a thread for mundane ironists

[b]tiny nietzsche

if you don’t wake up tomorrow, there’s always the day after[/b]

Maybe for example.

don’t hate yourself, hate what you’ve become

Unless of course you’ve become yourself.

in space, there is no five second rule

On the other hand, isn’t Earth in space?

I’m at the point in the movie where I wonder what the fuck I’m doing with my life

My guess: Somewhere between the opening and the closing credits.

the sun will come out when it’s ready, it doesn’t care what time you think it is

Twice a year around here.

drugs mean never having to say you’re dying

Obviously: define “never”.

[b]José Saramago

…just like everything else in life, let time take its course and it will find a solution.[/b]

True, but don’t expect it to always be a good one.

…that is what we say when we do not wish to play the weakling, we say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one’s courage in both hands…

Of course it won’t fool all of the people all of the time.

…there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

Yeah, it can get that bad.

Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.

And who the hell really knows why that’s true.

We’ve all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we’ll be sure to have some tomorrow.

Does it work that way for strength? Maybe more, maybe less?

We all know that each day that dawns is the first for some and will be the last for others, and that for most people it will be just another day.

Let’s think about that some more.

[b]Barbara Kingsolver

What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.[/b]

Right, in this world.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

Of course there’s still the part where we don’t know that.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

Just don’t expect that to always be enough. If it ever is.

There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it’s true, but you haven’t told anyone yet.

If there’s anyone you actually want to tell.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

So, all you Americans, don’t forget to vote!

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

In fact, not even a relative sometimes.

[b]so sad today

i’m not bad at masturbating[/b]

He thought, prove it!

hi, i’m an existential hole

Great, he winced, another hole.

i don’t need to sleep forever just for 1000 years

Forever [eventually] is much more likely. If you call that sleep.

help me not be myself

Okay, but it will cost you.

i only give 5 fucks but they’re all very obsessive

What, he wondered, does it actually mean to give a fuck? Obsessively or not.

i’m probably going to end up just being nothing

At all as likely as not.

[b]Lidia Yuknavitch

In water, like in books—you can leave your life.[/b]

Most times though it finds you again.

That image of Joan of Arc burning up in a fire burned inside me like a new religion. Her face skyward. Her faith muscled up like a holy war. And always the voice of a father in her head. Like me. Jesus. What is a thin man pinned to wood next to the image of a burning woman warrior ablaze? I took the image of a burning woman into my heart and left belief to the house of father forever.

Don’t count Jesus out though. He’s not still on top for nothing.

Your life doesn’t happen in any kind of order. Events don’t have cause and effect relationships the way you wish they did. It’s all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations.

In either direction though you can go too far.

I am a woman who talks to herself and lies.

I’m not a woman who does much the same.

I don’t have any problem understanding why people flunk out of college or quit their jobs or cheat on each other or break the law or spray-paint walls. A little bit outside of things is where some people feel each other. We do it to replace the frame of family. We do it to erase and remake our origins in their own images.

Not counting all the times we don’t know why we do it.

He treated my scarred as shit past and body as chapters of a book he wanted to hold in his hands and finish.

But only if you let him.

[b]Lillian Hellman

A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.[/b]

Instead, we elect him president.

Freedom costs you a great deal.

If you can count that high.

But maybe half a lie is worse than a real lie.

We’ll have to hear it first.

It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.

Providing of course they have one.

The world is out of shape when there are hungry men.

Then there’s this part: worldhunger.org/world-child-hunger-facts/

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

I’d certainly like to believe that mine is.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened”. Michel de Montaigne[/b]

Or, sure, most of which did.

“Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.” Seneca the Younger

They certainly do here.

“There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.” Richard M. Rorty

Right, like we were never indoctrinated as kids.

“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” John Dewey

Well, if in fact we actually do.

“Character is simply habit long continued.” Plato

Not including all serious philosophers of course.

“No human thing is of serious importance.” Plato

For very long anyway.

[b]John Fowles from The Collector

It is me. I am his madness. For years he’s been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.[/b]

And then, after adding you to his collection, he killed you.

I mean I never feel I feel what I ought to feel.

And then, even worse, some days I do.

Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?

Let’s just say that, as with most things she attempted to impart, it was over his head.

You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven’t any choice. But it’s what you say that counts.

Clearly with some godawful exceptions.

I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I’ve become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I’m not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It’s like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.

What in your life would you compare to Hiroshima?

The power of women! I’ve never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.

And then one day one of them kidnaps and kills you.

[b]Colson Whitehead

One of my dinner companions invited me on a strip-club excursion. I demurred, spoiled by the erotic revues of Anhedonia, where the performers remain fully clothed but get emotionally naked, delivering monologues about their top-shelf disappointments, and times when they were almost happy. Hard to enjoy American-style strip clubs after that. Once you go bleak, you never go back.[/b]

Next up: The whores of Mensa.

On one end there was who you were before you went underground, and on the other end a new person steps out into the light.

For some of us, darker than ever.

The Four Questions? As put forth by Mettleheim:
How did this happen?
How could this happen?
Is it exceptional?
How will it be avoided in the future?

Or [of course] how can we make it happen more often.

I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside.

Next up: Learning to play poker.

She has always considered herself an atheist, not realizing she had a religion.

Worshipping No God for example.

All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

And half of us actually aren’t.

[b]tiny nietzsche

it’s beginning to look a lot like fuck you[/b]

If only 365 days a year.

if you’re not sure who you are anymore, take a number. twelve is available

Actually, twelve is long gone.

if you don’t want to wake up tomorrow, don’t go to sleep

That’ll do it.

one day I’m going to find me a grave and settle down

That’ll do it.

rosemary’s large adult son

That would be Ronan Farrow.

what if it was postmodernism the whole time?

And what if it doesn’t even matter?

[b]Viet Thanh Nguyen

Quoting Nguyen Du - "Talent and destiny are apt to feud.” [/b]

After all, what does it mean to call something that is destined, talent?

I always assume a man is at least a latent homosexual until proven otherwise.

And how might that be?

Let’s just hope history forgets the snafus.

Obvioulsy: Not the ones today.

Like all good students, I yearned for nothing but approval, even from fools.

Unless, of course we are the fools.

Our society had been a kleptocracy of the highest order, the government doing its best to steal from the Americans, the average man doing his best to steal from the government, the worst of us doing our best to steal from each other.

Let’s call it something else though.

Ever since the first caveman discovered fire and decided that the ones still living in darkness were benighted, it’s been civilization against barbarism . . . with every age having its own barbarians.

Let’s name the ones here.

[b]Mario Vargas Llosa

It’s easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand. When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It’s not easy to be moved by abstract things.[/b]

Twelve more today.

I am somewhat allergic to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings.

True, but that doesn’t make men any less from Mars and Women any less from Venus.

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

Or, for some of us, non-fictions.

The essential difference between the culture of the past and the entertainment of today is that the products of the former sought to transcend mere present time, to endure, to stay alive for future generations, while the products of the latter are made to be consumed instantly and disappear, like cake or popcorn.

Depending on the products of course.

They had forgotten the abuses, the murders, the corruption, the spying, the isolation, the fear: horror had become myth. Everybody had jobs and there wasn’t so much crime.

Sounds like human nature to me.

Nostalgia is cowardice.

Well, I guess that settles that.

[b]Dave Eggers

It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, suspicion, fear.[/b]

That and knowing.

I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run.

Of course no one is always able to.

What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

Or of necessity.

Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?

Here for example.
Or here in particular.

It occurred to her, in a moment of sudden clarity, that what had always caused her anxiety, or stress, or worry, was not any one force, nothing independent and external. it wasn’t danger to herself or the constant calamity of other people and their problems. It was internal: it was subjective: it was not knowing.

On the contrary, he thought, it is that too.

So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.

Or, as I often insist, mocked.

[b]Werner Twertzog

You have little to fear if I follow you. But you do not have nothing to fear.[/b]

My advice: Get the restraining order.

It is important to live alone, and go to therapy, until you recover your authentic self, which, as we all know, does not exist.

Obviously, this might take a while.

There is so much horror in the world, sometimes I feel like I cannot take it. And then I remember the inevitability of death, and, even more, the annihilation of all matter.

Of course this won’t work for everyone.

Almost none of you will trend when you die.

Almost none was will trend before either.

Everyone in your graduation class photograph will be dead.

In fact, I might be the last one.

The United States has become Rwanda with nuclear weapons.

Let’s decide how troubling this is.

[b]Philip Larkin

This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.[/b]

Sure, why not?

Life is slow dying.

Like it can’t be speeded up.

One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the same day as we do ourselves.

Tell that to, among others, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

In life, as in art, talking vitiates doing.

Ain’t that the truth!!

I suppose if one lives to be old, one’s entire waking life will be spent turning on the spit of recollection over the fires of mingled shame, pain or remorse. Cheerful prospect!

Nope, not yet.

[b]The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.[/b]

Not counting the Kids of course.

[b]Existential Comics

Philosophy is important because someone has to tell college freshmen that they are all fucking idiots and literally every single thing they believe is wrong and dumb.[/b]

So, is that my job here or yours?

It’s horrifying to think of a world without philosophy. Imagine it, everyone would just accept it as a matter of course that chairs and stuff actually exist.

Providing of course they actually do.

we all must die, but in a sense, we can live forever in the hearts and minds of our haters

For one thing, define forever.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb to remember when politics gets complicated: Communism is good, and not communism is bad.

Anyone here dare to differ?

Liberals are great because you know the slide into fascism will be very politely disagreed with.

On the other hand, maybe there are different kinds.

An existential crisis is when you are like “shit, life sucks, nothing is even worth doing.” You overcome it when you drink your morning coffee.

On the other hand, maybe there are different kinds.

[b]David Hockney

I love California; everything is so artificial.[/b]

And not just Hollywood.

In the end nobody knows how it’s done - how art is made. It can’t be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn’t explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

Right, like that will stop them.

No theoretician, no writer on art, however interesting he or she might be, could be as interesting as Picasso. A good writer on art may give you an insight to Picasso, but, after all, Picasso was there first.

Anyone here foolish enough to explain that?

I usually only draw myself in down periods… I suppose that’s why I often draw myself looking grim. I just think, ‘Let’s have a look in the mirror.’ When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don’t, do you?

C.C. Baxter: The mirror… it’s broken.
Fran Kubelik: Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.

If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look and paint what you see until the canvas ends.

Works that way with philosophy too. If you don’t count all the times it doesn’t.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can’t divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

So: Abstract art, abstract feeling?

[b]Russell Banks

Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.[/b]

Nope, not yet.

When you are a long way from where you think you belong, you will attach yourself to people you would otherwise ignore or even dislike.

No way that I ever did.
No way that I ever would?

One hates a person for the same reason one loves him.

We’ll have to know the person first of course.

What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.

Trust me: there actually are alternatives.

But when you’re a kid it’s like you’re wearing these binoculars strapped to your eyes and you can’t see anything except what’s in the dead center of the lenses.

Either that or x-ray specs.

All those happy, pretty, successful people–he hated them because he knew they didn’t really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in a way that made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren’t people, he fumed, they’re photographs.

Let’s just call it sour grapes and move on.

[b]The Dead Author

Socrates taught me that it’s ok to rather be dead.[/b]

Not only that but [to the best of my knowledge] he still is.

The problem with writing about depression is that you have to be depressed to have something to say about it, but not depressed to be able to say it.

He means just one of the problems of course.

godot taught me that it’s never too late.

On the other hand, he always does eventually show up.

Life is waiting for death while trying to keep your phone charged.

You know, among other things.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on this day in 1844, German philosopher who declared god dead but never gave up hope that he’d find a girlfriend.

So, did he?

You are filled with organs and a skeleton. The rest is up to you.

That con’t be good.

[b]David Sedaris

I can’t promise I’ll never kill anyone again, he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. It’s unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.[/b]

That’s probably the refrigerator talking.

When her muzzle grew more white than brown, the chipmunk forgot that she and the squirrel had had nothing to talk about. She forgot the definition of “jazz” as well and came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity.

Let’s take this to its logical conclusion.

It make one’s mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment.

And then to the assholes who force you to.

He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.
He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.
He nice, the Jesus.

The fractured English Jesus.

I don’t know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books about misguided kittens or seals who wear uniforms, and then reread them if the child so orders. In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: “Shut up.” That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child’s house, we lived in theirs.

Next think you know they’re serial killers.

As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion.
Let’s save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living, I said.

Let’s decide if this is racist.