a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Blake Crouch

Because memory…is everything. Physically speaking, a memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together—a symphony of neural activity. But in actuality, it’s the filter between us and reality. You think you’re tasting this wine, hearing the words I’m saying, in the present, but there’s no such thing. The neural impulses from your taste buds and your ears get transmitted to your brain, which processes them and dumps them into working memory—so by the time you know you’re experiencing something, it’s already in the past. Already a memory.

Not unlike this is.

That’s what it is to be human—the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.

Meaning what exactly?

In the world we came from, our existence was so easy. And so full of discontent because it was so easy. How do you find meaning when you’re one of seven billion? When food, clothing, everything you need is just one Walmart away? When we numb our minds to sleep on all manner of screens and HD entertainment, the meaning of life, of our existence and purpose, becomes lost.

That's what we're here for, right?

They say all art—whether books, music, or visual—is a reaction to other art.

Of course they're always saying stuff like that.

I think balance is for people who don't know why they're here.

You know, whatever balance is.

It occurs to me that if I do survive, I'll carry a new revelation with me for the rest of my days: we leave this life the way we enter it–totally alone, bereft.

Not unlike if he doesn't survive.

[iambiguous]

Ani DiFranco

I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.

Works the same when you're cursed with them too. At least in [so far] the best of possible worlds.

I can't wait to get back to New York City where at least when I walk down the street, no one ever hesitates to tell me exactly what they think of me.

When they're not acting like you don't even exist.

Virtue is relative at best, there's nothing worse than a sunset when your driving due West.

What could be clearer than that?

We negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction.

That and for paying the bills.

...you've left me with nothing but I have worked with less.

Then there's what you left them.

A good brain ain't diddley, if you don't have the facts.

She means diddly squat of course. Or would if she were here.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

Okay, but then there's "me".

[iambiguous]

Neal Stephenson

I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and I’d rather be miserable than stupid.

Clearly the exception to the rule.

Every true heart needed a pragmatic counterweight, and every cynic an idealist to lift his spirits.

Fortunately [or unfortunately] I'm a true cynic.

I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.

A little help here, please.

Really, he has only two emotions: sleeping and adrenaline overdrive.

Me? It's the other way around.

But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.

So, can I count on all of you here?

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

Over a hundred at least. Or I will be.

[iambiguous]

God

I send natural disasters to punish mankind for being stupid enough to believe in a God who would send natural disasters to punish it.

Religion in a nutshell? Or just a start?

What doesn’t kill you needs to try harder.

Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't. Same for what you don't kill.

Fuck half of you.

The conservatives of course.

Suicide is never the solution, unless it’s the suicide of someone who helped you rape children.

Suicide...or murder?

Standing up for what you believe in isn't a virtue if what you believe in is awful.

And, let's face it, He'll be the judge of that.

If you want to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill, don't elect them President.

Again, especially.

[iambiguous]

Luis Bunuel

If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'

You'll either come to appreciate this or you won't.

Salvador Dalí seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman's shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door.

Rather surreal though don't you think?

Thank God, I am still an atheist.

I have never been able to go that far myself.

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

For all practical purposes though what the hell is our imagination?

Like the majority of deaf people, I don't like blind people much.

Any truth to this?

The bar... is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable-and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a client that doesn't like to talk.

Especially the one in your abode.

[iambiguous]

Marianne Faithfull

I've made a contribution to my time and my generation through being myself, not through what I shared with the Rolling Stones. It's very bad for me and very dangerous to see myself as someone who had an influence on this song or that song. It immediately puts me in the position where my worth is dependent on how much of my soul I shared with Mick Jagger, and it's just not valid. You can use the gossip you've heard. You're not getting it from me.

On the other hand, why'd ya do it, Mick?

I was anorexic in the 60s and 70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now.

And then some you might say.

Penitentiary songs have been a love of mine for years. They are so wonderful.

Take your pick: https://www.ranker.com/list/songs-about ... nker-music

My story is really an affirmation of my strength and my luck. To live with a great artist like Ted Hughes or Mick Jagger is a very, very destructive role for a woman trying to be herself. In fact, it can't be done.

Any exceptions here, perhaps?

My father belonged to a commune, and the food was ghastly. My idea of food hell is the salad cream they'd pour all over bits of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It was just disgusting.

Of course we don't have their side, do we?

If you analyze the bad times you find that it's because you wanted to have a bad time.

Really, how idiotic is that? Well, not counting if [for you] it's true.

[iambiguous]

Jan Mieszkowski

Brecht: What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

Any bank founders here for the rebuttal?

Quote Nietzsche to
16: impress a love interest
20: impress a new roommate
24: impress yourself
28: annoy your parole officer

Let's put them in the right order.

Age 18: I've never read Hegel!
Age 20: I've never read Heidegger!
Age 22: I've never read Žižek!
Age 24: Why did I ever read Hegel?!?
Age 26: Why did I ever read Heidegger?!?
Age 28: Why did I ever read Žižek?!?

Let's put them in the right order.

I’m interested in reading some philosophy. Where should I start?
Kant: With Hume.
Hegel: With Spinoza.
Schopenhauer: Why bother?
Nietzsche: If you can read, it’s already too late to become a philosopher.

Let's put them in the right order.

Logician: I wanted to be a mathematician
Epistemologist: I wanted to be a logician
Aesthetician: I was having trouble spelling "epistemologist"
Ethicist: I wasn't very popular in high school

Obviously: All of the above.

Are your kids texting about ancient philosophy?

LMAO = Let's make Aristotle obsolete
FTW = Follow Thales wisely
LOL = Lots of Lucretius
BRB = Basilides routs Boethus
IMHO = I must Heraclitus obey
WTF = Will Thrasymachus fail?

So, sure, ask your kids and get back to us.

[iambiguous]

Billie Holiday

The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

Must be a different impossible then.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

I'll settle for way more than enough.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

Most of us can only take her word for it, I suppose.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

The whole basis -- or practically the whole basis -- of listening to music as well.

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.

No one's ever threatened me with that yet.

Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.

Sounds good to me, he thought, I'll just speed it up.

[iambiguous]

Existential Comics

We must imagine Sisyphus as starting a podcast.

Either that or imagine him here.

Greek philosophy: how to live the good life.
German philosophy: how to know the world.
French philosophy: how to understand society.
American philosophy: how to justify neo-imperialist exploitation of the third world.

Or, sure, the other way around.

Remember when the Panama Papers revealed that the ultra rich all had a secret tax-evasion island where they hid their assets, and nothing happened?
Well, you'd think the ultra rich having a secret rape island would be taken a little more seriously, but it's not looking good.

Let's connect the dots here.

Why do they always make supervillains have utilitarian justifications for their schemes? Where is the supervillian who is a devoted Kantian and obsessively follows his moral duties no matter the consequences?

Actually, only Hollywood knows.

What is a "thought leader"? It's someone who is too stupid to be an intellectual, but has figured out how to sound smart to people who don't know the difference.

That makes me one, right?

Existentialism is funny because it's the only philosophy people read and become convinced of the opposite conclusion that it was trying to show. People read existentialists and fall into despair that life is meaningless, even though it's trying to show why that's not the case.

Someone explain to him the difference between existential and essential. And not just in regard to meaning.

[iambiguous]

Brad Thor

Muslim students would go through a bunch of feel-good exercises and leave with the impression that without Islamic contributions to science, there would be no U.S. space program.

The nerve of them!

While the words are yet unspoken, you are master of them; when once they are spoken, they are master of you.

We'll need to hear the words first, of course.

It had to be tonight and it had to be moonless, because that was the only way a dangerous, borderline-psychotic insertion like this could ever possibly work.

Hell, I've snuck a few them in here.

Al Qaeda didn’t translate to "the base", as most Western media outlets had so ignorantly reported, but rather, “the database.” It referred to the original computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with the help of the CIA to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

Cue, among other things, the deep state and the military industrial complex.

Malthus believed that a Utopian society could never be achieved as long as the world’s population was allowed to continue to grow unchecked. The only way to protect the earth and improve the existence of mankind was to have less of mankind—something he believed Mother Nature would eventually deliver in the form of widespread famine and disease.

Nope, not yet. But Trump and Putin will think of something.

For instance, said Alan, we’re now learning that the smallpox pandemics of the Middle Ages, not the plague, mind you, but smallpox, left generations of people with a rare genetic defect that protects them against infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. We estimate that approximately one percent of people descended from northern Europeans are virtually immune to HIV infection.

Thank God?

[iambiguous]

Mata Hari

Death is nothing, nor life either, for that matter. To die, to sleep, to pass into nothingness, what does it matter? Everything is an illusion.

If not wholly inevitable.

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.

And at times no less ambiguous.

I have encountered in this world riff-raff and good people. I lose. I win. I defend myself when I am attacked. I take when someone has taken from me. But I beg you to believe me; I have never done an act of espionage against France. Never. Never.

So, what do you think?

It is unbelievable.

It and everything else for example.

I had long since lost any illusion of being loved for who I was and now accepted, with clean conscience, flowers, flattery, and money that fed my ego and my false identity.

I think I actually understand this.

I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.

You know, if this actually is the best of possible worlds.

[iambiguous]

Nina Simone

You've got to learn to leave the table
When love's no longer being served

The bed too.

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

Or none that you show.

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere...

Okay, but don't forget the exceptions.

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

If you did make it yourself, and if living in it is still an actual option.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

I wouldn't doubt it.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

Of course here you do that with philosophy, right?

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

your therapist doesn't like me

You know, if that's a problem.

matter has no idea antimatter exists

At least theoretically.

my dreams need subtitles

So, can he borrow yours?

one thing video games have taught me is how to sit patiently while quietly seething inside

Or: one thing ILP has taught me is how to sit patiently while quietly seething inside

elvis is dead

And now Peter Fonda.

I can't take me anywhere

Well, except here of course.

[iambiguous]

Peter Fonda

Muslims want the whole world to be Muslim. Christians want the whole world to be Christian. Catholics, Protestants, Mormons. They're all the same. Far out, right? Everyone wants the world to be like them.

You know, being objectivists.

I have always maintained that society has no business dictating morality.

Our morality in particular.

I truly miss the genius of the music of John Lennon, as I'm sure everybody does.

Not counting the assholes of course.

Civilization has always been a bust.

In other words, not just ours.

I want to be on set and die hearing those words: Where's Peter?I want to be on set and die hearing those words: Where's Peter?

It just wasn't meant to be.

Remember, Alan Greenspan was a member of Ayn Rand's collective. To understand this is to understand why we are doomed with the Federal Reserve.

Trust me: It goes a hell of a lot deeper than that.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

two kinds of people in the world: those who can draw a horse leg and those that can't

Let alone all four of them.

any sufficiently advanced realism is indistinguishable from magic

And not just the quantum stuff.

the straw that broke the camel's neck

The dead camel in other words.

let's get this party started eventually

First, let's vote on when eventually.

got to get to sleep so I can wake up again for the rest of whatever this is

Great, another "general description".

school isn't just something you can learn on your own, it's also social interaction with jerks and preparation for your mindless service related future job

You know, if we're being honest.

[iambiguous]

Woody Allen

I got a divorce because my ex-wife left me for another woman.

Luckily, that happened to me too.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

So far, so good.

I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.

Like any club ever would. Now anyway.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

And who doubts they're not out to get him now?

He's a politician. That's a notch below child molester.



I'm a teleological, existential agnostic.

If only in the good movies.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

that which does not kill us makes us breakfast

And, with any luck, a denver omelette.

I promise to read your best tweet at your funeral

Or: I promise to read your best post at your funeral

me: she's not my type
doktor: I didn't realize you had a type
me: o negative

Obviously a smartass.

violins is the last refuge of the romantic

Actually I prefer cellos.

mama don't let your babies grow up to be nihilists

Unless of course it's beyond her control.

to do list:
laundry
contemplate my mortality
dishes

Of course he's just paraphrasing Sisyphus.

[iambiguous]

Noel Coward

He's completely unspoiled by failure.

Take comfort in that, Kids.

I never cared who scored the goal, or which side won the silver cup. I never learned to bat or bowl; but I heard the curtain going up.

And that's before the applause. Or, from time to time, the standing ovations.

She stopped the show --- but then the show wasn't traveling very fast.

Is there the equivalent of that here?

Bed is the perfect climate.

Not to worry: Someday you'll know what that means.

Conceit is an outward manifestation of inferiority.

Just not your own, right?

It's like this, dear boy, the one in front is blind and the kind one behind is pushing him.

This actually goes deeper than you think it does.

[iambiguous]

so sad today

the will to live gets on my nerves

Even worse, the will to power.

torturing myself over things that don’t matter is going ok

Or, for some, actually, not okay at all.

i have trouble making decisions because i don’t see the point in anything

That will do it.

ask your doctor if 23 hours a day of alone time is right for you

Or, sure, your psychiatrist.

nothing good happens out of bed

Well, maybe once in a while.

it’s important to give up on everything first thing in the morning

Or even before you fall asleep.

[iambiguous]

Edith Piaf

I'd like to see one person - just one - who would own up to having been a coward.

How about it, anyone here?

I can die now. I've lived twice.

Me, I've sort of lived once.

I've been thinking about Jesus. Don't you find it a bit strange that, since He was living with His family and all, He up and left them just when they needed him most?

Well, His life was scripted by the Creator Himself.

For me, sleeping is a waste of time. I'm afraid to sleep. It's a form of death.

Not counting the wet dreams of course.

I want to die young. I think it's awful to get old, and sickness is ugly.

Does 47 count?

To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing.

Sure, it's possible she really meant it.

[iambiguous]

Daniel Silva

I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you've never heard of it before.

They don't call it the deep state for nothing.

So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life?
Develop a drinking problem. More Scotch, please.

Cheers.

The secrets of survivors are not easily surrendered. They are locked away behind barricaded doors and accessed at great risk to those who possess them.

Don't even think of coming after mine.

It seems difficult to imagine, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.

Tell me this has nothing to do with dasein as an existential contraption embedded historically and culturally in a particular world.

The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.

My guess: By any means necessary.

“If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for two". Ancient Jewish Proverb.

Or more as the case may be.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely is not universality but circularity." Willard Van Orman Quine

Let's file this one under "definitional logic".

"A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one." Heraclitus

Cue [among other things] dasein.

"To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future". Simone de Beauvoir

Just clear enough perhaps to be plausable.

"Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean." Bob Dylan

Let's start with this.

"When one's ideas are not challenged, one's ability to defend them weakens." John Stuart Mill

Not counting you Mr. Objectivist.

"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company." Jean-Paul Sartre

Never have been. And, I suspect, never will be.

[iambiguous]

Oswald Spengler

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

You know, even though, in all likelihood, we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world.

The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort -- "happiness." He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering.

Yep, sounds about right.

Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.

Indeed. And if you don't believe him, run it by Satyr.

One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.

And that's probably applicable to our posts here, right?

History is direction—but Nature is extension—ergo, everyone gets eaten by a bear.

Well, so far, not me.

Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.

He means state capitalism of course.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"Do everything like someone is gazing at you." Epicurus

In other words, not just God.

“All knowledge degenerates into probability.” David Hume

Or, here, futility.

"People know what they want because they know what other people want." Theodor Adorno

You know, being, among other things, fucking sheep.

"In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes." Theodor Adorno

When, for example, you come down out of the clouds.

"The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness” Theodor Adorno

Actually ideology itself is no match for the postmodern gods: pop culture, consumerism and the worship of celebrity.

"Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?" Isaac Bashevis Singer

Rather a quandary, isn't it?

[iambiguous]

Bob Dylan

People think they know me from my songs. But my repertoire of songs is so wide-ranging that you'd have to be a madman to figure out the characteristics of the person who wrote all those songs.

And here: People think they know me by my posts...

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

Yeah, sure.

The song was there before me, before I came along. I just sorta came down and just sorta took it down with a pencil, but it was there before I came around.

Noted. But let's move on.

I never wanted to be a prophet or a saviour. Elvis maybe.

You know, like Phil Ochs.

I just try to understand that tomorrow is another day.

Next up: the day after that.

I'll stand over your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead.

The sound you hear is [still] the masters of war snickering. And not just all the way to the banks.