a thread for mundane ironists

[b]John dos Passos

We work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work.[/b]

Thank God then for Heaven.

I never see the dawn that I don’t say to myself perhaps.

Or: I never see the dusk that I don’t say to myself maybe next time.

While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.

Not many still around of this frame of mind. Or is that just me?

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Can this be trumped?

That’s a very cynical remark, said the California woman. This isn’t any time to be cynical.
This is a time, said Robbins, when if we weren’t cynical we’d shoot ourselves.

Of course it’s always that time for some of us.

Too goddam many lawyers mixed up in this. Run the sonsobitches out. If they resists shoot ’em, that’s what I says to the Governor, but they’re all these sonsobitches a lawyers fussin’ everythin’ up all the time with warrants and habeas corpus and longwinded rigmarole. My ass to habeas corpus.

Let’s face it, some things never change.

[b]Jonathan Nolan

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying — and you have to keep trying — eventually you will come across the next item on your list.[/b]

If, for example, you are afflicted with anterograde amnesia.

You’re different. You’re more perfect. Time is three things for most people, but for you, for us, just one. A singularity. One moment. This moment. Like you’re the center of the clock, the axis on which the hands turn. Time moves about you but never moves you. It has lost its ability to affect you. What is it they say? That time is theft? But not for you. Close your eyes and you can start all over again. Conjure up that necessary emotion, fresh as roses.

If, for example, you are afflicted with anterograde amnesia.

Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser?

Well, that would explain a lot about…this place?

Believing the lie that time will heal all wounds is just a nice way of saying that time deadens us.

Then [in a way] it’s not a lie.

How can you forgive if you can’t remember to forget?

I forgot.

Here’s the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one person with one set of attributes. It’s not that simple. We’re all at the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through the brain. Every man is broken into twenty-four-hour fractions, and then again within those twenty-four hours. It’s a daily pantomime, one man yielding control to the next: a backstage crowded with old hacks clamoring for their turn in the spotlight. Every week, every day. The angry man hands the baton over to the sulking man, and in turn to the sex addict, the introvert, the conversationalist. Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots.

Or, perhaps, one possible truth? Though, sure, point taken.

[b]tiny nietzsche

I just say things under my breath now[/b]

[size=50]can you hear him?[/size]

seize the means of destruction

You know, before the Kids do.

I guess those yolo people finally died

Any still around here?

I wish I could remember the future.

Or at the very least forget it.

me: I need a sword
7-eleven: how about a slurpee?
me: okay

Another one bites the dust.

in space, no one can hear you nut

Though, sure, they can still see you.

[b]B.F. Skinner

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.[/b]

We call them Mom and Dad.

Democracy is the spawn of despotism. And like father, like son. Democracy is power and rule. It’s not the will of the people, remember; it’s the will of the majority.

Ouch. But point taken.

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don’t want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.

Remember when it was only a man? And white as likely as not.

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.

More or less civilized.

Promising paradise or threatening hell-fire is, we assumed, generally admitted to be unproductive. It is based upon a fundamental fraud which, when discovered, turns the individual against society and nourishes the very thing it tries to stamp out. What Jesus offered in return of loving one’s enemies was heaven on earth, better known as peace of mind.

In other words, your guess is as good as mine.

But restraint is only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.

Give or take any particular context for example.

[b]Paul Valéry

Poems are never finished - just abandoned.[/b]

In other words, not unlike most everthing else.

Politeness is organized indifference.

Well, as long as they buy it.

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

Has that ever worked for you?

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

Hell, sometimes that’s all there is.

Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

Let’s file this one under, “meeting them half way”.

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

Like it or not, we’re all about to find out.

[b]so sad today

i’m not emotionally dead but it sounds fucking amazing[/b]

Trust me: it’s not.

looking for dopamine in all the wrong places

Anyone here know all the right places?

what should my next mistake be

Is this mine?

i’m becoming who i was always meant to be but shittier

In other words, wait until this happens to you.

i wish i was more not me

Right up to the point where I’m not you.

sorry my suffering isn’t as good as your suffering

Not that it ever could be.

[b]Celeste Ng

You never got what you wanted; you just learned to get by without it.[/b]

Let me guess: You haven’t learned that yet.

One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules… was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.

Let me guess: You haven’t learned that yet.

He pushed her in. And then he pulled her out. All her life, Lydia would remember one thing. All his life, Nath would remember another.

And never the twain shall meet.

Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.

Well, believe it or not, some don’t.

It’s too late. He’s already learned how not to drown.

She thought: We’ll see about that.

You could stop taking their phone calls, tear up their letters, pretend they’d never existed. Start over as a new person with a new life. Just a problem of geography, he thought, with the confidence of someone who had never yet tried to free himself of family.

Me? Mine? It was a snap.

[b]Mary Roach

If you try this yourself, I recommend doing so when no one is home. Otherwise, you will run the risk of someone walking in on you and having to witness a scene that includes a mirror, the husband’s Stanley Powerlock tape measure, and the half-undressed self, squatting.[/b]

Any guesses?

Not a single one was shipped to the field. Why? Because the National Defense Research Committee had been working on a far more lasting and penetrative weapon for use against the Japanese. Seventeen days before the second and final Final Report on Who, Me? was released, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Any guesses?

I guess I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science. Certainly most things can–including the vast majority of what people ascribe to fate, ghosts, ESP, Jupiter rising–but not all.

Starting with the profound mystery that is Existence itself.

For the more you know about how dead bodies decay—the biological and chemical phases they go through, how long each phase lasts, how the environment affects these phases—the better equipped you are to figure out when any given body died: in other words, the day and even the approximate time of day it was murdered. The police are pretty good at pinpointing approximate time of death in recently dispatched bodies. The potassium level of the gel inside the eyes is helpful during the first twenty-four hours, as is algor mortis—the cooling of a dead body; barring temperature extremes, corpses lose about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per hour until they reach the temperature of the air around them. Rigor mortis is more variable: It starts a few hours after death, usually in the head and neck, and continues, moving on down the body, finishing up and disappearing anywhere from ten to forty-eight hours after death.

Death. Technically speaking.

The Babylonians were the original liver guys, believing the organ to be the source of human emotion and spirit. The Mesopotamians played both sides of the argument, assigning emotion to the liver and intellect to the heart. These guys clearly marched to the beat of a freethinking drummer, for they assigned a further portion of the soul (cunning) to the stomach. Similar freethinkers throughout history have included Descartes, who wrote that the soul could be found in the walnut-sized pineal gland, and the Alexandrian anatomist Strato, who decided it lived “behind the eyebrows.

So, where’s your soul?

Bacteria don’t have mouths or fingers or Wolf Ranges, but they eat.

Okay, but do they have souls?

[b]John Cage

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of music
nothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of music
nothing is accomplished by playing a piece of music
our ears are now in excellent condition.[/b]

Or:
nothing is accomplished by writing this
nothing is accomplished by posting this
nothing is accomplished by reading this
our minds are now in excellent condition

I want my writing to be as clear as water I can see through so that what I experienced is told without my being in any way in the way.

Let’s decide if he accomplished it.

You can feel an emotion, just don’t think that it’s so important.

Though [of course] you may well feel that it is.

Computer mistake in grade-giving resulted in academic failure of several brilliant students. After some years the mistake was discovered. Letter was sent to each student inviting him to resume his studies. Each replied he was getting along very well without education.

Whether true or not I want it to be.

Syntax, like government, can only be obeyed. It is
therefore of no use except when you
have something particular to command
such as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.

I know: Why carrots?

…the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is no access to the dark night of the soul.

You know, if that’s your thing.

[b]August Strindberg

I am a socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!.. I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath; I believe we are so webbed, so horribly regimented, that no spring-cleaning is possible, everything must be burned, blown to bits, and then we can start afresh…[/b]

Sure, I could live with that.

One gets more and more humble the longer one lives, and in the shadow of death many things look different.

Maybe not humble but point taken.

Speaking at last becomes a vice, like drinking. And why speak, if words do not cloak thoughts ?

Better perhaps to not think at all.

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.

Or: I loathe people who keep cats. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to scratch people themselves.

When women grow old and cease being women, they get beards on their chins; I wonder what men get when they grow old and cease to be men?

Viagra.

But unfortunately, I am a man, and there is nothing for me to do but, like a Roman, fold my arms across my breast and hold my breath till I die.

Starting now.

[b]Anatole France

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.[/b]

Loved lots of them. But nothing yet.

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.

You know, whatever that means.

We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.

Or so we’re told.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

But not you, right Mr. Objectivist?

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Tell them that.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

Trust me: Ask.

[b]Neil Gaiman

That’s the trouble with you young people. You think because you ain’t been here long, you know everything.[/b]

Ironically in other words.

I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.

Did she know that?

Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?

And, for some, not unlike their readers.

What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.

I know that voice. It might even be mine.

‘Nevermore,’ said Shadow.
Fuck You, said the Raven.

Let’s call it the alternative ending.

‘Nearly’ only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.

That’s nearly true.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.” Rene Descartes[/b]

Anyone here ever tried that?

“We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.” Rene Descartes

Think about that. But don’t strain your brain.

“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.” Socrates

Imagine him in Trumpworld!

“I think that humans always tend to talk about rubbish because they don’t really want to talk about reality.” John Lennon

Imagine him in Trumpworld!

“The worst evil of all is to leave the ranks of the living before one dies.” Seneca

Ouch!

“All knowledge degenerates into probability.” David Hume

He means on this side of the grave.

[b]Leonardo da Vinci

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.[/b]

And desire without study? Let’s not leave that out.

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.

And the philosopher?

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

In fact they’re counting on it.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

Let’s just say that for some this is endlessly problematic.

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.

Nope, not yet.

Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.

And yet so little is.

[b]Terry Pratchett

Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about, said the voice of Maurice. They’re so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.[/b]

True, but that’s still not enough to explain Don Trump

The phrase ‘Someone ought to do something’ was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider ‘and that someone is me’.

So, has that someone ever been you?

It was quite impossible to describe.
Here is what it looked like.
It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.

Does that ring any bells?

Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

On top of me.

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.

In other words, leaving God out of it.

Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called ‘human’ is allowed in, and the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed.

And the size of Hell?

[b]Nein

On the Internet nobody knows you’re a discourse.[/b]

On the other hand, on the internet everyone knows you’re a troll.

Don’t worry: there’s plenty of Monday for everyone.

Not only that but seven days a week.

Signifiers. The real heroes.

Just not mine. And especially not yours.

If you need me, I’ll be examining my masculinity.

Lots of that going around, isn’t there?

When your Twitter break ends, at least one thing is clear: it didn’t work.

Still, there’s always the next one.

It’s starting to signify a lot like nothing.

Or, perhaps, a whole lot less of everything.

[b]C.G. Jung

Nobody, as long as he moves among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.[/b]

And that’s not the half of it for some. Not even close.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

Yeah, I tried that. And look where I am now.

My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.

Yeah, I tried that. And look where I am now.

The true leader is always led.

Or dragged tooth and nail as the case may be…

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.

And that’s just on this planet.

We are not what happened to us, we are what we wish to become.

Right, like the two have absolutely nothing in common.

[b]Joseph Heller

America is not going to be destroyed, he shouted passionately.
Never? prodded the old man softly. Well… Nately faltered.
The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.
Nately squirmed uncomfortably. Well, forever is a long time, I guess.[/b]

Indeed, and Don Trump makes it all the more imaginable.

Little by little, or maybe all at once, everything comes to mean its opposite; unreason argues itself into reason, and vice versa, and we cannot see the seams.

It’s almost as though he’s been here.

Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out.

Or: Clevinger was one of those people with lots of brains and no intelligence, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out.

A distant warm look entered Major Danby’s eyes. It must be nice to live like a vegetable, he conceded wistfully.
It’s lousy, answered Yossarian.
No, it must be very pleasant to be free from all this doubt and pressure, insisted Major Danby. I think I’d like to live like a vegetable and make no important decisions.
What kind of vegetable, Danby?
A cucumber or a carrot.
What kind of a cucumber? A good one or a bad one?
Oh, a good one, of course.
They’d cut you off in your prime and slice you up for a salad.
Major Danby’s face fell. A poor one, then.
They’d let you rot and use you for fertilizer to help the good ones grow.
I guess I don’t want to live like a vegetable, then, said Major Danby with a smile of sad resignation.

Works the same way with fruits.

Now, where were we? Read me back the last line.
‘Read me back the last line,’ read back the corporal who could take shorthand.

A smartass, right?

Well, maybe it’s true,’ Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?
I do, Dunbar told him.
Why? Clevinger asked.
What else is there?

You tell me.

[b]Allen Ginsberg

I don’t think there is any truth. There are only points of view. [/b]

And, in particular, about this.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.

Now that’s poetry.

Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening.

Let’s call this his hippie persona.

Our heads are round so thought can change direction.

Or go in circles.

I know too much and not enough.

About, for example, this and that.

I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I’ll never be sane.

On the other hand, who wants to be that.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik‏

Beauty will save the world. Beauty standards will ruin it.[/b]

Objectively as it were.

People incapable of insanity are the craziest.

I know that I am.

Narcissists in mirror are closer than they appear.

And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

In the beginning there was chaos. And it’s still here.

But that’s the good news.

If my morning cup of coffee could talk it would have the voice of Alan Rickman quoting Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare.

My advice: Don’t hold your breath.

Bad lit: I need to be touched.
Good lit: I need to touch someone.
Kafka: I need to touch someone, but there’s no one around.

And then they arrest him for it.