a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Neal Stephenson

I made it into Wikipedia, sang Erszebet. I’ll bet none of my enemies ever made it into Wikipedia.[/b]

Anyone here make it into wikipedia?

Passing through the utility section she considered getting herself a cup of coffee. Then she felt shock and shame over the fact that she was thinking about coffee while her planet was being set on fire. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee anyway and stepped into the Farm.

That’s just how it goes sometimes.

Human nature doesn’t change, Randy. Education is hopeless. The most educated people in the world can turn into Aztecs or Nazis just like that. He snaps his fingers.

Just not you, right?

When Hiro learned how to do this, way back fifteen years ago, a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. Now, that’s no longer possible. Software comes out of factories, and hackers are, to a greater or lesser extent, assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they may become managers who never get to write any code themselves.

Anyone here know if this is true? And, if so, why it matters.

Daniel understood the complaint. For Daniel, too, had once designed a building, and savored the thrill of seeing it built, only to endure the long indignity of watching the owner clutter it up with knick-knacks and furniture.

Not unlike, among others, Howard Roark.

…the question hung there like an invisible wall of flatulence…

Not unlike [as often as not] the answer.

[b]Werner Twertzog

So then I said, to Tom Cruise, “Little Melvin, your performance is like Max von Sydow impersonating Kinski on crack.” He responded, “My name is not Melvin.” But that is what I still call him.[/b]

Not only that but Little Melvin is still a fucking Scientologist!

Is God God?

Actually, the devil here is in the details.

All of the stories have been told. All that remains is the untelling of the unstories.

Let’s get that ball rolling.

In the U.S., college is important for teaching one to perform complex mathematics on six hours of sleep so that one can get basic healthcare, someday, on five hours of sleep, while paying off one’s student loans.

So, how does this work in, say, China?

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” is, as we all know, a grotesque tale of home invasion.

Unless you count the happy ending. Right boys and girls?

As Frederick Buechner tells us, “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the needs of multi-national corporations.”

Of course Frederick Buechner [like the rest of us] says a lot of things.

[b]Miles Davis

My father’s rich, my momma’s good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I’ve never suffered and don’t intend to suffer.[/b]

You tell me.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

Right, and with absolutely no exceptions.

I’ll play it first and figure out what it’s called later.

Of course with jazz you can call it anything.

…people will go for anything they don’t understand if it’s got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don’t look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don’t understand…That’s what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

Fucking white people again!

I don’t pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself…and I’m too vain to play anything I think is bad.

Would that we could be the same way here.

Play what you know and then play above that.

Or: Post what you know and then post above that.

[b]Jodie Foster

It’s an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That’s always been a tug of war for me. [/b]

Me too. And I won.

I don’t like it when reviews aren’t about the movie. When they’re about how much money somebody made, or who they’re sleeping with, or if they got the job via some connection, or about how Fox is putting X amount of dollars into it.

Then stay out of Hollywood.

People say as a woman actor your career is over at 40. But then they told me I would never work again after I was 16.

They. It’s always what they say.

I was a literature major in college and that was my thing, books.

I figured that.

I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it’s a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

Okay, but just what in the hell is a spiritual crisis?

I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie.

Me neither.

[b]Andrew Sullivan

Personally, I’d rather have pins stuck in my eyes than endure a conversation with John Kerry, but I’d love to hang with Bush.[/b]

Personally, I say fuck them both.

I think of these imperial adventures like welfare programs; you start them with all good intentions, they never end, they go on forever and get more expensive as they go on.

Or just let them eat cake.

When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, “Then there’s no hope for me, Mum.”

Well, some do insist that “God hates fags”.

I think sex is completely absurdly demonized in our culture. But in the end, however much sex you want to have, with however many people in how many ways, to be loved and to love is what human beings really want.

You know, after all the bills are paid.

Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing.

You know, being optimistic.

The myth that there was somehow a magic wand in the early 1980s to cure AIDS - a wand that Reagan deliberately refused to wave - is now almost conventional wisdom.

There’s a reason for that though.

[b]Werner Twertzog

The will that has been broken and repaired is more beautiful than one that has never been so tested.[/b]

Not counting mine of course. And probably yours.

Touch not the unclean thing. Use a paper towel, instead.

Clearly the postmodern update.

Yes, we have no bananas.
We have no bananas today.
As we all know.

Actually, I’m eating one now. True story.

Zoos are important for allowing humans to think they are free.

It’s always about perspective, isn’t it?

Good things come to those who wait. For example, death.

Unless, as with most of us, death is a bad thing.

Forget self-actualization. Find joy in fleeting moments.

Or, as with most of us, in opiods

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments

As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.[/b]

Someone explain that please.

You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

Around here from the general direction of Washington D.C.

Nobody is any authority on the fucks other people give.

Not even you, Kid.

The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.

Not to worry. They’re no less powerless to do anything about it.

Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories.

We’ll need a context of course.

You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

Thank god for you guys, he thought.

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.[/b]

Not to mention all that stuff around it.

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.

And that’s before we get to the part about dasein. And then the part after.

The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.

If it’s even there at all.

But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.

See, I fucking told you!!

We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

See, I fucking told you!!

The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.

And not just the machines of course.

[b]God

I miss the old days, before days.[/b]

When, for example, even He was nothing at all.

Other universes are laughing at you.

Of course they have Gods that we laugh at.

Retweeting this counts as going to church.

Though, sure, go anyway.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or straight, you are all equally loathsome in My eyes.

Not many that doesn’t include.

Just because this Republican president is the worst president of all time doesn’t mean the last Republican president wasn’t also, at that time, the worst president of all time.

Doesn’t bode well for the next one then.

What a ridiculous species you are. Just absurd.

I guess He shouldn’t have created us then.

[b]Ralph Nader

Your best teacher is your last mistake. [/b]

Trust me: Sometimes.

You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement or despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective.

Don’t expect this to always work. Or, for some, ever work at all.

The only true aging is the erosion of one’s ideals.

Now that’s bullshit

The financial wealth of the top 1 percent of households in the U.S. exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent.

It’s always important tp point this out from time to time. However futilely

I have a consistent rule: The American people should know as much about the Pentagon as the Soviet Union and China do, as much about General Motors as Ford does, and as much about City Bank as Chase Manhattan does.

Like that would actually change anything.

If God hadn’t meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn’t have invented dentists.

Or for that matter false teeth.

[b]Pythagoras

…most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth or power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge. [/b]

For whatever that’s worth.

God built the universe on numbers.

Ones and zeros no doubt.

Write in the sand the flaws of your friend.

While he carves yours in stone.

The wise man should be prepared for everything that does not lie within his control.

Sure, how hard can that be.

Better be mute, than dispute with the Ignorant.

Fat chance, right?

Do not even think of doing what ought not to be done.

Fat chance, right?

[b]Lynda Barry

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time. [/b]

Every once in while as it were.

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.

Among other things, fuck that.

The groove is so mysterious. We’re born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.

You laughing too?

You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.

Posts for example.

When we finish a book, why do we hold it in both hands and gaze at it as if it were somehow alive?

No, this is a real thing. And, for some books, the only thing.

I go to work the minute I open my eyes.

If you call that work.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

Kant: Act as if you were free
Schopenhauer: Act as if you never wanted to be free
Nietzsche: Act as if freedom never existed
Beckett: Act as if you never existed[/b]

Act as though you agree with me.

It’s a little-known fact that Albert Camus was the aesthetic inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

My guess: even less known than that.

English lit: The mist is so beautiful!
German lit: I wish I could fly!
Russian lit: I almost feel bad about throwing my brother to his death

How about the mist here?

German philosophy: do, don’t, will, won’t
British philosophy: would’ve, could’ve, should’ve
French philosophy: I doubt, you doubt, we doubt, they doubt
American philosophy: I am a bat

Are you a bat?

Ontology: Be it
Epistemology: Know it
Ethics: Judge it
Aesthetics: Love it
History: Live it
Politics: Break it

Then reelect it.

Deleuze: The state apparatus is a concrete assemblage
Foucault: Techniques of power abound
Sartre: I need a drink

Though not necessarily in that order.

[b]Pete Seeger

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.[/b]

Composted? What the hell is that doing in there?

It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

Unless of course they go electric

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

Let’s just say that his came close.

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Only multicultural.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.

Some don’t even read the big print of course.

I tell kids, don’t trust the media. The media with their emphasis on fame is helping to destroy this country, helping destroy the human race. It’s the plug-in drug.

And, no, he’d point out, not just Fox News.

[b]Douglas Adams

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.[/b]

Or, at any rate, you die.

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

Given a determined universe in particular.

This must be Thursday, said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

For most of course it’s Tuesday.

I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

Let’s make that a priority here too.

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Here especially, he thought

There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.

Of course you all like me, right?

[b]Existential Comics

Why can you be unkempt but not kempt?
Why can you be disturbed but not turbed?
Why can you be overwhelmed and underwhelmed but not whelmed?
Why do a small number of capitalists control all the productive capacity of society, and the workers have no say in how or what is produced?[/b]

The really Big Questions in other words.

philosophy is funny because half the ideas are just so dumb. but we make progress because they are still slightly less dumb than the ideas people have who don’t do philosophy

Of course we all know they are slightly more dumb. And that’s before we get to the Kids.

Greatest moment of enlightenment for philosophers:
Aristotle: reads Plato
Descartes: reads Aristotle
Hume: reads Descartes
Kant: reads Hume
Hegel: reads Kant
Marx: reads Hegel
Foucault: takes acid in the desert and is like “whoa dude, what if…like…everything is a prison??”]

And that [so far] is where it still stands.

We are told we have to go to college to get a job.
We are told we have to go into debt to go to college.
We are told we have to work for the rich to pay off our debt to the rich.
We are told this is freedom.

You know, if you’re a capitalist.

through the miracle of science, we can achieve existential despair twice as fast as we could in the 1800s

Or, for some of us, triple as fast. At least.

thinking about making a list of the hundred greatest philosophers just to get absolutely everyone pissed off about the order i choose

Have there even been 100 philosophers?

[b]Bob Dylan

I’m determined to stand whether God will deliver me or not. [/b]

If it’s even the right God.

He’s hell bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused, and his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.

Five will get you ten he’s a Kid. And an objectivist.

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me.

Not likely that it thinks about us at all.

Having these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way.

Never had that problem, have you?

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

ILP is a sort of stage too, isn’t it?

The truth is far from you, so you know you got to lie
Then you’re all the time defending what you can never justify

For example, in the Oval Office.

[b]Blake Crouch

It will be destructive at first, like all progress. Just as the industrial age ushered in two world wars. Just as Homo sapiens supplanted the Neanderthal. But would you turn back the clock on all that comes with it? Could you? Progress is inevitable. And it’s a force for good.[/b]

In other words, fuck the details. And none of us are more than that.

He also carried that whiff of unearned arrogance that seems to cling to those who crave authority for the sheer sake of power.

Let’s name names.

In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies. I would think a former employee of the federal government could grasp that concept.

State and local employees too around here.

And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn’t just the inverse of who I am. It’s an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life…

I know: Let’s not go there.

You know how a dream feels the farther you get from it? It loses its color and intensity and logic. Your emotional connection to it fades.

Not unlike reality itself.

You believe in God, Ethan?
No.
Many did. Adopted moral codes. Created religions. Murdered in the names of gods they’d never seen or heard.
You believe in the universe?
Sure.
Oh, so you’ve been to space. Seen those distant galaxies firsthand?
Point taken.

Sophistry, right?

[b]tiny nietzsche

area 51 plus one[/b]

The deeper state still.

objects in the mirror are dirtier than they appear

So, go and wash them.

my aesthetic is a kitchen fire

Electrical to boot.

my body is revolting against me and I couldn’t agree more

Trust me: No one says that when it’s actually true.

why do I have to suffer for your art?

Of course here it’s “philosophy”.

what’s ketamine is ketayours

how depressing is that?

[b]Tori Amos

So, you can make me come, that doesn’t make you Jesus. [/b]

It’s not nothing though.

I call that god the Little G. Because the god that we’ve been worshipping is not to me the Supreme Creator. Anybody who needs to control and make people feel ashamed. . .It’s like, ‘I send my only begotten son. . .’ Well you know, that concept of sending a son where we as women could, like, breastfeed him and give him milk, but he’s not gonna soil his dinky with us? What’s that all about?

Someone tell her.

I call that god the Little G. Because the god that we’ve been worshipping is not to me the Supreme Creator. Anybody who needs to control and make people feel ashamed. . .It’s like, ‘I send my only begotten son. . .’ Well you know, that concept of sending a son where we as women could, like, breastfeed him and give him milk, but he’s not gonna soil his dinky with us? What’s that all about?

Sure, maybe.

I’m not somebody that gets played a lot at parties and weddings. I mean, you know, you mention my name and you get an eye roll, until, of course, you’re jumping off a bridge.

She said it.

Robert Plant asked me to marry him, but I said ‘no.’ I mean, you just don’t want to marry someone you’ve wanted to do it with since you were thirteen, because, well, if he farts, I would, like, die!

So, what do you think, true story?

Womanhood is a whole different thing from girlhood. Girlhood is a gift…Womanhood is a choice.

You know, if men let them.
You know the ones.