a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Rick Moody

Cool is spent. Cool is empty. Cool is ex post facto. When advertisers and pundits hoard a word, you know it’s time to retire from it. To move on. I want to suggest, therefore, that we begin to avoid cool now. Cool is a trick to get you to buy garments made by sweatshop laborers in Third World countries. Cool is the Triumph of the Will. Cool enables you to step over bodies. Cool enables you to look the other way. Cool makes you functional, eager for routine distraction, passive, doped, stupid.[/b]

Trust me, nobody hates that idiotic word more than I do.
Except, perhaps, him.

Fucking family. Feeble and forlorn and floundering and foolish and frustrating and functional and sad, sad. Fucking family. Fiend or foe.

Actually, there are folks who do not think this way at all. About their own family, for example.

It was monks who first taught the art of reading in silence. During the Dark Ages. Augustine, perhaps, was first. And silence was a tongue Elena understood. Silence was her idiom for support and caring. Silence was permissive and contemplative and nonconfrontational and there was melody to it. It was both earth and ether.

Obviously not you run-of-the-mill silence.

Death was terribly durable. It was the sturdiest idea around. A body was dead, and before long it wasn’t even a body anymore, it was just elements. But it was still dead.

Death. Hell, it’s right up there with God, isn’t it?

You could pay Arthur Janov to teach you to scream about history, or you could learn prayer or a mantra, or you could write your life down and hope to make peace with it, write it down, or paint it, or turn it into improvisational theater, but that was the best you could probably do. You were stuck.

Stuck, yes. And then some.

The sounds of southwestern cacti are broadcast for several weeks until, by general assent, it is agreed that cacti make no sounds.

Are they supposed to?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.” Tacitus[/b]

What do you think, human nature?

“It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.” Søren Kierkegaard

He thought: Let’s not go there.

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.” Søren Kierkegaard

And then repeat as necessary.

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." Ezra Pound

Of course it may well be more complicated than this. Having never been a slave himself.

“Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.” John Dewey

He means real art of course.

“Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.” Martin Heidegger

And let’s not forget women.

[b]André Gide

What was doubly disconcerting for me was that he showed such extraordinary and precocious insight in describing his own feelings that I felt he was making my own confession.[/b]

Most of us will go to the grave and never experience something like this…

Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.

Though that’s going back some.

I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw.

So he bought another mirror.

For what use is it to forbid what we can’t prevent?

We can dream can’t we?

What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told.

A general description I can live with.

Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead-letter nowadays? It is because they have severed themselves from life.

For example, Cue Will Durant’s “epistemologists”. And not just James.

[b]Nein

Moby Dick can teach us many things, friends. Diplomacy isn’t one of them.[/b]

And not just in regard to white whales.

Discontent. Everyone’s favorite season.

Are there any others?

A gentle reminder from November. That every month is the cruelest.

I’ve never known one that wasn’t.

Sometimes you wonder where certain authors were all your life. What they were doing there. And why they never wrote.

Nope, never wondered that. Well, not that I can recall.

Your own. Personal. October Revolution.

No. Thank. You.

Sorry, we’re out of context. But perhaps I could interest you in a fundamental misunderstanding.

I know: Let’s explore what the two might have in common.

[b]Lou Reed

There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.[/b]

You know, generally speaking.

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

And here I thought only I believed this.

You’re going to reap just what you sow.

Here for example: youtu.be/iDtO88QyKMM

I’m still not sure I didn’t die.

Trust me: He did.

And no kinds of love are better than others.

For example, after you are dead and gone.

There is only one good thing about a small town
You know that you want to get out

Unless of course [now] you want to go back.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

There is always a city. There is always a civilization. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilization, but to become that city, that civilization, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated is what you did not understand.[/b]

In other words, back again to genes and memes.

It was Hell, if hell is where the life we love cannot exist.

If even Hell itself describes it.

Everyone assumed it had to be some sort of biography, because if you are a woman and use yourself as a character, it has to be some sort of confessional, whereas if you’re a man, you’re actually doing some post-modern play on the novel, some critique on identity with lots of references to Foucault.

Come on, admit she has a point here.

The pursuit [of happiness] isn’t all or nothing—it’s all and nothing.

At any rate, for some of us, eventually.

The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home, like all the men who now live with mermaids at the bottom of the sea.

Not counting Allen Bauer of course.

As he turned inwards she turned outwards, but while he wore his intensity like a garment, she slept in hers.

Seems counterintuitive doesn’t it?

[b]Mary Roach

Human remains dogs are distinct from the dogs that search for escaped felons and the dogs that search for whole cadavers. They are trained to alert their owners when they detect the specific scents of decomposed human tissue. They can pinpoint the location of a corpse at the bottom of a lake by sniffing the water’s surface for the gases and fats that float up from the rotting remains. They can detect the lingering scent molecules of a decomposing body up to fourteen months after the killer lugged it away.[/b]

Imagine this from the dog’s point of view.

Any discussion of the sexuality of the digestive tract must inevitably touch on the anus. Anal tissue is among the most densely innervated on the human body. It has to be. It requires a lot of information to do its job. The anus has to be able to tell what’s knocking at its door: Is it solid, liquid, or gas? And then selectively release either all of it or one part of it. The consequences of a misread are dire. As Mike Jones put it, You don’t want to choose poorly. People who understand anatomy are often cowed by the feats of the lowly anus. Think of it, said Robert Rosenbluth, a physician whose acquaintance I made at the start of this book. No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine-tuned as an anus. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.

Not counting the assholes here of course.

No one goes out to play anymore. Simulation is becoming reality.

You either understand this [really understand it] or you don’t.

Penguins can shut down digestion by lowering the temperature inside their stomach to the point where the gastric juices are no longer active. The stomach becomes a kind of cooler to carry home the fish they’ve caught for their young. Penguins’ hunting grounds may be several days’ journey from the nest. Without this handy refrigerated mode, the swallowed fish would be completely digested by the time the adults get back.

Nature: Nothing short of astounding.

Women who routinely have orgasm in intercourse without explicit clitoral stimulation all say that it makes little difference what the guy does, as long as he doesn’t come too soon.

He thought: Let’s not go there.

Every now and then in life, a compliment is tucked so seamlessly into a insult that it’s impossible to know how to react.

And trust me: Practice makes perfect.

[b]Existential Comics

Stupid people often think they are more “rational” because they don’t understand the social context of a problem, making the problem simple.[/b]

Objectively as it were.

Nazi: we will eliminate the Jews.
Antifa: no.
Liberal: whoa, let’s just have a civil discussion about whether or not to eliminate the Jews.

He does have a point, right?

Philosophy is when you think about a topic so much you realize that not only do you not understand it, but you don’t understand anything.

On the other hand, even that’s something.

The major problem with life is that you have to be yourself the whole time.

Now that you mention it…

Imagine explaining Capitalism to a alien: “Well…a few people own everything, and for 40 hours a week everyone else has to do what they say.”

I know: Let’s have a revolution!

Nihilist: nothing matters, nothing’s good or bad, there is no meaning.
Also nihilist: I’ll riot if this computer game doesn’t run at 60 fps.

So, what’s the problem?

[b]John Cage

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.[/b]

Just short of, say, a contradiction in terms.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Well, since the big bang anyway.

When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.”

Just what we need, another metaphsyical pragmatist.

Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression “free as a bird,” Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, You know? They’re not free: they’re fighting over bits of food.

Besides, it’s all in the genes anyway.

The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.

Whether you put them there or not.

Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it’s own accord.

Tried that once myself. And I still don’t understand it.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

How good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.[/b]

Not many of us are up to that though.

If a four-letter man marries a five-letter woman, he was thinking, what number of letters would their children be?

You tell me.

You’re going to have things to repent, boy,’ Mr. John had told Nick. 'That’s one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.

Among other things, sins.

This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

Just don’t expect to actually pin this down.

Imagination is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine. If he gets so he can imagine truly enough people will think that the things he relates all really happened and that he is just reporting.

Imagine that, he thought. But then couldn’t.

That I am a foreigner is not my fault. I would rather have been born here.

So, where would you rather have been born?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” Buddha[/b]

Really, how could anyone in their right mind actually believe this?

“Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.” Denis Diderot

Really, how could anyone in their right mind actually believe this?

“What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.” Denis Diderot

Indeed. Yesterday being the 100th anniversity of the Russian Revolution.
You know, for better or for worse.

“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” Aristotle

So, how am I doing?

“When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it’s time for artists to make their mark.” Joni Mitchell

Recognizing of course that the world has never not been that way.
But, sure, now especially.

“The sun at noon is the sun setting. The thing born is the thing dying.” Chinese Proverb

Now that’s grim.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Truly, life is wasted on the living…[/b]

Is it possible to take it that far?

She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.

Of course 9 times out of 10 she’s a he.

There are things that wait for us, patiently, in the dark corridors of our lives. We think we have moved on, put them out of mind, left them to desiccate and shrivel and blow away; but we are wrong. They have been waiting there in the darkness, working out, practicing their most vicious blows, their sharp hard thoughtless punches into the gut, killing time until we came back that way.

And who among us doesn’t?

The problems with success, frankly, are infinitely preferable to the problems of failure.

Let’s at least agree it’s not a cliche.

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

As opposed to, say, philosophy.

[b]Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.

She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny French woman with white hair, with a daughter and a grand-daughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy.

Or that’s a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull.

Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months’ pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.

There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow.

There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter’s wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones.[/b]

Actually, I didn’t know her. But that sounds like something the Gestapo would do. In fact, it sounds like something certain folks here might do.

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.[/b]

Maybe, but that never stopped me.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
I can’t remember. Which?
Do you know what those words mean?
Not really.
An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical.
I’m an optimist.
Well, that’s good, because there’s no irrefutable evidence. There’s nothing that could convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.

Clues, evidence. You have yours, I have mine.

I beg you, no matter what happens, no matter where you go in life or how many millions you make, no matter anything, I beg you: never buy a German car.

So far, I’ve bought two of them. But point taken.

My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

Fortunately [or unfortunately] mine is running out.

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.

In fact, he’ll teach you.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

Because [for some] it’s not a cat.

[b]Terry Pratchett

Just because you can explain it doesn’t mean it’s not still a miracle.[/b]

Like for example the microwave oven.

Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading.

Or [if we’re really, really lucky]: Always remember that the crowd that applauds your election is the same crowd that will applaud your impeachment.

There is always time for another last minute.

Obviously: Until there’s not.

It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it, said War testily, the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse.

The second coming of a lesser God.

There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on them. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse’s hooves: If one of the horse’s hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there’s probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you’re looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse.

And that’s not even counting the Confederate statues. Well, in the civilized world.

Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?

Ego?

[b]God

The first step is admitting you have a penis.[/b]

Cue Louis C. K. among others

Sanity is becoming more and more of an achievement.

On the other hand, what does this tell us about God?

Mary was underage. I knocked her up. I’m a child molester.

And, after all, He did make Roy Moore in His image.

I apologize to some of you for most of you.

Thus God reveals to us the actual existential limits of His power.

The only person who ever needs to watch you masturbate is Jesus.

Though, for all practical purposes, He’s God.

A year ago today, I officially forsook all of thee.

Clue: He means November 8th, 2016.

[b]C.G. Jung

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.[/b]

And where might that be?

We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

And what might that be?

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Among other things, cue the Ubermen.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

Let’s try to note some exceptions. If not here.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Let’s ponder the implications of this, Mr. Objectivist.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.

No people either.

[b]Joseph Heller

He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference of the equator and always wrote “enhanced” when he meant “increased.” He was a prick.[/b]

An autodidactic prick no doubt.

[b]The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins.

The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by the discovery. It was miraculous.

It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue, slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.[/b]

Maybe, but you can’t fool God.

Clevinger is a very bright guy, a Harvard man, who knows everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

In other words, a scholar.

[b]Oh, they’re there all right, Orr had assured him about the flies in Appleby’s eyes after Yossarian’s fist fight in the officers’ club, although he probably doesn’t even know it. That’s why he can’t see things as they really are.

How come he doesn’t know it? inquired Yossarian.

Because he’s got flies in his eyes, Orr explained with exaggerated patience. How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?[/b]

Catch 17 as I recall.

What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?

Hell, you could say that about a few folks here.

Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.

Sounds like something Don Rumsfeld’s machine would write.

[b]Steven D. Levitt

Kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don’t contain methane.[/b]

Anyone here know why?

Know that some people will do everything they can to game the system, finding ways to win that you never could have imagined. If only to keep yourself sane, try to applaud their ingenuity rather than curse their greed.

Not counting Bernie Madoff of course.

How are you supposed to get everyone to pull in the same direction when they are all pulling primarily for themselves?

Who would think that you can?

The future is far less knowable than you think.

Trust me: You’ll die.

Just as a warm and moist environment is conducive to the spread of deadly bacteria, the worlds of politics and business especially—with their long time frames, complex outcomes, and murky cause and effect—are conducive to the spread of half-cocked guesses posing as fact. And here’s why: the people making these wild guesses can usually get away with it!

For example, not get impeached.

To Borody and a small band of like-minded brethren who believe in the power of poop, we are standing at the threshold of a new era in medicine. Borody sees the benefits of fecal therapy as “equivalent to the discovery of antibiotics.” But first, there is much skepticism to overcome.

Let’s explain that.

[b]Lawrence M. Krauss

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.[/b]

On the other hand, not much here in the way of immortality and salvation.

In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe…We live in a special time, the only time, where we can observationally verify that we live in a special time.

Not that any of us will be around to confirm it.

A universe without purpose should neither depress us nor suggest that our lives are purposeless. Through an awe-inspiring cosmic history we find ourselves on this remote planet in a remote corner of the universe, endowed with intelligence and self-awareness. We should not despair, but should humbly rejoice in making the most of these gifts, and celebrate our brief moment in the sun.

Nope, that doesn’t work for me. In fact, not even close.

If we wish to draw philosophical conclusions about our own existence, our significance, and the significance of the universe itself, our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge. A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa, whether or not we like the implications.

Sure, that will catch on.

I like to say that while antimatter may seem strange, it is strange in the sense that Belgians are strange. They are not really strange; it is just that one rarely meets them.

Any Belgians here?
Any antimatter?

In science we have to be particularly cautious about ‘why’ questions. When we ask, ‘Why?’ we usually mean ‘How?’ If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: ‘Why is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?’ but what we really probably mean is, ‘How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?’ That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the Earth ending up in its present position. ‘Why’ implicitly suggests purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system in scientific terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.

Why is this beyond actually knowing? For example, so far.

[b]Existential Comics

I heard Marie Antoinette’s last words were “Monsieur, I beg your pardon”, but that’s a lie, it was actually “so much for the tolerant left.”[/b]

So, what will your last words be?

What will destroy Western Civilization:
1600: democracy
1800: atheism
1900: feminism
2017: fuck it, let’s just destroy it for real this time

Cue Don Trump.

Philosophy teaches us that no matter how smart you think you are, you are actually a stupid idiot.

Though not if you are one of us.

It wasn’t until it was too late that Captain Kirk realized space wasn’t the final frontier– the real frontier was confronting his sexuality.

A little help here please.

Click here to discover this one weird trick to a meaningful life that existentialists DON’T want you to know about.

You know, hypothetically.

[b]There are three categories of comedy:

1. Satire.
2. Observational humor.
3. When someone all of the sudden gets kicked in the balls.[/b]

Go ahead, imagine that it’s me.