a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Karl Kraus

Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.

And not just pit bulls.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Well, with a few exceptions of course.

One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.

Where the hell is he going with this?

A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.

Okay, but how about one with, uh, a "condition"?

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Actually, I wouldn't go that far.

War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.

Excepting the military industrial complex of course.

[iambiguous]

God

I should probably wrap this up.

Let's counsel Him.

Want to know what true racism is? Enslaving millions of black people for hundreds of years, then oppressing them through terror, lynching, legislation and explicit and implicit cultural, legal and societal discrimination for another 150, leaving them second-class citizens. No?

Of course God's a leftist!

Remember: for every one human being who's horrible, there are five who are merely deeply flawed.

Here? Double it. At least.

Great. Now you've opened a wormhole in spacetime that will suck all reality into its antimatter counterpart in a negative universe. Nice job, Kayleigh. Nice job.

A little help with this one, please.

I made you in My image and I'm an asshole.

Anyone here still doubt that?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
A man who owned 600 other men.

And, of course, Sally.

[iambiguous]

Heinrich Heine

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.

That's a "condition" too though, right?

Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.

And I've clearly solved our own, right?

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.

See, I told you. And what you believe can be, well, anything.

God will forgive me. It's his job.

How about me, he wondered.

Silence can be defined as conversation with an Englishman.

You tell me.

Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.

And we've got a few of them here, he suggested.

[iambiguous]

Robin Wright

It's what still excites me most about acting: letting your imagination go places it's never been before. There's nothing better than that.

Lots of actors here too.
Right?

I want to be perfect. I don't want to fail. And you always fail.

Must be an acting thing.

Everybody fucking does it. I suppose I can't say 'everybody' because I don't know for sure, but come on...It's just the tiniest sprinkle of Botox twice a year. I think most women do 10 units, but that freezes the face and you can't move it. This is just one unit, and it's just sprinkled here and there to take the edge off...

Hollywood!

My favorite designers are Levi Strauss and Fruit of the Loom.

Not on the red carpet of course.

I have such a little face.

Little other things too.

I could not understand why Meryl Streep, for example, is allowed to work while pregnant and I'm not.

Let's find out.

[iambiguous]

God

If you think wearing a mask intrudes on your rights, wait till the fever intrudes on your body, the fluid intrudes on your air sacs, the failure intrudes on your organs and the end intrudes on your life.

They don't call Him God for nothing.

Reality is a hoax.

How comforting, he thought. Or not of course.

2020. Six months down. Three to go.

Well, it is a leap year.

I'll stop cursing in My tweets when you stop being so fucking stupid.

Don't hold your breath, Kid.

Love Me or I'll kill you.

Yo, Pascal!

I was never briefed about coronavirus.

Let alone in the Oval Office.

[iambiguous]

Martha Graham

Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.

Sure, why not.

The body says what words cannot.

Gasp!

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.

You know, like philosophy.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

Anyone here actually believe that?

The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.

Anyone here actually believe that?

Freedom to a dancer means discipline.

A strange way to put it, he thought.

[iambiguous]

Stefan Zweig

Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.

Not much that can't be nowadays.

The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.

Or, sure, just skip that part.

How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!

Let's trade experiences.

There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it.

Preposterous, isn't it?

In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.

Really preposterous, isn't it?

The dressmaker doesn't have problems unless the dress has to hide rather than reveal.

The philosopher too. Well, on occasions.

[iambiguous]

Eva Green

Life's too short to wear high heels.

Never wore them myself.

I don't wear base, as I don't like to cover up my freckles, but I couldn't live without YSL Touche Eclat for hiding my under-eye circles. I love the smoky-eye look, so I use Dior's 5-Colour Eyeshadow in Night Dust and lashings of mascara. I finish with a dash of bronzer for a healthy glow.

Sure, I'll let this slide. See The Dreamers for example: https://youtu.be/YU1brBVMBkM

At drama school, I always picked the really evil roles. It's a great way to deal with your everyday emotions.

I knew she'd say that.

People think I'm so strong, but I'm very shy.

I hoped she'd say that.

I was very studious, too much. I would never go out at weekends. I was very serious.

That and drop dead gorgeous.

In this business actors who have Botox or surgery make you very aware of age. It's awful.

No need when you're acting here thank god.

[MagsJ]

Haha!

Crushing on Eva Green, I see. : )

[iambiguous]

Haha!

Crushing on Eva Green, I see. : )

You bet.


On the other hand, she still doesn't know that I exist.

[MagsJ]

Haha!

Crushing on Eva Green, I see. : )

You bet.

On the other hand, she still doesn't know that I exist.

An Indian guy called me a prat and a coconut, earlier, because I told him that posting a porn video in a political messaging group should be kept private and not shared.. I wish he didn’t know that I existed.

It seems that life and people, test some more than others.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

sext: ready player one

Inevitable, wasn't it?

hold your horses gently

Missed the point, didn't he?

don't talk to me before I exist

Or, for that matter, after.

me: it hurts when I paint
doktor: abstract expressionism?
me: no, my arm

Or both as likely as not.

I like my coffee like I like my mornings, cold and dark

That and a stack of pancakes.

give up in aisle three

If not the whole goddamn store.

[iambiguous]

Mikhail Baryshnikov

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.

So, what's the equivalent of that here?

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.

So, what's the equivalent of that here?

No one is born a dancer. You have to want it more than anything.

Nope, never did.

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than lifes daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

Well, music and literature anyway.

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.

He's that good, eh?

Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum, every movement on stage, in words is virtually impossible.

What here we call virtually improbable.

[iambiguous]

so sad today

if you need me i’ll be trapped inside myself

I know: Huh?

kind of in the mood for death

Maybe mine, maybe yours.

i like to blame myself for everything just in case

I'm for blaming others myself.

sometimes i forget i have depression and then it reminds me

Naturally as it were.

if you need me i’ll be taking things too personally

Like there's any other way.

hello, my name is what’s the point?

Yep, there it is, right on the name tag.

[iambiguous]

Robert Musil

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.

Yo, Mr. Objectivist!

There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses...

Yo, Kids!

With its claims to profundity, boldness and originality, thinking still limits itself provisionally to the exclusively rational and scientific. ... As soon as it lays hold of the feelings, it becomes spirit.

I know: it would have to be that way, wouldn't it?

All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!

That is one way to look at it.

Every word wants to be taken literally, else it decays into a lie. But one mustn't take any word literally, else the world becomes a madhouse.

We're in there somewhere, right?

I am not only convinced that what I say is false, but also that what one might say against it is false. Despite this, one must begin to talk about it. In such a case the truth lies not in the middle, but rather all around, like a sack, which, with each new opinion one stuffs into it, changes its form, and becomes more and more firm.

We're in there somewhere, right?

[iambiguous]

John Cage

There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.

Or three if you count the intellectual contraptions you find here.

Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound.

In other words, whatever that means.

The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.

You know, among other things.

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

Oh, sure, that'll make them go away.

The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.

Our Indians or theirs, he wondered.

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

So, what are the odds it's a true story?

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

My guess: Man is still a mystery. Woman too.

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

Either that or, here, have a “condition”.

"The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any." Hannah Arendt

Unless of course it’s a little [or a lot] of both.

“Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Unless of course it isn't.

"Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?“ Søren Kierkegaard

Yo, dasein!

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nope, never have. You know, yet.

[iambiguous]

Terry Eagleton

Americans use the word "dream" as often as psychoanalysts do.

Should that concern us?

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

As well it should must be.

The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.

So, what's that make the Old Testament?

The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society.

Or, far more likely, the least compelling.

Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.

Cheek by jowl, he utterly disagreed.

Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair.

What's that make us then?

[iambiguous]

Delia Owens

Kya wondered who started using the word cell instead of cage.

Anyone here know?

If only she could join in, belong to them. Kya knew it wasn’t so much that the herd would be incomplete without one of its deer, but that each deer would be incomplete without her herd.

I skipped that part myself.

The Barkley Cove graveyard trailed off under tunnels of dark oaks. Spanish moss hung in long curtains, creating cavelike sanctuaries for old tombstones - the remains of a family here, a loner there, in no order at all. Fingers of gnarled roots had torn and twisted gravestones into hunched and nameless forms. Markers of death all weathered into nubbins by elements of life.

My kind of oblivion, he thought.

I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not. I don’t know the answer. Maybe there isn’t one.

Let's find it. You know, finally.

Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was...

And what will never be.

She knew it wasn’t Chase she mourned, but a life defined by rejections. As the sky and clouds struggled overhead, she said out loud, “I have to do life alone. But I knew this. I’ve known a long time that people don’t stay.

Worse [sometimes]: the ones that do.

[iambiguous]

Karl Kraus

How powerful social mores are! Only a spider's web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting.

No, really, I get this.

If children had been told that they could not blow their noses, this alone would make adults blush.

No, really, I get this.

Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.

The rest as they say is history.

I can say with pride that I have spent days and nights not reading anything, and that with unflagging energy I use every moment to acquire gradually an encyclopedic lack of education.

This reminds me of the things some here take pride in.

I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am.

That's something to aim for here.

Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts.

Or, as the salesmen insist, tits.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks." Jorge Luis Borges

Is this defensible?

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music." Vladimir Nabokov

He means death metal of course.
Or rap?

"For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist." Vladimir Nabokov

See, I told you.

"My criticism of Hegel's procedure is that when in his discussion he arrives at a contradiction, he construes it as a crisis in the universe." Alfred North Whitehead

You know, as Marx did.
Well, as a materialist.

“Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Let's explain that to the Kids here.

“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.” Rudolf Carnap

Yes, but only if you're lucky.

[iambiguous]

Wim Wenders

My advice is, don't spend money on therapy. Spend it in a record store.

Remember them?

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

Here? The blind leading the blind. Right, Kids?

I sometimes feel fiction is the ideal preservation for real memories. Fiction is such a good place to keep things.

Until it becomes indistinguishable from lies.

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed.

Or reinforce the conception that things are shit and can never be changed.

Whoever came up first with that saying a picture is worth a thousand words didn't understand the first thing about either one.

Let's explain what that means.

The beautiful image today means nothing. It's worth shit. In fact, it's almost as if it has the opposite effect, because you're just like everything else out there.

So, does that bother you?

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

Believe it or not however there are exceptions.

"Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability.” Rudolf Carnap

Name that tune.

“Despite their pretensions, all of them, the "Fourth International," "anarchists", and "ultra-leftists," are but historical memories, minute scabs on the wounds of the working class, destined to be shed as the new skin readies itself in the depths of its tissues.” Cornelius Castoriadis

Tell that to Donald Trump.

"Revolution does not mean torrents of blood, the taking of the Winter Palace, and so on. Revolution means a radical transformation of society's institutions. In this sense, I certainly am a revolutionary.” Cornelius Castoriadis

Me too. Once. And look at the world today.

"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." Friedrich Nietzsche

I'll bet that's still true.

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach --- that it makes no sense.” Philip Roth

On the other hand, does that?

[iambiguous]

Martha Graham

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

Why do people say things like this, he wondered.

Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.

Next up: Some women.

What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.

Unless, of course, they either do or do not act on it.

People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.

Mystical enough for you?

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.

Biological imperatives as it were.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

And philosophers?

[iambiguous]

Stefan Zweig

Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?

Ignorance is bliss?

In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

So, is this true? And how about checkers?

...for the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.

If he does say so himself.

Ah, how fatefully swift is the move from one feeling to another.

So, how fateful was yours?

Art knows no happier moment than the opportunity to show the symmetry of an extreme, during that moment of spheric harmony when the dissonance dissolves for the blink of an eye, dissolves into a blissful harmony, when the most extreme opposites, coming together from the greatest alienation, fleetingly touch with lips of the word and of love.

He doesn't take the words right out of my mouth.

In their overestimation of the role of civilization, the humanists misunderstand the primary forces of the world of primitive human drives with their untamable violence. With their optimistic view of the role of culture, they trivialize the terrifying, hardly solvable problems of mass hatred and of the great passionate psychoses of the human race.

You come to understand this a decade at a time.