a thread for mundane ironists

[b]D H Lawrence

I have realized that my will, no matter how intelligent I am, is only another nuisance on the face of the earth, once I start exerting it. And other people’s wills are even worse.[/b]

And not just all that Nietzsche shit.

The hideousness {the author] sees is the reflection of himself, and of the automatic meat-lust with which he approaches another individual…Even the most “beautiful” woman is still a human creature. If {the author] approached her as such, as a being instead of as a piece of lurid meat, he would have no horrors afterwards.

Meat-lust. Sure, put it in perspective, but, still, there it is.

Man is willing to accept woman as an equal, as a man in skirts, as an angel, a devil, a baby-face, a machine, an instrument, a bosom, a womb, a pair of legs, a servant, an encyclopaedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the one thing he won’t accept her as is a human being, a real human being of the feminine sex.

Especially those who grab 'em by the pussy.

She was the flint and he the steel. But in continual striking together they only destroyed each other.

Or, occasionally, he was the flint and she was the steel.

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society: or fear of oneself. He was not afraid of himself. But he was quite consciously afraid of society, which he knew by instinct to be a malevolent, partly-insane beast.

And, for sure, we’ll see our fair share of that here.

…though it’s a shame, what’s been done to people these last hundred years: men turned into nothing but labor-insects, and all their manhood taken away, and all their real life. i’d wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake. but since i can’t, an’ nobody can, i’d better hold my peace, an’ try an’ life my own life: if i’ve got one to live, which i rather doubt.

I can live with that, he thought.

[b]Paul Schrader

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. [/b]

After all, you’ve earned it.

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It’s absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

Call it, say, the Woody Allen Syndrome.

Because many of the films I’ve made have had an intellectual edge, it’s harder for me to lie. It’s harder for me to go to people with money and say I don’t care about art, all I care about isc ommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

Tee-hee?

Contradiction is the heart and soul of character and drama. You’re always looking for it. I loved her so much I hit her; that’s character. I loved her so much I hit her again; that’s even more character.

First, let’s run that by her.

There’s the generation that made the rules, the generation that codified them. The generation that broke them - that’s mine. The generation that laughed at them - that’s Tarantino’s. And now there’s a generation that doesn’t know that there were any.

Not quite anything goes and not quite everything goes.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

Just not in Hollywood.

[b]tiny nietzsche

you can’t spell sunday without sad[/b]

And don’t try it with tuesday, wednesday, thursday or saturday either.

sometimes when I see mars low in the sky, I can’t help but think how elon musk is a dick

Who needs Mars for that, he thought.

voids will be voids

And then some for mine.

me: I feel disconnected
doktor: have you tried reality?
me: does it hurt?
doktor: all the time

Actually, only until you die.

fuck. I woke up again

Not only that but it’s getting to be a habit.

a group of time travelers is called a probably

He means probably not of course.

[b]David Sedaris

To put [undecided voters] in perspective, I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight attendant comes​ down the aisle​ with her food cart and, eventually,​ parks​ it beside my seat.​ “Can I inter​est you in the chick​en?​” she asks.​ “Or would​ you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?”

To be undecided in this elect​ion is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked.[/b]

He means the next election too.

When asked “What do we need to learn this for?” any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.

I’ve always preferred crostics myself.

I’m the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I’ve never even met.

Never even came close myself. But that’s their problem.

Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.

Doesn’t surprise me.

It’s just a penis, right? Probably no worse for you than smoking.

We’ll need a context of course.

This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight.

Hell, that might even be catch-44.

[b]Martin Scorsese

There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.[/b]

What’s that make hard then?

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting.

And we know who that is.

Very often I’ve known people who wouldn’t say a word to each other, but they’d go to see movies together and experience life that way.

Define experience.

I love movies - it’s my whole life, and that’s it.

My guess: He really means it.

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.

Wow, who would have thought that.

Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred… The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.

He snorted sarcastically.

[b]Hannah Arendt

I’m more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.[/b]

In other words, some things never change.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

Let’s start one then.

And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations – as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world – we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.

And [clearly] not just Eichmann and the banality of evil. At least not here.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.

So, what do you think, a bit more complicated than that?

When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.

On the other hand, you can fool most of the people some of the time.

…the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

In fact, all the centuries.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Napoleon[/b]

So, how am I doing so far?

“What people commonly call Fate is, as a general rule, nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct.” Arthur Schopenhauer

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

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” Soren Kierkegaard

And, no, not just the objectivists.

"The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him."Arthur Schopenhauer

Indeed, they’ll tell you exactly what it is.

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson

So, no doubt, he kept them away from the slaves.

“Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?” Epicurus

Let’s file this one [yet again] under, “blah, blah, blah”.

[b]José Saramago

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with God, for he doesn’t understand us, and we don’t understand him.[/b]

Yeah, but He started it.

If you don’t write your books, nobody else will do it for you.

Trust me: That’s actually true.

…the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief.

How high up being of particular importance here.

…sometimes we ask ourselves why happiness took so long to arrive, why it didn’t come sooner, but appears suddenly, as now, when we’ve given up hope of it ever arriving, it’s likely then that we won’t know what to do, and rather than it being a question of choosing between laughter and tears, we will be filled by a secret anxiety to which we might not know how to respond at all.

All these fucking years, he thought, and I still don’t.

… that’s how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.

My advice: Don’t count on me.

When we are born, when we enter this world, it is as if we signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf?

Seriously, would you sign it yourself?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” H. G. Wells[/b]

You know, if only that were actually true.

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Give or take a few of the punchlines.

“The world is everything that is the case.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Naturally as it were.

“On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.” Adam Smith

Sounds about right.

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” Soren Kierkegaard

Not to mention the one smack dab in the middle of oblivion.

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” Soren Kierkegaard

Right, like we can even know what that is.

[b]Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Every loneliness is a pinnacle.[/b]

Unfortunately, I’m one of the very few who agree.

A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.

Of course as she understood it integrity involved thinking exactly like she did. And without a smidgeon of irony.

The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrifice.

Unless of course that’s just natural.

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

Again the great irony here being that by its very nature capitalism thrives on the alienation of labor.

Why no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.

Again the great irony here being that all others must measure their own values against hers.

Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles?

Hell, I’m always imagining the imbeciles here smiling.

[b]Jessie Burton

In suffering we find our truest selves.[/b]

Oh, sure we do.

Pity, unlike hate, can be boxed and put away.

Never tried that before.

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain, Nella thinks. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Not only that but a lot less time to do something about it.

A lifetime isn’t enough to know how a person will behave.

My guess: A lifetime is all we’ll get.

When you have truly come to know a person, Nella – when you see beneath the sweeter gestures, the smiles – when you see the rage and the pitiful fear which each of us hide – then forgiveness is everything. We are all in desperate need of it.

He wondered if that included him.

My brother knows the danger of having nothing to do.

That and the power to do it.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

McLuhan: The medium is the message.
Debord: The medium will have been the message.
Baudrillard: I’ll have a medium coke and fries.[/b]

Obviously: Baudrillard. Only he preferred Dr Pepper.

[b]How To Perfect Your Writing

1. Delete the extraneous citations
2. Delete the weak efforts at satire
3. Delete the self-congratulatory asides
4. Admire the blank page[/b]

Or here the blank post.

Descartes: I think therefore I am
Kant: I think I probably am
Schelling: Perhaps I can’t even think
Nietzsche: I can’t even

Of course one of them went insane.

Tweeting is theory.
Deleting is praxis.

Not counting those [these days] who are outright banned.

American novel: I want to be a British novel!
British novel: I want to be a French novel!
French novel: I want to be a Russian novel!
Russian novel: Thank God I’m not a German novel!

Let’s make sense of this.

[b]A Brief History of Poetry

1. A, B, C, D
2. AAA BBB CCC DDD
3. ABAB CDCD
4. ABBA
5. AC⚡️DC[/b]

Lyrically as it were.

[b]Lillian Hellman

The only good thing about aging is you’re not dead.[/b]

Not counting all the times you wish you were.

Advances are made by those with at least a touch of irrational confidence in what they can do.

A touch? Let’s pin that down.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.

As for myself, make me an offer.

Nobody knows what you want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don’t get it.

Indeed. And I recall when that was still true of me.

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

Right, like we can actually know what that means.

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.

Right, like we can actually tell the difference.

[b]John Fowles from The Magus

But he was absolutely alone. No one ever wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met.[/b]

That makes at least two of us.

Because they died, we know we still live. Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.

In other words, that Buddha bullshit.

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

For most of course it’s the day they die.

In our age it is not sex that raises its ugly head, but love.

And then, right around the corner, hate.

It was not the mask I was afraid of…but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself.

But mostly, some will insist, women. Here for example.

The thing I felt most clearly, when the first corner was turned, was that I had escaped. Obscurer, but no less strong, was the feeling that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won.

Remember when this was only a man thing?

[b]Sad Socrates

I’m not saying I know, but I’m also saying you don’t know.[/b]

What? Damned near everything I figure.

It’s not true love until you feel nothing.

Or at least barely something.

Most things don’t make sense, they just make rational sense.

Let’s start with, oh, I don’t know, objectivism?

I’m so tired of having legitimate criticisms.

Steer clear of here then.

Sadness sells.

Not unlike happiness for that matter.

You can’t win.

Not only that but you can lose brutally.

[b]Colson Whitehead

It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he’d experienced it.[/b]

Better to just stay dead, right?

The only time “early bloomer” has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing.

Him and Woody Allen.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Maybe someday that will even make sense.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

And of course take you with them.

This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.

Hmm, I wonder what nation that is?

And what else but a being cursed with the burden of free will would wear a poncho.

On purpose in other words.

[b]Viet Thanh Nguyen

You must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp or a reservation or a plantation.[/b]

Clearly more applicable to some than to others.

After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.

On the other hand, there’s always manifest destiny.

These questions required either Camus or cognac, and as Camus was not available I ordered cognac.

Questions about suicide as likely as not.

Some bemoan the brutalism of socialist architecture, but was the blandness of capitalist architecture any better? One could drive for miles along a boulevard and see nothing but parking lots and the kudzu of strip malls catering to every need, from pet shops to water dispensaries to ethnic restaurants and every other imaginable category of mom-and-pop small business, each one an advertisement for the pursuit of happiness.

That’s why we won.

The point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

We just forget what that is. Well, some of us.

Our teachers were firm believers in the corporal punishment that Americans had given up, which was probably one reason they could no longer win wars. For us, violence began at home and continued in school, parents and teachers beating children and students like Persian rugs to shake the dust of complacency and stupidity out of them, and in that way make them more beautiful.

Sure, it might catch on again.

[b]The Dead Author

Kafka taught me that you can be a successful lawyer during your lifetime and a world-famous writer after your death, and people will still feel bad for you.[/b]

Anyone here still feel bad about him?

Remembering is just a more creative way of forgetting.

Well, it certainly can be.

So Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir walk into a bar. Smoking and drinking turn Sartre into a diabetic. He goes blind and is no longer able to write. De Beauvoir takes care of him for seven years until his death in 1980. There’s nothing funny about substance abuse.

Okay, but still not likely to stop me.
Why? Let’s just say I have my reasons.

Melancholia is for romantics, despair is for existentialists, but depression is for everyone.

Or eventually everyone.

German is easy because the word for ‘yes indeed’ (“allerdings”) is also the German word for ‘actually no’.

Like the word “cleave” over here.

Who should we read?
Shakespeare: Homer.
Goethe: Shakespeare.
Tolstoy: Goethe.
Joyce: Tolstoy.
Hemingway: Joyce.
De Beauvoir: Women.

See if you can spot the outlier here.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Perhaps this is the ultimate freedom, eh, Dreamlord? The freedom to leave.[/b]

Indeed, and who doesn’t cherish that here?

Mostly you are what they think you are.

Not to be confused with what you think they are.

Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say they’re scared for the fear to become real.

Other times though it actually takes something frightening.

Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative, or so we presume, for nobody returns to dispute it.

I think I’ll be the first.

I love dreams. I know enough about them to know that dream logic is no story logic, and that you can rarely bring a dream back as a tale: it will have transformed from gold into leaves. from silk to cobwebs, on waking.

So, maybe I’ll tell him about my dreams. No cobwebs yet.

We don’t have a clue what’s really going down, we just kid ourselves that we’re in control of our lives while a paper’s thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they’re tired, or bored.

On the other hand, what if this wasn’t true?

[b]Dave Eggers

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.[/b]

My guess: No one has ever said that of Don Trump’s lies.

You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You know you’ve done nothing good for yourself. That’s the same feeling, and you know it is, after some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished.

Yet here we are day after day after day.

The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.

Admittedly, it doesn’t look good.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

On the other hand, what if it’s ladders all the way down?

Why do you want to be on The Real World?
Because I want everyone to witness my youth
Why?
Isn’t it gorgeous?

He’s got us there, right? And not a damn thing we can do about it.

Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.

Or: Once a year, she remembers that she is going to die. Then she forgets again, because more than remembering she is going to die, she is forgetful.