a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Brad Thor

… have a smile for everyone you meet and a plan to kill them.[/b]

You know, if you’re a pragmatist.

You know when I told you the joke about how a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body? I was only kidding.

In other words, now that the body has been found.

…all members of Congress should be required wear NASCAR uniforms. You know, the kind with the patches? That way we’d know who is sponsoring each of them.

In the interim, you can go here: opensecrets.org/influence/

[b]There are many lay people and scholars alike, both with and without the Muslim community, who feel that the pure orthodox Islam of the fundamentalists could never survive outside the context of its seventh-century Arabian origins. Apply twenty-first-century science, logic, or humanistic reasoning to it and it falls apart.

They believe this is why Islam has always relied so heavily on the threat of death. Question Islam, malign Islam, or leave Islam and you will be killed. It is a totalitarian modus operandi that silences all dissent and examination, thereby protecting the faith from ever having to defend itself.[/b]

Next up: fundamentalist Christians.

There aren’t many honest men or women in Washington anymore. Politicians get where they are by the sheer force of their egos, not their convictions. And you know what? It’s our fault as voters. We don’t demand better candidates, so we end up getting what we deserve—on both sides of the aisle.

No, really, on both sides.

Incredible brilliance often dwells on the razor’s edge of madness…

I know that mine once did.

[b]Mark Manson

Humans are attracted to each other’s rough edges.[/b]

If not exactly the opposite.

The fact is, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information.

And, no, not only the Kids, Mr. Objectivist.

A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, ‘What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?’ Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

I’ll struggle for none myself.

There’s a saying in Texas: “The smallest dog barks the loudest.” A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident. A rich woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody that she’s rich.

Okay, but what if you leave Texas?

I try to live with few rules, but one that I’ve adopted over the years is this: if it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.

Of course, we’re the exceptions.

We are actually often happier with less. When we’re overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from what psychologists refer to as the paradox of choice. Basically, the more options we’re given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting.

Still, most will take their chances with more.

[b]Natalie Portman

My dad’s a doctor, and when I was 8, I went to one of his medical conferences where they were demonstrating laser surgery on a chicken. I was so mad that a chicken had to die, I never ate meat again. [/b]

See how these things happen?

I’m afraid of everything. But maybe when you’re afraid of everything, it sort of seems like you’re scared of nothing.

Well that sort of seems ridiculous to me.

When I was in nursery school, the teachers asked me, y’know, ‘What does your dad do for a living?’ So I said ‘He helps women get pregnant!’ They called my mom and they were like, ‘What exactly does your husband do?’

That actually sounds like a true story.

I’d rather be smart than a movie star.

Turns out that she’s both. Also, drop dead gorgeous. You know, if that matters.

Lying is the most fun a woman can have without taking her clothes off.

She ought to run for president then.

If you’re an actress or a musician, everyone thinks you’re hot.

Let’s note the ones who aren’t.

[b]so sad today

life is the worst phase[/b]

Not counting death of course.

I’m a fucking idiot but at least i’m dumb as shit

Let’s expalin the difference.

embarrassed to be alive: the musical

Filmed entirely in the Oval Office.

sorry my emotional honesty leaked out and got on you

Or here: sorry my intellectual honesty leaked out and got on you

comparing myself to people who don’t really exist

Don’t we all?

can I count on you to let me down?

After all, you can count on me.

[b]Woody Allen

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. [/b]

Is there anyone who hasn’t been quoted as saying this?

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Ever the optimist.

The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?

So, has that ever come up here?

There are two important things in the world, the first is sex. The other isn’t all that important.

Let’s not go there, Woody.

A: Socrates is a man.
B: All men are mortal.
C: All men are Socrates.

Except here of course.

Marriage is the death of hope.

And [possibly] not just his.

[b]Joni Mitchell

Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at. [/b]

See what you make of it: youtu.be/P-HlAw3clwQ

We call for the three great stimulants of the exhausted ones, artifice, brutality, and innocence.

Your three might be different. Or your first three.

The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what’s behind the curtain the jury cries.

Or what’s in the box.

When I began experimenting, people weren’t ready for it. Once it’s in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.

Maybe. But, for me, there’s her first album. And then all the rest of them.

Lazy reviewers look up other people’s reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.

That’s sort of how it works here, he thought.

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire.

Needless to say: For better or for worse.

[b]Lisa Taddeo

We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.[/b]

We not including me in particular.

Sometimes there’s nothing better on earth than someone asking you a question.

And then sometimes there’s nothing worse.

Her whole life stretches out before her, a path of imprecise but multiple directions. She could be an astronaut, a rap star, an accountant. She could be happy.

Not many of us that isn’t true of.

She’s never understood exactly what it means to seethe until tonight.

Not many of us that isn’t true of.

There should be a stronger word than regret.

Better yet, nothing to regret.

Sleep is not sweet but dumb.

Not counting the dreams of course.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Cleverness is not wisdom.” Euripides[/b]

Though [from time to time] close enough.

“Those are only rumors of suffering. Real suffering has a face and a smell. It lasts in the most intense form no matter what you drape over it. And it knows your name.” Mary Karr

Let’s illustrate that text.

“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody’s head off.” Mary Karr

In a word: Wow!

“Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses his past and is dead for the future.” Euripides

On the other hand, learning what exactly?

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.” Evelyn Waugh

Of course he doesn’t feel that now. To the best of my knowledge.

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Marcus Aurelius

Unless the object is something altogether different. Mine for example

[b]Noel Coward

A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy. [/b]

But don’t forget to drink it.

It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

And don’t forget to take advantage of it.

You will know you’re old when you cease to be amazed.

I was about 15 myself.

My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous.

And therein lies a tale. Lots and lots of them in fact.

Work is much more fun than fun.

So, how many here can say that?

Familiarity breeds contempt, but without a little familiarity it’s impossible to breed anything.

That might possibly go without saying.

[b]Edgar Degas

A picture is first of all a product of the artist’s imagination, it must never be a copy.[/b]

Tell that to the photographer?

Instantaneity is photography.

So, is this a slight?

I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.

Worse, to the owner.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

Let’s decide if this goes too far.

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

In other words, whatever that means.

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

Though certainly not here.

[b]Nein

Sorry. We’re all out of context.[/b]

Not to worry. Right, Mr. Objectivist?

Your alienation. I suggest you own it.

Or [more likely] give up and let it own you.

ALT + RIGHT + DELETE

Always important to bring this tweet back, he thought.

The end of the week. Otherwise known as the right side of history.

Like that will keep Monday at bay.

The old man: 0
The sea: 1

Not like that will ever change, right?

May history forget us kindly.

Of course by then we’re all dead and gone.

[b]Harlan Coben

We always seem to be on the eve of destruction. And we always seem to get through it.[/b]

Will Trump’s be the one we don’t?

The Newark train station is about as romantic as a pile of hippo dung with head lice.

It’s infested as Trump might say.

Secrets…were cancers. Secrets festered. Secrets ate away at your innards, leaving behind nothing but a flimsy husk.

Mine? Nope, not so far.

Terrific, Simon said. The psychos are on my side.

We’ll need a context of course.

Certain problems cannot be solved if you are constantly entertained and distracted.

Well in that case, fuck them.
You know, if you can.

…boy is getting all Ds and Fs in math so his parents send him to Catholic school. On his first report card, his parents are shocked to see their son getting straight As. When his parents ask him why, he says, “Well, when I went into the chapel and saw that guy nailed to a plus sign, I knew they were serious.”

Christ saves!

[b]Werner Twertzog

There is no word in German for taking pleasure in the misery of others, as we all know.[/b]

And, incredibly enough, if there is, it is not dasein.

Meanwhile, having abandoned the American open road, David Brooks composes his next column from the deck of his beater Hallberg-Rassy at the Gouvia Marina in Corfu.

Trust me: Whatever this means, it’s true.

For the American Left to become anti-Russian is misguided; the real threats to the majority of humans, including Americans, are not based in nations but in global finance capital.

Tell that to, among others, Rachel Maddow?

Imagination is insanity that can be monetized.

And we know how that turns out. Well, not counting you of course.

To jump over the moon, for a cow, is, as we all know, an impossibility designed to derange the minds of children.

Yeah, but what’s that next to religion and God?

The collapse of everything is timed to coincide with the death of the last Baby Boomer.

And, sure, that might be me.

[b]Bob Dylan

There’s beauty in the silver singing river
There’s beauty in the sunrise in the sky
But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty
That I remember in my true love’s eyes[/b]

Wow. I was just listening to Judy Collins’s absolutely beautiful rendition of this song: youtu.be/yMQqeCRSk6M

I wanted to understand things and then be free of them.

Just out of curiosity, how the hell does that work?

The inmates and prisoners
I found they were my kind
And it was there inside the bars
I found my peace of mind.

I think I might have once known what I think he might mean here myself.

Peace is the time it takes to reload your rifle.

If that long.

Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore.

If not a jagged cliff.

I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed… so drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself.

Can anyone here actually pin that down?
Nashville Skyline perhaps?

[b]Blake Crouch

I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.[/b]

Just sometimes? That’s ridiculous.

Life with a cheat code isn’t life. Our existence isn’t something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That’s what it is to be human - the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.

Hell, he snorted, I’m meaninglessly cheating right now.

All your life you’re told you’re unique. An individual. That no one on the planet is just like you. It’s humanity’s anthem.

Not counting North Korea of course.

We’re all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglas.

My guess: Some of us more than others.

Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars.

RIP Keith Moon.

His experience, there was darkness everywhere human beings gathered. The way of the world. Perfection was a surface thing. The epidermis. Cut a few layers deep, you begin to see some darker shades. Cut to the bone - pitch black.

Go ahead, pick a bone.

[b]Werner Twertzog

I do not have a “lawn,” but some of you should get off it in any case.[/b]

Yeah, and that includes his “lawn” here.

Listen to me, when you make a film like “Fitzcarraldo,” there will be tensions among the actors, extras, and the crew. There may be injuries and even death, I grant you. Unfortunately, in this case, it was not Kinski.

Next up: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

I was not on the grassy knoll, I am told.

And neither was Lee Harvey Oswald.

I still regret not shooting the man who introduced Jacques Derrida to America.

Someone ask him to explain that.

Your house is built on a burial ground. Every house is.

Going back to the caveman say.

Even now, I cannot get a decent table at Arby’s.

Let alone a decent lobster bisque.

[b]Neal Stephenson

The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them.[/b]

And not just the crony capitalists. Or maybe not just them.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.

Let’s run this by Mr. Reasonable.

What are letters?
Kinda like mediaglyphics except they’re all black, and they’re tiny, they don’t move, they’re old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use ’em to make short words for long words.

Does that include the letters we use here?

…every human being who is born into this universe is like a child who has been given a key to an infinite Library, written in cyphers that are more or less obscure, arranged by a scheme—of which we can at first know nothing, other than that there does appear to be some scheme.

Unless the whole goddamn thing is a scheme.

Unfortunately, this category of secret is itself so secret that it’s very existance is secret, and he can’t actually reveal it to anyone.

I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.

The leaders of Nippon were stupid. They took all of the gold out of Tokyo and buried it in holes in the ground in the Philippines! Because they thought that The General would march into Tokyo and steal it. But The General didn’t care about the gold. He understood that the real gold is here—" he points to his head “—in the intelligence of the people, and here—” he holds out his hands "—in the work that they do. Getting rid of our gold was the best thing that ever happened to Nippon. It made us rich. Receiving that gold was the worst thing that happened to the Philippines. It made them poor.

I’m assuming this is a metaphor. If not a very good one.

[b]Krzysztof Kieslowski

Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one. [/b]

Unless of course investigating it makes it worse.

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

At least I put the brakes on that here.

I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know.

Do they know that?

Of course, you could, no doubt, call my going to film school the biggest mistake I ever made.

Not unlike going to college and majoring in philosophy.

We understand the concept of equality, that we all want to be equal. But I think this is absolutely not true. I don’t think anybody really wants to be equal. Everybody wants to be more equal.

And, nowadays, not just the ubermen.

Of course I’d like to get beyond the concrete. But it’s really difficult. Very difficult.

Red. White. Blue.

[b]God

You are 100% biodegradable.[/b]

Not counting the soul of course…

As My own son, I bought Myself a necktie for Father’s Day.
And as My own father, I insincerely thanked Myself and walked away disappointed yet again.

Maybe next year, Pop.

The bad news: climate change threatens 1 in every 4 species with extinction.
The good news: you’re one of them.

Even Trump and Putin?

I have lost control of the situation.

In other words, again.

Nothing is real and you are cosmically insignificant, so relax.

You too, Chief.

At those darkest moments when it feels like I’ve abandoned you, remember: I was never with you to begin with.

From the Horse’s mouth, as it were.

Science is true whether or not you believe it, but religion is true whether or not it’s true.

Funny it worked out that way, he groused

[b]Ani DiFranco

Smile pretty and watch your back.[/b]

Or, sure, scowl and watch your back.

The fundamental imbalance that is behind all of the other social diseases is patriarchy.

Some say genes, some say memes.

I’d rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.

Though not necessarily in that order.

You’ve got your whole life to do something.
And that’s not very long.

And getting shorter all the time.

I am still praying for revolution.

And if Trump is reelected?

To split yourself in two is just the most radical thing you can do.

Well, not counting being drawn and quartered.