruct the approach to reality; which is why, post factum they appear so obvious.

He means ours of course, not theirs. Even if he doesn’t.

The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears….

Hey, if the shoe fits.
Right, Kids?

[b]so sad today

it’s like i always say: fuck[/b]

Or, if you’re Lyssa, f**k.

is being alive a meme?

Sure, but with a few genes thrown in.

just ignore the abyss: the musical!

Let’s think up a soundtrack.

shhh, listen…it’s the sound of everything getting stupider

I know, I know: Is that even possible?

cause of death: got out of bed

And going all the way back to the fucking womb for most of us.

sorry to hear about your positive attitude

But only when you bring it here.