a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Existential Comics

The damn atheists ruined atheism![/b]

Of course we all ruin something.

So pathetic how many Democrats are obviously thrilled about Trump, because now all they have to do is say “Trump is BAD! Russian INTERFERENCE!!!” and everyone loves it. Meanwhile they don’t have to propose a single policy that would harm the bottom line of their corporate donors.

Hey, we don’t call it crony capitalism for nothing.

People who are obsessed with logical fallacies suffer from the most severe fallacy: that disagreements are easily resolved. As though everyone secretly agrees, but half the population made a simple logical misstep and arrived at the wrong conclusion.

Okay, admittedly, not just the objectivists.

Republicans are outraged that Trump might be a traitor to the American people, when he was only suppose to be a traitor to the American working class.

And not just the ones in Congress.

I like that slogan “freedom isn’t free”, because it’s extremely true, but not just in that you have to fight for freedom. Freedom literally costs money. Ever try going to a city with no money? You’ll find your only freedom is to sleep in the street and beg for food.

Still, as we all know, it’s their own damn fault.

That phrase “the birds and the bees” is weird as hell, if you are teaching your kids about sex, you probably shouldn’t bring up bees. The Queen Bee has one giant orgy at the start of her life, rips all the male bee’s dicks off, killing them, and stores all their sperm for life.

Bees, the first feminists.

[b]Anthony Bourdain

…your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.[/b]

In other words, if it lets you.

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.

Oh please!

Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom…is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.

Sure, suicide fits in there somewhere.

Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.

Of course [like everyone else] he gets to say what that is.

They’re professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don’t forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table.

Same with their hackers.

We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn.

Even if they eat together at McDonalds?

[b]tiny nietzsche

me: I don’t trust anything
postmodernism: same[/b]

Same meaning different.

it’s my funeral and I’ll die if I want to

Now all we need is Leslie Gore.

I hate tourists almost as much as I hate locals.

My advice: move.

I used to think being human was a given. Now I’m not so sure.

Just out of curiosity, what the hell does that even mean?

I got my phd at Fuck U

Me? I got my associate degree at Fuck U community college.

my horoscope says I did it in the kitchen with the lead pipe

Time to get a new birthday.

[b]Meg Wolitzer

It was exhausting being a schizophrenic.[/b]

Even more exhausting: figuring out if you actually were.

Everything you do, it’ll all feel really slow for a long time. But looking back, much later, it will have seemed like it was fast.

You know, in the shadow of, among other things, the abyss.

He’d had a real talent, but what was talent without confidence, self-possession, “ownership,” as people said, pompously but maybe accurately.

How’s that different [for some] from having no talent?

My job does not define me.

Not so sure about your own job are you?

The way Susannah sings ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ is so sad, he murmured.
Yeah, it really is.
It makes me think of the way people devote their lives to each other, and then one of them just leaves, or even dies.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, said Jules, who had never understood those lyrics, in particular how a single wind could carry two people apart. I know this sounds picky, but wouldn’t the wind carry them together? she asked. It’s one breeze. It just blows one way, not two.
Huh. Let me think about it. He thought briefly. You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But still, it’s very melancholy.

Lots of lyrics like that though.

All that reading took. It became as basic as any other need. To be lost in a novel meant you were not lost in your own life, the drafty, disorganized, lumbering bus of a house, the disinterested parents.

You know, back when novels actually accomplished this.

[b]Ambrose Bierce

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.[/b]

Schadenfreude, dummy.

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.

The same fucking God!

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

But only until Mueller drains the swamp. Or, sure, maybe not even then.

Nihilist, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

Not even close, right?

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

Remember when that was actually true?

Twice – Once too often.

Or, sometimes, twice too often.

[b]so sad today

yeah no shit i’m trying too hard[/b]

Any chance that I am?

one time i was optimistic and it did not go well

Don’t tell me about it.

the emptiness has arrived

Again in other words.

being an adult sounds really bad

And not for no reason.

weekend plans:
regret past
fear future

Or, sure, 24/7

sorry i tried to use you as an antidepressant

Sorry I made it worse.

[b]May Sarton

Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.[/b]

At fifteen I might have read one or two.

At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.

Provided of course this doesn’t get you a beating. Or killed.

Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child’s mind, they are not easily eradicated.

So much more to the point, their words.

I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful halt, ‘won’t go,’ or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person’s face.

Of course they may feel the same way around you.

Routine is not a prison, but the way to freedom from time.

Though, sure, for some, it is a fucking prison.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

My guess: for some more than others.

[b]Dorothy Parker

I hate writing, I love having written.[/b]

That’s quite common, I would imagine.

Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.

We all know that tone of course.

Tell him I was too fucking busy–or vice versa.

Or, sure, the other way around.

What fresh hell is this?

On the other hand, for some, it’s probably good practice.

They sicken of the calm who know the storm.

How ass backwards is that? But point taken.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Anyone know what’s actually on it? Or, sure, is that it?

[b]Nora Ephron

I live in my neighborhood. My neighborhood consists of the dry cleaner, the subway stop, the pharmacist, the supermarket, the cash machine, the deli, the beauty salon, the nail place, the newsstand, and the place where I go for lunch. All this is within two blocks of my house. Which is another thing I love about life in New York: Everything is right there. If you forgot to buy parsley, it takes only a couple of minutes to run out and get it. This is good, because I often forget to buy parsley.[/b]

Can you say the same about your own neighborhood?
Actually, I almost can about mine.

Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all.

In other words, she was one of the lucky ones.

In a socialist country you can get rich by providing necessities, while in a capitalist country you can get rich by providing luxuries.

Let’s imagine this in, say, Pyongyang.

On some level, my life has been wasted on me. After all, if I can’t remember it, who can?
The past is slipping away and the present is a constant affront. I can’t possibly keep up.

Of course now she doesn’t have to.

I have spent a great deal of my life discovering that my ambitions and fantasies - which I once thought of as totally unique - turn out to be clichés.

What’s that say about our ambitions and fantasies then?

I think the hardest thing about writing is writing.

Damn, it would have to that, wouldn’t it.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.” W.H. Auden[/b]

Let’s file this one under, “fair is fair”.

“The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.” W.H. Auden

The mystery of music. That never goes away.

“The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.” Henri Bergson

Having first of course created the flocks of sheep.

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Henri Bergson

Of course folks like me take this much too far.

“Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” Voltaire

On the other hand, how certain can we be about this?

“I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Nikos Kazantzakis

That’s close but not quite meaningless.

[b]Erica Jong

The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.[/b]

Well, perhaps not an actual law here.

You don’t have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

Maybe, but how about a man?

Rendall’s first law of jealousy: jealousy does the cock harder and pussy wetter.

Any particular Rendall?

Yet a man assumes that a woman’s refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it’s no. When a woman says no, it’s yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves. Finally, after centuries of living under the shadow of such assumptions, they no longer know what they want and can never make up their minds about anything. And men, of course, compound the problem by mocking them for their indecisiveness and blaming it on biology, hormones, premenstrual tension.

Let’s pin down the percentages here: genes more or less than memes?

I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, ‘the absentminded professor-’ They screamed at me, but I couldn’t hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe.

Trust me: Don’t expect this to always work.

No wonder the word ‘feminism’ was feared. It had been much too narrowly defined. I define a feminist as a self-empowering woman who wishes the same for her sisters. I do not think the term implies a certain sexual orientation, a certain style of dress or membership in a certain political party. A feminist is merely a woman who refuses to accept the notion that women’s power must come through men.

Not counting Mr. Reasonable of course.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.” Thomas Carlyle[/b]

Not unlike weak minds.

“For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Really, think about that.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle

Let’s pin down the difference.

“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.” Socrates

In other words, among other things, we get old. And the more beautiful you are, the grimmer that must be.

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” Albert Camus

Still, none perhaps will ever top mine.

“It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.” Blaise Pascal

So, do you believe that this is true?

[b]John Fowles, The Magus

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.
I suppose one could say that Hitler didn’t betray his self.
You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.[/b]

See how simple it all is?

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.

Right, like they’re actually the same thing.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

Sure, if you want to call them answers.

You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.

Nope, haven’t smiled yet.

The dead live.
How do they live?
By love.

First, let’s run that by the dead.

I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic that my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope—an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose of one permanently useful thing, Oxford’s greatest gift to civilized life: Socratic honesty. It showed me, very intermittently, that it is not enough to revolt against one’s past. One day I was outrageously bitter among some friends about the Army; back in my own rooms later it suddenly struck me that just because I said with impunity things that would have apoplexed my dead father, I was still no less under his influence. The truth was I was not a cynic by nature, only by revolt. I had got away from what I hated, but I hadn’t found where I loved, and so I pretended that there was nowhere to love. Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.

Though probably true, I am myself still no less a hardcore cynic. It is simply the only point of view that makes sense.

[b]Seneca

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.[/b]

Tell us about it?

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Or sometimes all it is is luck.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

Like something like this can actually be known.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Here of course the rest really is history.

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via - There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

That’s certainly still true.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

Not counting the times you get confused.

[b]Nein

Grammar, syntax, and cynicism walk into a bar. Bartender: what wouldn’t it be?[/b]

Just out of curiosity, where is this bar?

We regret to inform you that capitalism hired a few temps to dig its own grave. Then flipped it as a luxury time-share.

Let’s file this one under, “it doesn’t surprise me”.

A gentle reminder that history can now skip the tragedy. And go directly to farce.

Cue the Oval Office.

I was told there’d be better lies.

Or: I was told there’d be better fake news.

It was the summer of our disbelief.

Next up: the autumn of our disbelief.

If we’re going to live in a dystopia, it’d be nice to at least have one we could take somewhat seriously.

Has it really gotten that bad?

[b]Günter Grass

Grownups have it in them to be creative, and sometimes, with the help of ambition, hard work, and a bit of luck they actually are, but being grownups, they have no sooner created some epoch-making invention than they become a slave to it.[/b]

Not counting us of course.

But every time I shunned books, as scholars sometimes do, cursed them as verbal graveyards, and tried to make contact with the common folk, I ran up against the kids in our building and felt fortunate, after a few brushes with those little cannibals, to return to my reading in one piece.

Tell me that hasn’t only gotten more relevant. And here we have the Kids too.

An entire gullible nation believed faithfully in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus was really the Gasman.

Of course here [for some] he’s the President.

And Oskar was kneeling at the left side-altar, trying to teach the boy Jesus how to drum, but the rascal wouldn’t drum, offered no miracle. Oskar had sworn back then and swore again outside the locked church door: I’ll teach him to drum yet. Sooner or later.

That’ll be a miracle.

The grim portrait of Beethoven hanging over the piano . . . was removed from its nail, and an equally grim portrait of Hitler was hung on the same nail. . . . Mama . . . insisted that Beethoven be placed, if not over the sofa, at least over the sideboard. This resulted in the grimmest of confrontations: Hitler and the genius hung opposite each other, stared at each other, saw through each other, yet found no joy in what they saw.

And now of course they’re both long dead and gone.

Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists.

On the other hand, is it possible that this does make sense?

[b]Neil Gaiman

It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth – not to mention sweet potato pudding and spice cabbage – and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte’s famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth.[/b]

Hell, we can’t all be Shakespeare.

Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

Ain’t that almost close to being nearly the truth?

If there’s one thing that a study of history has taught us, it is that things can always get worse.

If not will always get worse.

I think hell’s something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go. They’re doing the same things they always did. They’re doing it to themselves. That’s hell.

Of course they don’t know that. Just look at the one’s doing it here.

Small children believe themselves to be gods, or some of them do, and they can only be satisfied when the rest of the world goes along with their way of seeing things.

Five will get you ten they grow up to be objectivists.

It’s easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud.

Either that or post it here.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

…the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification.[/b]

You know, if this Deity actually does exist.

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

Probably including Michael Cohen.
Right, Don?

The principle of vis inertiae…seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress…

Hell, that’s proven here on almost any given day.
Well, whatever it means anyway.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.

We’ll need some examples of course.

…in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind - that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content - and that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on the great question of social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.

Anyone here ever been?

So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.

And not just just world one suspects.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

One eternity at a time, please.[/b]

On the other hand, try to imagine more than one.

An optimist: Everything is going to be OK!
A pessimist: Nothing is going to be OK.
A true pessimist: Think positive!

Clearly, I’m missing something here.

Ready.
Set.
Relax.
Don’t do it.

Let alone do it again and again and again.

There’s no music more passionate than silence.

Of course sometimes you can hardly hear it.

You know who definitely has a special place in hell? People who say ‘I hear you.’
As in:
You’re not listening to me!
I hear you.

I hear that.

You may believe in God, witchcraft or astrology, but you’re way more superstitious if you believe in common sense.

Or, here, what passes for philosophy.

[b]Federico García Lorca

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I’m still alive…[/b]

Let’s just say this can only go on for so long.

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone

Or, for others, five in the morning.

There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain’s tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.

What to make of this, he wondered. True? False? Good? Bad?

The important thing in life is to let the years carry us along.

Indeed, what could be clearly more opaque than that?

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

Millions of them now.

Death laid its eggs in the wound…

Let that sink in.