a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Bob Dylan

When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke.[/b]

And not just on desolation row.

Don’t forget to support your public library.

That always bears repeating.

I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s.

I read it in 1972. By then though my life couldn’t have been more changed.

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin’ up, we struggle and we scrape
We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape

The rhymes are just icing on the cake.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

You know, like Jim Morrison.
I guess.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

Notice how he doesn’t actually name any. Unless of course fat is just a metaphor.

[b]Blake Crouch

I thought I appreciated every moment, but sitting here in the cold, I know I took it all for granted. And how could I not? Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.[/b]

Let’s trade topples.

If you want to understand the world, you have to start by understanding—truly understanding—how we experience it.”

Oh Christ, he thought, not that again.

If he did this to you, he would have rationalized it somehow. That’s how decent people justify bad behavior.

Define decent?

What if our worldline is just one of an infinite number of worldlines, some only slightly altered from the life we know, others drastically different? The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that all possible realities exist. That everything which has a probability of happening is happening. Everything that might have occurred in our past did occur, only in another universe. What if that’s true? What if we live in a fifth-dimensional probability space? What if we actually inhabit the multiverse, but our brains have evolved in such a way as to equip us with a firewall that limits what we perceive to a single universe? One worldline. The one we choose, moment to moment. It makes sense if you think about it. We couldn’t possibly contend with simultaneously observing all possible realities at once. So how do we access this 5-D probability space? And if we could, where would it take us?

Uh, you tell me?

If I wanted to bring you down, David, I could’ve done that months ago.
If I wanted you dead, Agent Hassler—you and everyone you love—there is nothing in the world stopping me from making that happen. Not from prison. Not from the grave.
So we’ve established trust, Hassler said.
Perhaps. Or at the very least, assured mutual destruction.
No difference in my book.

This modern world…

I’ve seen so many versions of you. With me. Without me. Artist. Teacher. Graphic designer. But it’s all, in the end, just life. We see it macro, like one big story, but when you’re in it, it’s all just day-to-day, right? And isn’t that what you have to make your peace with?

You know, if that can actually be done.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Disney movies are important for reminding very small children that their mothers can die at any moment.[/b]

A little help please.

The great thing about liberal arts faculty members is that they all are tragic failures, and so they have empathy for students.

And, believe it or not, that was before Trumpworld.

No, Mr. T., do not “pity the fool.” Pity the learned person who understands, yet can do nothing.

And that certainly includes you and I, right?

[b]Four stages in a man’s life.

1. You believe in Santa.
2. You don’t believe in Santa.
3. You renounce your faith in anything or anyone.
4. You become an hopeless alcoholic and die in the streets.[/b]

Being optimistic, let’s say.

Hell is other people. Hell, also, is being alone. Everything is hell.

Okay, but Hollywood in particular.

There is no “I” in DEATH.

Tell that to the Grim Reaper.

[b]Fiona Apple

Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice.[/b]

Though, by all means, try to convince them.

It pisses me off to think we’re conditioned to push away bad feelings and think anything that’s uncomfortable is to be avoided. When things are really bad nowadays, I recognize the value in it because it’s me filling my quota- it’s going to make my joy more intense later.

Clearly, you can take this too far. And, who knows, maybe she has already discovered this.

Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel it’s necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them.

Here for example: youtu.be/uU1z9UReOQY

How can I ask anyone to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone?

I hear that.

You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun.

I hear that. Too.

The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.

In other words, maybe.

[b]Neal Stephenson

You can say any sort of nonsense in Latin, and our feeble university men will be stunned, or at least profoundly confused. That’s how the popes have gotten away with peddling bad religion for so long, they simply say it in Latin.[/b]

So, how do you say dasein in Latin?

…the insects here see you as a big slab of animated but not very well defended food. The ability to move, far from being a deterrent, serves as an unforgeable guarantee of freshness.

He wondered: What was God thinking?

Sorry, baby. Let’s get out of here, he says, speaking with the intense, strained tones of a man with an erection.

And not just in dreams either.

People wait until they have a need for some history and then they customize it to suit their purposes.

And Trumpworld will be no different.

Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is Western, and completely alien to us Chinese. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos.

Among other things, capitalism.

If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness.

For some though, he was still just another fag.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Live every day like you are already dead.[/b]

Actually, I am getting better at it.

Vacations are important for relearning that you will never be happy.

Not counting the Griswolds of course.

Why does this “prayer breakfast” feel like it is run by the moneychangers?

Well, it did take place in the Oval Office.

Freedom of the will is an illusion, but we must act as though it were an absolute truth.

Even though we could never act otherwise.

If no one is plotting to murder you, then you are not asking the right questions.

Anyone plotting that here?

Nothing against the whales, but I cannot even save myself.

Of course the whales don’t know that.

[b]Miles Davis

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent. [/b]

Here of course it’s the word.

It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note - it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

Here of course it’s the word after.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.

Sounds like a personal problem.
But, okay, sure, point taken.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

You know, when you can hear it.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

Or, here, repeat over and over and over again.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he’s got to think differently in order to do it. He’s got to play above what he knows - far above it. I’ve always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that’s where great art and music happens.

Not to worry. No one really knows what shit like this means.

[b]Isabelle Huppert

I always thought that’s the exact metaphor, the perfect metaphor for acting. To go blind, to ignore the danger, and to totally trust. [/b]

In the director more or less than the acting.

I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal.

My own personal favorite: The Piano Teacher.

Acting is a way of living out one’s insanity.

Unlike, for example, philosophizing.
Unless, of course, you count me.

I think movies say a lot about real life, even more than theater. It says a lot about the invisible, that movies are so fascinating. The camera lens is like a microscope that goes beyond the surface. It’s like you’re exploring a secret, so you explore the director’s secret, you explore the actor’s secret, and therefore you explore the universe’s secrets.

Real life and then some.

I don’t have time, because I still have so many films to see.

For example, before she dies.

If I seem detached or distant, it’s because I think this is a more exact reproduction of life, where you hide as much as you show.

And that’s before you get to the parts hidden even from yourself.

[b]God

The universe isn’t conspiring against you.
The universe isn’t rooting for you.
The universe really, truly couldn’t care less about you.[/b]

And He should know.

Money can’t buy happiness, but neither can poverty, and money can buy a lot of really cool things, so try to have lots of money.

God the capitalist. And He is of course.

To reverse climate change, most people are willing to have other people do whatever it takes.

Here we just call that the American way.

Retweeting this just might be the best decision you’ll ever make.

How about posting it here? I’ll let you know.

You really have no fucking idea what you’re doing down there, do you.

In other words, no more than He does up there.

Attention, London!
This Christmas season, for only the second time ever, I am taking earthly form.
And this time, I’m a lesbian.

The play, of course!

[b]Billie Holiday

The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit. [/b]

Anyone know if that ever happened?

New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.

Anyone know if that’s actually true?

If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.

Believe it or not, I used to have them myself.

In this country kings or dukes don’t amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.

Then P-Daddy.

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.

Or, for any number of oldie acts today, the rest of their fucking lives.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

When it’s not dripping.

[b]Annie Lennox

Each individual is as individual as their fingerprints, and I think that’s extraordinary. [/b]

Not counting all those who are pretty much the same.

The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

True. And then, ironically, to make matters worse, you die.

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

Let’s turn this into philosophy.

When you’re that successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can’t really tell whether you have created the momentum or it’s creating you.

Most of course will never know.

You become really ugly when you become very superficial and self-obsessed.

Like that isn’t already the American way.

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion - very powerful emotions. That’s what draws millions of people towards it.

This is actually really true.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

British philosophy: We’re sorry about Ayer.
French philosophy: We’re sorry about Sartre.
German philosophy: We’re sorry about Habermas.
American philosophy: We’re sorry.[/b]

Is it even possible to understand this?

[b]Would have thrived on Twitter:
Pascal
Hume
F. Schlegel
Nietzsche
Wittgenstein

Strictly Tumblr material:
Plato
Leibniz
Rousseau
Kant
Husserl[/b]

Is it even possible to understand this?

Aristotle: I never promised you a good life!
Kant: I never promised you a rational life!
Nietzsche: I never promised you a real life!
Beckett: You’re dead. I promise.

No as a matter of fact, Sam, I’m not. But point taken.

Plato: A good idea is worth dying for
Kant: The idea of the good is worth dying for
Beckett: Dying sounds like a good idea

Or it will eventually.

Philosophy begins when you give up
Descartes: certitude
Kant: dogmatism
Kierkegaard: hope
Nietzsche: philosophy

And in exactly that order.

[b]When I read your work, I feel like I’m

Plato: bathed in sunlight
Aristotle: infused with wonder
Descartes: paralyzed by doubt
Marx: taking to the streets
Heidegger: losing my language
Nietzsche: losing my mind
Sartre: on my 10th espresso
Žižek: lost in a Walmart parking lot[/b]

How about my work, here?

[b]Brad Thor

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act’. [/b]

Their evil of course.

Snyder had scaled the rocky heights of the American political landscape by adhering to a simple mantra: Do unto others before they do unto you.

That’s how it works alright. Then double it.

They had one mantra, and it came straight from the founder of the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan. If you fall, fall forward.

And then all the way to the bank.

Being happy boils down to three things. Something to do. Someone to love. And something to look forward to.

Well, he thought, from the bottom of the barrel, that explains a lot.

The funny thing about believing you can do no wrong is that you quickly begin doing nothing but wrong.

Right, like there are never any exceptions.

Harvath shrugged as his phone chimed. That’s social media for you. There’s a reason the intelligence community loves it so much.

And not just the Russians.

[b]Nina Simone

It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl’s talk. [/b]

By all means, tell me more.

The Beatles are lucky, very lucky. But what has happened to them has nothing to do with them, in a sense. They came along at the right time. Attention was focused on them. They’ve had the chance to grow in almost any direction they wanted. Very lucky. They are not exceptionally talented.

Two words: John Lennon.

Once I understood Bach’s music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

I know what you’re thinking: Who’da thunk it?

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Just never sunk in for me.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

Not unlike with white people. Only more so.

I’m sorry that I did not become the world’s first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.

That would be Andre Watts. Said to be “the first Black concert pianist to achieve international super stardom”.
youtu.be/KJ8pzu14FmI

[b]Existential Comics

fyi anyone who spells “bourgeoisie” right on the first try is a cop[/b]

A little help with this one please.

[b]Guide to being a real man:

• make your own decisions.
• don’t let things upset you beyond your control.
• lift weights.
• eating steaks rare for some reason has something to do with it.
• bottle up all your emotions deep inside until they burst out at random as misdirected anger.[/b]

Uh-oh. I’m not even close then.

“I’m neutral in respect to unions”
– someone who is against unions.
“I don’t think we should talk about race”
– someone who is racist.
“I’m not political”
– someone whose politics aligns with the current ruling class.

And, believe it or not, not just in the red states.

…oh shit you guys I totally forgot about the complete game of the week six 2006 Monday Night Football matchup of the Bears vs Cardinals, in which the Bears overcame a 23-3 deficit while scoring zero points on offense and committing two turnovers.

No, really, this is actually quite insightful.

I’m socially liberal, but fiscally conservative, which means that I hate poor black people because they are poor, not because they are black.

Cue Phil Ochs?

actually according to the ancient Greeks, who invented Western Civilization, everyone should fuck each other all the time

Talk about a double entendre!

[b]Roger Penrose

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.[/b]

Or as closed as some can think up.

There are considerable mysteries surrounding the strange values that Nature’s actual particles have for their mass and charge. For example, there is the unexplained ‘fine structure constant’ … governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions.

Let’s connect the dots between that and “I”.

Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.

Let’s connect the dots between that and “I”.

…our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up…

Cue Ecmandu?

With thought comprising a non-computational element, computers can never do what we human beings can.

What the hell, let’s all agree that settles it and move on.

Do not be afraid to skip equations. I do this frequently myself.

Right, like we’d know the ones to skip.

[b]Dan Savage

I always kind of divided the gay guys I met up into two groups when I first started coming out. There were the guys who thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them and hated themselves and were so burdened with shame and internalized homophobia. It just really paralyzed and shredded them. And then there were guys like me who thought, “I’m fine, everybody else is crazy. My church is sick and the family’s crazy, but me? I’m fine.” [/b]

So, how does this comport with your experience?

I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism.

You know, whatever that does.

A certain tiny percentage of everyone is gay.

Not counting those who are less than zero.

One man’s piss-soaked sadomasochistic orgy is another man’s poetic ecstasy.

Let’s call it conflicting goods.

I’m an agnosto-theist. I cross myself on airplanes. I pray when I’m sick. When you’re sick I’ll keep you in my thoughts; when I’m sick, I’m entreating a higher power.

You know, when no one is watching.

I wouldn’t say that holidays are manufactured by corporations, but they’re certainly exploited and mined by them.

Could that actually be true?

[b]tiny nietzsche

a selfie made out of dust and a broken heart[/b]

I know: been there, done that.

respect my ambiguity

he died doing what he loved, returning fire into a hurricane

My guess: the steroids.

oh fuck. I’m the abyss

And trust me: Not just here.

girl with the crayon tattoo

In production they tell me.

fatalism is killing me

Well, that’s only natural.

[b]Pythagoras

Numbers have a way of taking a man by the hand and leading him down the path of reason. [/b]

If only in the either/or world.

As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.

They will kill each other anyway.

If you have a wounded heart, touch it as little as you would an injured eye. There are only two remedies for the suffering of the soul: hope and patience.

Them and opioids.

Know thyself and thou wilt know the universe.

It is better to be silent, than to dispute with the Ignorant.

Me, I prefer to torment them myself.

If you’re asked: What is the silence? Respond: It is the first stone of the Wisdom’s temple.

Would you like to know my response?

[b]Wanda Sykes

I’m a black, gay woman. I think the only way to make the GOP hate me more is if I sent them a video of me rolling around on a pile of welfare checks. [/b]

Let’s confirm that.

If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, then don’t marry somebody of the same sex.

Right, like that’s the way it will ever work.

As soon as you say ‘I do,’ you’ll discover that marriage is like a car. Both of you might be sitting in the front seat, but only one of you is driving.

I ended up in the trunk myself.

I don’t like the saying keep your friends close and enemies closer. I want my enemy on a different planet.

Not counting Pluto of course.

I don’t understand why people really get upset about something that doesn’t affect them at all.

It’s probably in the Bible.

I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

Pick one:
1] Rush Limbaugh
2] Rush Limbaugh
3] Rush Limbaugh