a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[b]Existential Comics

Scientists: so we have to drastically reduce carbon emissions to save the planet.
The billionaires who run things: hmm…looks like some stock prices might go down if we do that, so no.
And then we all died, the end.[/b]

So,don’t forget to vote!

What are you willing to suffer for?
Nietzsche: meaning.
Sartre: freedom.
Dostoyevsky: art.
Russell: to prove that 2+2=4.

Let’s put them in the most rational order.

Schopenhauer is hilarious because he’s like “life isn’t worth living, and I’ve proven it with metaphysics!”
It’s like…nah dude, you are just a bitter asshole. Other people enjoy their lives.

The same with this bitter asshole, right?

As a great philosopher once said: “you all tweet too much.”

And then Desperate Degenerates like me bring them here.

i bet they’ll finally invent immortality when i’m like 90 years old and then i’ll have to be old and shit forever, god dammit

If not double [or even triple] god damnit.

The socialist position is that humans should control property.
The capitalist position is that property should control humans.
This should not be a difficult decision.

Sure, it might be more complicated than that.

[b]Bjork

I find it very difficult to draw a line between what’s sex and what isn’t.[/b]

I know: assume [one way or another] that everything is.

There’s definitely, definitely, definitely, no logic to human behaviour . . .

Let’s definitely, definitely, definitely find some.

People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.

Just for the record: “a member of an indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia”

You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.

Of course first you’ve got to catch them.

I lose interest when something becomes a political movement. What I’m interested in is emotions.

And that suits the ruling class just fine.

I do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.

45 million dollars for example.

[b]Brad Thor

Happiness in life is all about three things—something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.[/b]

You know, before you’re dead and gone.

Benjamin Franklin, that those who trade some of their liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. The wisdom of the founders never ceased to amaze him.

Tell that to, among others, the folks back then of color. Or, for some, no doubt, their wives.

Hegelian dialectic—a psychological tool used to manipulate the masses. In this case, you create a problem, wait for the reaction, and then offer the solution. What people historically fail to realize, though, is that those offering the solution are the same people who caused the problem in the first place. They also fail to realize that no matter what the solution is, it always ends up providing its creators with more power.

Next up: Marx reads Hegel.
Spirit meets capital.

If you steadfastly refused to quit, you rapidly narrowed your options to only winning.

On the other hand, in reality…

You ever work with a UN stabilization force? Ash asked. Harvath shook his head. Then trust me. As the old saying goes, you can’t spell unprofessional, unethical, or unaccountable without the UN. The cholera outbreak the old blue helmets caused in Haiti? Over ten thousand dead, and it has spread to the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The rapes and sex crimes they have committed in Mali and everywhere else? The stories of their depravity and brutality are legion.

Let’s put this in perspective. If it’s actually true, for example.

We don’t even use the word terror anymore. There’s only ‘man-made disasters’ caused by disenfranchised groups who are really just ‘misunderstood’.

With the possible exception of Fox News. Where even Christian liberals are terrorists.

[b]Sad Socrates

Men are terrible. Women are terrible. Children are terrible. Life is terrible. Death is terrible. [/b]

You know, if you’re him.
Or, sure, from time to time, me.

I was really disappointed when I woke up and realized dreams were also part of reality.

I live for them myself.

Not trying to brag but I have no future.

Understood.
No, really.

Just trying to assert my dumbinance.

Here?
The Kids.
The objectivists.
KT.
[size=50][though not necessarily in that order][/size]

There’s not enough time in the day to die.

Not counting those who make time.

This is the only place I can comfortably say the word death.

You know, while he still can.

[b]Mark Manson

It’s worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something.[/b]

Fess up, Mr. Objectivist.

Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is apositive experience.

And not just in La La Land.

To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.

Is that an actual thing?

I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating.

Talk about needing a fucking context!

You too are going to die, and that’s because you too were fortunate enough to have lived. You may not feel this. But go stand on a cliff sometime, and maybe you will.

No cliff? Let’s come up with alternatives.

…you can’t build a better mind without challenging your own beliefs and assumptions…

And then this part: Repeat as necessary.

[b]Natalie Portman

I wonder how people decided that women were supposed to shave their legs and armpits.[/b]

And now of course that, uh, other thing.

I think that most women know what happens that leads you to a point where you’re not even looking for intimacy anymore. You’re just looking for the physical side of it and not the emotional side of it.

The girly-men too.

Part of my reason for being vegetarian was because it practices respect and love for life all through the day, so three times a day, you make a decision to eat things that have not been killed.

Tell that to the plants. You know, if you could.

I can sleep a whole day. If no one woke me up, I would sleep for 24 hours. I think it’s a combination of my age and my appreciation for sleep. Sleep is so wonderful.

For me though it’s always about dreaming. My own dreams being rather, well, extraordinary.

I really hate being self-conscious—and being conscious of being self-conscious.

Point taken. But try not being conscious of your own self. Especially one like mine.

I was really excited to get to shave my head - it’s something I’d wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was nice to shed that level of vanity.

Okay, so what’s stopping her now? If not vanity.

[b]Sad Socrates

I’m a glass-is-half-broken kind of person.[/b]

I’m a glass-shattered-on-the-floor-in-a-thousand-pieces kind of person myself.
You know, on the good days.

Life’s too short to be laughing all the time.

Why does that actually make sense?

We’re only related through death.

That and being born.

Every day is the end of the world.

Or, more to the point, every day the world ends for approximately 151,600 of us.

Blah blah depression blah blah anxiety blah blah the world sucks blah blah I don’t want to do anything about it.

Worse: You want to but can’t.

Being alone in hell > Being in heaven with people

For some of us a hell of a lot greater.