a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[b]Neal Stephenson

. . . if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules.[/b]

Who cares…just show me the money.

If she screws up this delivery, that means she’s double-crossing God, who may or may not exist, and in any case who is capable of forgiveness. The Mafia definitely exists and hews to a higher standard of obedience.

I actually get that.

He is full of adrenaline, his nerves are shot, and his mind is cluttered up with free-floating anxiety-floating around on an ocean of generalized terror.

Just another day, right?

If you can’t test it, it’s not theorics – it’s metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.

And, boy, does that ever apply here!

Plastic is essentially frozen gasoline.

Except around matches.

Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him silly; while the victim is still staggering around in a daze, that god’s wife or lover, in a jealous rage, turns him–the helpless, innocent victim, that is–into let’s say an immortal turtle and e.g. power-staples him to a sheet of plywood with a dish of turtle food just out of his reach and leaves him out in the sun forever to be repeatedly disemboweled by army ants and stung by hornets or something. So if Arachne had dissed anyone else in the Pantheon, she would have been just a smoking hole in the ground before she knew what hit her.

Any truth to this?

[b]tiny nietzsche

happy birthday nietzsche! you fuck[/b]

Said with great affection of course.

go pet a dog. I’ll wait

Go buy a dog? Maybe he’ll wait, maybe he won’t.

this whole time I thought you were an artist, but it turns out you’re just not happy

Or: this whole time I thought you were a nihilist, but it turns out you’re just not happy

If you really loved me, you would watch me from afar, writing poems in blood, and burning them on my grave when I’m dead.

Now that’s love, Mr. Goatman.

wake up and smell the nihilism

Or, sure, the napalm.

resets feelings to factory settings

It’s in the Bible somewhere.

[b]Miles Davis

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.[/b]

Well, there you go.

The way you change and help music is by tryin’ to invent new ways to play.

Is that possibly applicable here?

What’s swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don’t have to ask anybody if that’s good music or not. You can always feel it.

Is that possibly applicable here?

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself.

At least a couple hours.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

Or: There are no wrong words in philosophy: only words in the wrong places.
Actually both one suspects.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

Any white folks here who don’t?

[b]Jodie Foster

I’d like to be Dakota Fanning when I get young. [/b]

Your challenge: to make sense of this.

I think an artist’s responsibility is more complex than people realize.

What’s that make our responsibility then?

Ninety-five percent of women’s experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive… women didn’t go to Vietnam and blow things up. They are not Rambo.

Not counting Ann Coulter perhaps.

But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy.

Works that way for many outside the business too. That and Taxi Driver.

When I go into the stores, I pet the saddles. Until security comes and takes me away.

Saddles meaning…what exatly?

If I make two movies my entire life, and they’re two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don’t need to be Steven Spielberg.

And on rare occasions neither does he.

[b]so sad today

honestly can’t believe time is just gonna like keep going[/b]

Or: honestly can’t believe that one day time is just gonna like stop

when my soul is feeling tired, parched, weak, i come here to have it totally destroyed

Here too, right?

i should be back in therapy but i’m tweeting instead

Better that than Facebook.

oh fuck i’m still me

And getting more me all the time.

my tits disappoint me more and more with each passing day

I’ll be the judge of that, he thought.

you need to love yourself
listen, if i knew how to love myself i’d be doing it

The part they always forget.

[b]Michael Moore

It really is disgusting when a guy in a ball cap with a high school education is the one asking the tough questions. [/b]

And an obese guy to boot.

I hate to say it, but killing is our way. We began America with genocide, then built it with slaves. The shootings will continue. It’s who we are.

Then why bitch about it?

Jesus told us that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us.

And look where that got him.

I’m a millionaire, I’m a multi-millionaire, I’m filthy rich. You know why I’m a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do.

Let’s decide if it is okay for hum to say this.

If the Founding Fathers could have looked into a crystal ball and seen AK-47s and Glock semi-automatic pistols, I think they would say, you know, ‘That’s not really what we mean when we say bear arms.’

One man’s opinion as it were.

Hope for the best is what we do, right from the moment we’re born.

Actually, I don’t remember that far back myself.