a thread for mundane ironists

[b]David Sedaris

The iPhone 2 led to the 3, but I didn’t get the 4 or 5 because I’m holding out for the 7, which, I’ve heard on good authority, can also be used as a Taser. This will mean I’ll have just one less thing to carry around.[/b]

I’m still using the iPhone 0.

Since when do politics affect a mammals ability to sustain a flame? That aside, who says a burning mouse can’t run a distance of twelve feet?

But what if it isn’t a non sequitur?

I thought the president-elect’s identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on.

We have ours, they have theirs.

True art was based upon despair, and the important thing was to make yourself and those around you as miserable as possible.

With me it’s true philosophy.

In France the most often used word is “connerie,” which means “bullshit,” and in America it’s hands-down “awesome,” which has replaced “incredible,” “good,” and even “just OK.” Pretty much everything that isn’t terrible is awesome in America now.

Okay, by me. As long as it isn’t “cool”.

…the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent.

The art of exploitation.

[b]David Bowie

I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.[/b]

He was after all a celebrity.

The moment you know you know you know.

What, for example?

Comfort comes into your house first as guest, then as a host, then finally as the master.

If it comes in at all.

You can’t stand still on one point for your entire life.

Let alone carry it into the next one.

I met my wife because we were both going out with the same guy.

Now that only gets you a shrug.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

Name one.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“John Lennon said it right. ‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain.’” Paul McCartney[/b]

He also said this: youtu.be/LNjTPZW7GCU

“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s?” Friedrich Nietzsche

Yes.

“Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.” Martin Heidegger

Cue, among other things, dasein.

“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.” Martin Heidegger

Language and emotions.

“Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” Jean Paul Sartre

Unless of course it’s two o’clock.

People talk about egos as if it were objects." Bob Dylan

Let’s explain why.

[b]Dashiell Hammett

To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted.[/b]

Actually, some men [and some women] don’t.

I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel…

That doesn’t make two of us.

Listen, Dundy, it’s been a long time since I burst into tears because a policeman didn’t like me.

Or, for that matter, a philosopher.

When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it’s good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You’re not likely ever to get all these things, and you’re not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don’t, but that is – and should be – your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.

The piddling part most of us get of course.

Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it.

How about you?

So that’s the way you scientific detectives work. My god! for a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy, you’ve got the vaguest way of doing things I ever heard of.

Vague but surely.

[b]Tara Westover

He said positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.[/b]

Positive liberty. People just make these things up.

I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.

Actually, it’s even more confusing than that.

Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.

If you know what she means.

The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she should have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.

You know what I call it.

The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.

In other words, you may be having one now.

There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain.

Explain that please.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Toxic masculinity is the primary cause of the U.S. governmental shutdown, I am told.[/b]

And not just Nancy’s, Don tweeted.

It is important for the music in bars to be loud to reduce conversation to the lowest common denominator.

We should have a soundtrack here then.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be happy.

Not counting Miners Mills of course.

Uneasy lies the head that rolls on the ground.

Count on it…

Kinski’s primary insight, derived from Sade, is that we do not understand human nature until the shackles of morality, decency, revulsion, and horror are systematically unlocked, as we all know.

Well, now we all know.

How about instead of faxing it, you place your message in a bottle a kilometer below the polar ice sheet and wait for climate change to bring it me?

Or, as a last resort, email it.

[b]Barbara Kingsolver

In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they’d sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn’t occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.[/b]

Among other things, this ain’t Kilanga.

The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

Anyone here ever heard it?

Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.

Death’s glancing blow. That’s a new one.

Now, see, that’s why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you.

I know: Imagine that happening to me.

I just can’t put up with a person that won’t go out of his way for me. And that’s what a man is. Somebody that won’t go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.

Look it up and get back to us.

Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.

But then once in a blue moon it’s the other way around.

[b]Jonas Mekas

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.[/b]

In reality [he suspected] not a single one.

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life.

Right, like they actually exist.

I read a lot. I listen a lot. I think a lot. But so little remains.

At least he’s doing it right.

Education is the resistance to everything that is bad today.

In other words, our education not theirs.

Don’t we have enough ugliness already? And don’t we know these things already? Why always fight ugliness with ugliness, stupidity with stupidity, displaying still more and more of it?

And who hasn’t thought this? Not that anyone really knows what it means.

I do not understand, I never really understood, never really lived in the so-called real world. I lived… I live in my own imaginary world, which is as real as any other world, as real as the real worlds of all the other people around me.

He learned that from me. Or might as well have.

[b]God

It’s important to remember that not every Catholic priest is a pedophile. Some of them are xenophobic racists![/b]

Small comfort?

[Money can’t buy happiness, but love can’t buy a Ferrari either.

Unless you’ve got yourself a sugar daddy.

The reason I’m not sending a giant asteroid to destroy you is it wouldn’t be fair to the asteroid.

That’s the God we know and love.

I did not want Donald Trump to be president. I can’t believe I have to say that.

Noted. But so much for omnipotence.

The last people I legitimately wanted to perform a mission for Me were named Jake and Elwood.

Going all the way back to Second City.

Fuck her, and fuck him, and fuck them all.

God has a shitty day.

[b]Stephen Hawking from Brief Answers to the Big Questions

When we see the Earth from space, we see ourselves as a whole. We see the unity, and not the divisions. It is such a simple image with a compelling message; one planet, one human race. [/b]

Let’s just say he took this to the grave.

The human race does not have a very good record of intelligent behaviour.

Maybe in the next life.

No matter how powerful a computer you have, if you put lousy data in you will get lousy predictions out.

Lousy data here too.

I think that when we die we return to dust. But there’s a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Some can believe this, some cannot.

People want answers to the big questions, like why we are here. They don’t expect the answers to be easy, so they are prepared to struggle a bit. When people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth—the Earth is a sphere that doesn’t have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.

Some can believe this, some cannot.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. Religion was an early attempt to answer the questions we all ask: why are we here, where did we come from? Long ago, the answer was almost always the same: gods made everything. The world was a scary place, so even people as tough as the Vikings believed in supernatural beings to make sense of natural phenomena like lightning, storms or eclipses. Nowadays, science provides better and more consistent answers, but people will always cling to religion, because it gives comfort, and they do not trust or understand science.

We can just leave it at that and move on. Or take the fucking leap and be done with it.

[b]Zhuangzi

The baby looks at things all day without winking; that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself within the surroundings and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene.[/b]

Any babies here to confirm that?

If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.

How’s that working out for you?

A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you.

People not only think stuff like this up, but actually believe it.

Men of the world who value the Way all turn to books. But books are nothing more than words. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down. The world values words and hands down books but, though the world values them, I do not think them worth valuing. What the world takes to be values is not real value.

Words about words not being worth yet more words still.

Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.

Fortunately, for some, they don’t have to be.

The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.

Of course that’s still going on.

[b]Existential Comics

I’m certain that the liberals who have been completely obsessed for the last two years about Russia buying some Facebook ads will be equally passionate in calling for an investigation into the CIA to see what they’ve been up to in Venezuela.[/b]

But that’s our imperialism.

…using my knowledge of various ethical theories to get out of an ethical bind by selecting which theory the shady shit i’m doing would be totally fine in…

Nihilism is still number one, he suspected.

Does philosophy make progress? Of course! We don’t understand far more than the Greeks ever could have imagined not understanding.

And then some.

Science is important because we have to understand what the world is like. Art is important so we understand that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Not your art though.

What people don’t bring up enough about racism is just how pathetic it is. You have one life, and you spend it trying to keep people with different skin tones out of America? That’s it? That’s your dream?

Yep some will say.

Remember metaphysicians: do not admit anything into your ontological framework which does not bring you joy.

Right, in this world.

[b]Russell Baker

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.[/b]

Still, I won’t insist on yours if you won’t insist on mine.

Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.

Worse than the theory of course is the practice. At least in the corporate media complex.

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don’t work, those that break down and those that get lost.

And not just electronics.

A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.

If only in the real world.

A solved problem creates two new problems.

Let’s test this.

I’ve had an unhappy life, thank God.

And now he can thank God in person. If you believe in that stuff.

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Handmaid’s Tale

What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.[/b]

Perspective. And let’s start with yours, right?

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.

Unless of course you betray them first.

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning.

And I don’t call some objectivists for nothing.

We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

He wondered: Is this even possible?

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?

Starting now, let’s change that.

I am not your justification for existence.

And you sure as shit aren’t mine.

[b]The Dead Author

Procrastination is the antidepressant that gives you panic attacks.[/b]

Heads they win, tails you lose.

As C.G. Jung teaches us, the groundhog can’t see its shadow because it contains everything that it has forgotten about itself.

That and climate change.

If it doesn’t spark joy, it won’t make you unhappy later.

And what’s one without the other?

Not caring is self-care.

For example, in a cynical world.

Ghosts are only as real as your depression.

Not counting Casper of course.

Camus taught me that it’s ok to be single.

Hell, almost anyone can teach you that.

[b]Tristan Tzara

You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.[/b]

For example, you have bills to pay.

In principle, I am against principles.

Let’s make sense of this.

Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.

Next up: Bada Bada Bing.

To make a poem, take one newspaper, one pair of scissors, snip the words one by one and put them in a bag. Shake gently, draw them out at random, and copy them conscientiously…

Either that or the dictionary.

Everyone dances to his own personal boomboom.

Once again, I’m the exception.

Let us try for once not to be right.

Including you, Mr. Objectivist.

[b]Andre Breton

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself. [/b]

That’s better than most, right?

Every time you date someone with an issue that you have to work to ignore, you’re settling.

Worse: You marry them.

Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

This may well be the most god-awful intellectual contraption of all.

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

Mine just keeps beating.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.

And how idiotic can that be?

It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.

I must have lost mine.

[b]Lenny Bruce

If you live in New York, even if you’re Catholic, you’re Jewish.[/b]

Maybe back then, right?

There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty lie.

There are however other ways to point that out.

I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like "What I’m Going to be If I Grow Up”.

At least he could joke about it.

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don’t think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you’re not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let’s really get basic and persecute ugly people!

There’s a kernel of truth in there somewhere. Let’s find it.

People are leaving the church and going back to God.

Is this better or worse?

Communism is like one big phone company.

Of course we’ll need Phyllo to confirm this.

[b]David Foster Wallace from Infinite Jest

I am not what you see and hear.[/b]

Let alone what he writes.

…morning is the soul’s night.

Or would be if you had one.

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It’s hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

Let’s just say it’s probably not exceptionally good.

We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give ourselves away, utterly.

See? Haven’t I been pointing that out for months now?

Yes, I’m paranoid — but am I paranoid enough?

Apparently not.

He suddenly felt nothing, or rather Nothing, a pre-tornadic stillness of zero sensation, as if he were the very space he occupied.

You can’t help but wonder what he feels now.

[b]Dave Eggers

What he had was a sense that few things mattered much. That few people are to be feared. And so he now faced all such situations with a sense of exhausted resolve, and he dealt with everything head-on.[/b]

We should all be so lucky.

The work of man is done behind the back of the natural world. When nature notices, and can muster the energy, it wipes the slate clean again.

Nature goes down for the count and we follow. When it’s not the other way around.

Not many songs can fend off evil. But the right song with the right voice can be a weapon; anyone who’s listened to music through headphones while riding the subway or plowing angrily through a rush-hour sidewalk knows how it can and separate you from them, allows you to say to the teeming masses that you are this and they are that.

Me, I’ve got a million of them.

Animals howl, he had been told, to declare their existence.

Predators more often than prey of course.

What can one do with one’s hands when the camera is interested in other things?

Well, there’s that other thing, right?

His mind seemed barely tethered to his body, much less the earth.

And they were all three lost in space.