a thread for mundane ironists

[b]so sad today

take a selfie at my funeral[/b]

Then post it on youtube.
That is what’s next, right?

it’s not my fault i was born: the musical

Soundtrack by Morrisey.

tired or dying? a memoir

Volumes I through IV.

“i’m different” – someone who is exactly the same

Though, really, not always.

we could wait for death together

Or, in the interim, godot

cause of death: your positive attitude

You know the ones.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island.[/b]

Not counting all the times that he is.

Birds are the last of the dinosaurs. Tiny velociraptors with wings. Devouring defenseless wiggly things and, and nuts, and fish, and, and other birds. They get the early worms. And have you ever watched a chicken eat? They may look innocent, but birds are, well, they’re vicious.

Plus, to gall us all the more, most of them can fly.

This is the only country in the world, said Wednesday, into the stillness, that worries about what it is.
What?
The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.

So, what is it then?

Not knowing everything is all that makes it OK, sometimes…

Let’s make sense of that.

The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.

Does the squirrel know that?

It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.

He thought: Like country music.
Not counting Emmylou Harris of course.

[b]André Malraux

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.[/b]

Though, for some, it’s more what they think they hide.

What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.

You know, to be optimistic.

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

Indeed, and you can take that to the grave.

I don’t argue with my enemies; I explain to their children.

And then [occasionally] arm them.

The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.

Any folks here despise themselves? Were you forced to?

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.

So, does that explain you? Too, I mean.

[b]Nein

Saying “guns don’t kill people” is like saying “defibrillators don’t save people”.[/b]

Well, sure, if they’re worth saving.

This is the alternate universe other universes warn their kids about.

Wouldn’t you?

Ideology: The mistaken belief that your beliefs are neither beliefs nor mistaken.

Rhymes with objectivism.

It’s not you. It’s your socially necessary form of pathology.

Actually, in Trumpworld, both.

In the beginning: there was the end. And it was good.

Just not good enough.

A. True.
B. Sad.
C. Sad but true.
D. Sad enough to be true, yet somehow still false.

Hell, not much that can’t be.

[b]Terry Pratchett

There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.[/b]

If only in your head.
If that’s all it takes.

It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.

Tragic music then for some.

Whut’s the plan, Rob? said one of them.
Okay, lads, this is what we’ll do. As soon as we see somethin’, we’ll attack it. Right?
This caused a cheer.
Ach, 'tis a good plan, said Daft Wullie.

See something. Attack it. See something else. Attack it.
If only all the way to the grave.

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

Let’s make this a cliche.

Look, that’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em.

If not hack them to pieces.

He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.
Which was going to be hard, because there wasn’t one.

On the other hand, how logical is that?

[b]C.G. Jung

Shame is a soul eating emotion.[/b]

For those who feel it anyway.

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.

After all, where do the genes end and the memes begin?

About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.

And I suspect it has only gotten [much, much, much] worse.

What you resist, persists.

Fortunately, as some insist, that only makes you stronger. Or, sure, with others, unfortunately.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

So, how’s that working out for you?

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

The unlived life. And then some.

[b]God

Elephants are like people, only humane.[/b]

Unless of course they’re in musth. But, sure, we’ll pass this along to Mr. Trump.

Alabama is a stupid fucking state full of stupid fucking people and I forsook it long, long ago.

By Alabama, He must mean all the other states down there too. But, sure, maybe not.

A religion based on the teachings of Jesus would be a great idea.

Let’s call it, say, socialism.

If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t.

So much for omnipotence.

I apologize to some of you for most of you.

Well, that’s a start.

Sanity is becoming more and more of an achievement.

Any sane folks here?

[b]Joseph Heller

Of course you’re dying. We’re all dying. Where the devil else do you think you’re heading?[/b]

See, another “general description”.

I have a feeling that someone nearby is soon going to find out something about me that will mean the end, although I can’t imagine what that something is.

I’m a little better though at pinning this down.

His response to them as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man. He could interpret their naked presence in his hands only as a cosmic oversight destined to be rectified speedily, and he was driven always to make what carnal use of them he could in the fleeting moment of two he felt he had before Someone caught wise and whisked them away.

Women, of course, have their own version of this.
Don’t they?

Kraft was a skinny, harmless kid from Pennsylvania who wanted only to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading an ambition. Instead, of being liked, he was dead, a bleeding cinder on the barbarous pile whom nobody had heard in those last precious moments while the plane with one wing plummeted.

And then on to the next war.

Yossarian’s attitude toward his roommates turned merciful and protective at the mere recollection of Captain Black. It was not their fault that they were young and cheerful, he reminded himself as he carried the swinging beam of his flashlight back through the darkness. He wished that he could be young and cheerful, too. And it wasn’t their fault that they were courageous, confident and carefree. He would just have to be patient with them until one or two were killed and the rest wounded, and then they would all turn out okay.

And then on to the next war.

Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It’s a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.

Let’s grapple with the irony.

[b]Lawrence M. Krauss

No matter where you go, there you are.[/b]

Whether you want to be there or not.

[b]Now, almost one hundred years later, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much our picture of the universe has changed in the span of a single human lifetime.

As far as the scientific community in 1917 was concerned, the universe was static and eternal, and consisted of a one single galaxy, our Milky Way, surrounded by vast, infinite, dark, and empty space.

This is, after all, what you would guess by looking up at the night sky with your eyes, or with a small telescope, and at the time there was little reason to suspect otherwise.[/b]

Of course that was before RM/AO. :wink:

[b]A physicist, an engineer and a psychologist are called in as consultants to a dairy farm whose production has been below par. Each is given time to inspect the details of the operation before making a report.

The first to be called is the engineer, who states: The size of the stalls for the cattle should be decreased. Efficiency could be improved if the cows were more closely packed, with a net allotment of 275 cubic feet per cow. Also, the diameter of the milking tubes should be increased by 4 percent to allow for a greater average flow rate during the milking periods.

The next to report is the psychologist, who proposes:

The inside of the barn should be painted green. This is a more mellow color than brown and should help induce greater milk flow. Also, more trees should be planted in the fields to add diversity to the scenery for the cattle during grazing, to reduce boredom.

Finally, the physicist is called upon. He asks for a blackboard and then draws a circle. He begins: Assume the cow is a sphere…[/b]

Let’s assume the consultant was a philosopher.

Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it.

And, yes, that includes all that shit you’ve been accumulating in your head over the years.

Reality doesn’t owe us comfort.

Neither apparently does God.

“I don’t mind not knowing. It doesn’t scare me". Richard Feynman

Especially not anymore. Unless of course…

[b]tiny Nietzsche

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo[/b]

280 characters no doubt.

My horoscope says I should eat ass

On the other hand, what can celestial bodies possibly know about that?

single set of footprints gives camus an idea for a book

Confirmation please.

this void is unavailable

But sure make me an offer.

wolves: hey we can chase you through the snow or you could just give the fuck up now

You know, if they could speak English.

how can you identify someone who thinks they’re nihilist?
they will tell you over and over again

None like that here though.

[b]Robin Wasserman

There are some moments you’d rather sleep through, pass from point A to point B without awareness of the time passing or the events that carry you from present to future. And it’s mostly those moments in which it’s smarter-safer- to stay awake.[/b]

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

I believed in happily ever after as much as anyone, because Jane Austen, Prince Charming, and Hugh Grant promised me it could happen. But maybe that particular delusion was universal.

There’s probably a gene for it. Unless, of course, you count me.

Now I existed solely thanks to the quantum paradox, my brain a collection of qubits in quantum superposition, encoding truths and memories, imagination and irrationality in opposing, contradictory states that existed and didn’t exist, all at the same time.

He wondered if that included dasein.

A fundamentalist is someone who wants to substitute what he believes for what you believe, Max said. And someone who thinks he knows the will of God better than anyone else.

And who does that remind you of?

I guess that’s the secret. It would never have occurred to Lia to want to escape – but then she gets kicked out. Best thing that ever happened to her? I’m not sure she would say yes, because obliviousness tends to be rather pleasant, but once you realized you’ve been oblivious, there’s no turning back. You can’t un-know what you know.

Let’s think up a loophole.

Be the person you were so I can be the person you made me.

That ever happen to you?

[b]Maurice Blanchot

My being subsists only from a supreme point of view which is precisely incompatible with my point of view. The perspective in which I fade away for my eyes restores me as a complete image for the unreal eye to which I deny all images. A complete image with reference to a world devoid of image which imagines me in the absence of any imaginable figure. The being of a nonbeing of which I am the infinitely small negation which it instigates as its profound harmony. In the night shall I become the universe?[/b]

Not all that different from my own being. Or, perhaps, it couldn’t be further away from it.

But this is the rule, and there is no way to free oneself of it: as soon as the thought has arisen, it must be followed to the very end.

Which we more or less make up as we go along.

Weak thoughts, weak desires: he felt their force.

And now we’re feeling them.

As reason returned to me, memory came with it, and I saw that even on the worst days, when I thought I was utterly and completely miserable, I was nevertheless, and nearly all the time, extremely happy.

That ever happen to you? No, I didn’t think do.

A word may give me its meaning, but first it suppresses it. For me to be able to say, ‘This woman’ I must somehow take her flesh and blood reality away from her, cause her to be absent, annihilate her. The word gives me the being, but it gives it to me deprived of being. The word is the absence of that being, its nothingness, what is left of it when it has lost being - the very fact that it does not exist.

Note to others: Is this what I’m saying too?

The central point of the work of art is the work as origin, the point which cannot be reached, yet the only one which is worth reaching.

Let’s start with the Mona Lisa.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.” e.e. cummings[/b]

Existentially, is this more or less metaphysical?

“Music is the melody whose text is the world.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Obviously: For better or worse.

“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Can you get more upbeat?

“The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.” Karl Popper

And there will be casualties.

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.” Karl Popper

Let’s call them objectivists. Or, sure, nihilists.

“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

My kind of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

[b]Simon Singh

Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.[/b]

And then some.

All that was required to measure the planet was a man with a stick and a brain. In other words, couple an intellect with some experimental apparatus and almost anything seems achievable.

If only in the either/or world.

An astronomer, a physicist, and a mathematician (it is said) were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field. “How interesting,” observed the astronomer, “all Scottish sheep are black!” To which the physicist responded, “No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!” The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, “In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black.”

And even that might have been painted.

God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.

Let’s just leave it at that, okay?

…if N is large enough, it is virtually impossible to deduce p and q from N, and this is perhaps the most beautiful and elegant aspect of the RSA asymmetric cipher.

Anyone here disagree?

Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that ‘the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it’. He then argued that the possible prize of eternal happiness has an infinite value and that the probability of entering heaven by leading a virtuous life, no matter how small, is certainly finite. Therefore, according to Pascal’s definition, religion was a game of infinite excitement and one worth playing, because multiplying an infinite prize by a finite probability results in infinity.

You know, leaving out, among other things, theodicy.

[b]B.F. Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.[/b]

You know, whatever that means.

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.

Usually [as they say] for its own good. Though it’s not like [as often as not] this isn’t true.

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.

And you know where this leads.

A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.

Well, the clever ones, anyway.

At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.

Conflicting goodwills among them no doubt.

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

Tell that to the objectivists. We are free to embrace their dogmas…or become “retards”.

[b]Philip Pullman

I don’t profess any religion; I don’t think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'[/b]

That makes 16% of us. On this planet anyway.

When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.

That makes 16% of us. On this planet anyway.

All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.

Or, as some insist, “one of us” and the “retards”.

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed.

Let’s file this one under, “that’s their problem”.

That’s the duty of the old, said the Librarian, to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

So, is it still that way?

Even if it means oblivion, friends, I’ll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.

Really, this actually works for some.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

A precise emotion seeks a precise expression.[/b]

Good luck with that.

I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the service. I’m never tempted by God, but I like his trappings.

And who among hasn’t thought that?

It seems to me that being the right size for your world…is a valuable clue to learning how to live.

Though not necessarily from your own point of view.

The end of every game is an anti-climax. What you thought you would feel you don’t feel, what you thought was so important isn’t any more. It’s the game that’s exciting.

You confess your exceptions and I’ll confess mine.

A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Or so they tell me.

Pulsar: a dying star spinning under its own exploding anarchic energy, like a lighthouse on speed. A star the size of a city, a city the size of a star, whirling round and round, its death-song caught by a radio receiver, light years later, like a recorded message nobody heard, back-played now into infinity across time. Love and loss.

Does the pulsar know that?

[b]Mary Roach

There is her heart. I’ve never seen one beating. I had no idea they moved so much. You put your hand on your heart and you picture something pulsing slightly but basically still, like a hand on a desktop tapping Morse code. This things is going wild in there. It’s a mixing-machine part, a stoat squirming in its burrow, an alien life form that’s just won a Pontiac on The Price Is Right. If you were looking for the home of the human body’s animating spirit, I could imagine believing it to be here, for the simple reason that it is the human body’s most animated organ.[/b]

Autonomically as it were.

It’s amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via an initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking. Is cutting the organs out of a dead man and stitching them into someone else barbaric and disrespectful, or is it a straightforward operation to save multiple lives? Does crapping into a Baggie while sitting 6 inches away from your crewmate represent a collapse of human dignity or a unique and comic form of intimacy?

Right, like there are actually correct answers to questions like these.

According to more than one astronaut memoir, one of the most beautiful sights in space is that of a sun-illumined flurry of flash-frozen waste-water droplets. Space doesn’t just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between.

Imagine then flash-frozen semen.

Here’s the other thing I think about. It makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who have trouble with the concept of not existing. Leaving a note requesting that your family and friends travel to the Ganges or ship your body to a plastination lab in Michigan is a way of exerting influence after you’re gone—of still being there, in a sense. I imagine it is a symptom of the fear, the dread, of being gone, of the refusal to accept that you no longer control, or even participate in, anything that happens on earth. I spoke about this with funeral director Kevin McCabe, who believes that decisions concerning the disposition of a body should be made by the survivors, not the dead. It’s none of their business what happens to them when they die, he said to me. While I wouldn’t go that far, I do understand what he was getting at: that the survivors shouldn’t have to do something they’re uncomfortable with or ethically opposed to. Mourning and moving on are hard enough. Why add to the burden? If someone wants to arrange a balloon launch of the deceased’s ashes into inner space, that’s fine. But if it is burdensome or troubling for any reason, then perhaps they shouldn’t have to. McCabe’s policy is to honor the wishes of the family over the wishes of the dead. Willed body program coordinators feel similarly. I’ve had kids object to their dad’s wishes [to donate], says Ronn Wade, director of the Anatomical Services Division of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. I tell them, Do what’s best for you. You’re the one who has to live with it.

Got it. Now, let’s move on.

Medical journals from 1905 to 1915 are rife with articles on “vibratory massage” and the many things it cures. Weakened hearts and floating kidneys. Hysterical cramp of the esophagus and catarrh of the inner ear. Deafness, cancer, bad eyesight. And lots and lots of prostate problems. A Dr. Courtney W. Shropshire, writing in 1912, was impressed to note that by means of “a special prostatic applicator, well lubricated, attached to the vibrator, introduced to the rectum” he was “able to empty the seminal vesicles of their secretions.” Indeedy. Shropshire’s patients returned every other day for treatment, no doubt also developing a relationship with the vibration machine.

We know where this is going, don’t we?

He told me that a German doctor named Wolff figured it out in the 1800s by studying X-rays of infants’ hips as they transitioned from crawling to walking. A whole new evolution of bone structure takes place to support the mechanical loads associated with walking, said Lang. Wolff had the great insight that form follows function. Alas, Wolff did not have the great insight that cancer follows gratuitous X-raying with primitive nineteenth-century X-ray machines.

Let’s file this one under, “Oh, well…”

[b]John Cage

Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.[/b]

Any fluent folks here? Okay, how did art help?

A ‘mistake’ is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.

Right, like that’s the end of that.

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

Hmm, this must be an intellectual thing.

Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

Hmm, this must be an intellectual thing.

Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can’t hear very well, would that change my question?

Also, are the answers ironic?

There is nothing we need to do that isn’t dangerous.

For example, more or less.

[b]August Strindberg

Life is not so idiotically mathematical that only the big eat the small; it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at least to drive it mad.[/b]

Besides, eventually, the meek shall inherit the earth.

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.

And some can even tell them apart.

It’s wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard, and your eyes fill with hatred. No, Margret, you certainly haven’t the true faith.

Maybe, but it is certainly the most common.

I dream, therefore I exist.

Just not anymore.

We are already in Hell. It is the earth itself that is Hell, the prison constructed for us by an intelligence superior to our own, in which I could not take a step without injuring the happiness of others, and in which my fellow creatures could not enjoy their own happiness without causing me pain.

Well, since capitalism anyway.

Love between a man and woman is war.

And not just between the Roses.