a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Evelyn Waugh

Your colleague, Captain Grimes, has been convicted before me on evidence that leaves no possibility of his innocence - of a crime…which I can neither understand nor excuse. I dare say I need not particularise.[/b]

Not, as it were, that the particulars matter.

A conservative is not merely an obstructionist who wishes to resist the introduction of novelties; nor is he, as was assumed by most 19th-century parliamentarians, a brake to frivolous experiment. He has positive work to do … Civilization has no force of its own beyond what is given from within. It is under constant assault and it takes most of the energies of civilized man to keep going at all … If [it] falls we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history.

True, but not too conservative. Or, for that matter, liberal.

One of the problems of the vacation is money, father.
Oh, I shouldn’t worry about a thing like that at your age.
You see, I’ve run rather short.
Yes? said my father without any sound of interest.
In fact I don’t quite know how I’m going to get through the next two months.
Well, I’m the worst person to come to for advice. I’ve never been ‘short’ as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke? On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that. Your grandfather once said to me, ‘Live within your means, but if you do get into difficulties, come to me. Don’t go to the Jews.’

This then gets passed down through the generations.

Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God either. When they want to hate Him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it’s God and hate that. I suppose you think that’s all bosh.

Bosh being the least of it. You know, for some.

It was dead contrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is found to have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points, and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, so that, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from either side of the tangle of wire.

And not just on the Korean Peninsula.

Modernization is just another jungle closing in.

At least until Don Trump drains the swamp.

[b]Mary Roach

Religion says that your soul goes to heaven or possibly to a seven-tiered garden, or that your soul is reincarnated into a new body, or that you lie around in your coffin clothes until the Second Coming. And, of course, only one of these can be true. Which means that for millions of people, religion will turn out to have been a bum steer as regards the hereafter.[/b]

Unless of course religion is more about comforting and consoling you here and now than in whatever might actually be your fate there and then. That’s the beauty of it.

It would be especially comforting to believe that I have the answer to the question, What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?

Is that really something to joke about?
[sure, apparently]

There, just beyond his open palm, was our mother’s face. I wasn’t expecting it. We hadn’t requested a viewing, and the memorial service was closed-coffin. We got it anyway. They’d shampooed and waved her hair and made up her face. They’d done a great job, but I felt taken, as if we’d asked for the basic carwash and they’d gone ahead and detailed her. Hey, I wanted to say, we didn’t order this. But of course I said nothing. Death makes us helplessly polite.

Not counting mine of course.

The slang for the rectum is “prison wallet”.

Gee, I wonder what that means?

It’s possible that the reason I’ve never experienced a ghostly presence is that my temporal lobes aren’t wired for it. It could well be that the main difference between skeptics…and believers is the neural structure they were born with. But the question still remains: Are these people whose EMF-influenced brains alert them to “presences” picking up something real that the rest of us can’t pick up, or are they hallucinating? Here again, we must end with the Big Shrug, a statue of which is being erected on the lawn outside my office.

Sure, it could all be as simple as that.

…think of it, said Robert Rosenbluth, a doctor whose acquaintance I made at the start of this book. No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine tuned as an anus. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.

Right, like that will work, among other places, here.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

Time is a player. Time is part of today, not simply a measure of its passing.[/b]

Or, perhaps, in a determined world, the only player.
In other words, whatever that means.

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

How is it that way indeed.

Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

Mine is tragic, sure, but no way in hell would I [could I] ever imagine it the most tragic.

Can I speak my mind or am I dumb inside a borrowed language, captive of bastard thoughts? What of me is mine?

You actually know, don’t you?

What art does is coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous.

Or, rather, that’s what we tell ourselves it does. Though, sure, it might.

Their throats were bare for God.

That can’t be good.

Even now when I’m furious, what I would like to do is to punch the infuriating person flat on the ground. That solves nothing I know, and I spent a lot of time understanding my own violence, which is not of the pussycat kind. There are people who could never commit murder; I am not one of those people. It’s better to know it, better to know who you are, and what lies in you, and what you could do, might do, under extreme provocation.

That makes [at least] two of us.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“It is easier for a man to burn down his own house than to get rid of his prejudices.” Roger Bacon[/b]

Pick one:
1] that’s going too far
2] that’s not going far enough

“Life is opinion.” Marcus Aurelius

Is that a fact?

“Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions.” Epictetus

What does that even mean?

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” Epictetus

On the other hand, don’t be too content.

“The quest for absolute certainty is an immature, if not infantile, trait of thinking.” Herbert Feigl

Of course we can be absolutely certain about that.

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand." Albert Einstein

For example, all the things that we can’t.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run.[/b]

Of course we haven’t heard the fish’s side yet…

Did I know him? Did I love him? You ask me that? I knew him like you know nobody in the world, and I loved him like you love God.

And this means what exactly?

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.

And this means what exactly?

But are there not many fascists in your country?
There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

And not just in Trumpworld.

Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day’s work.

What’s the equivalent of that in ballpoint pens?

The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it and the idiotic way they run it when they get it so that an honest man will distrust it as he would distrust a racket and refuse to be enslaved into it.

Of course that still hasn’t happened yet.

[b]Philip Larkin

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.[/b]

Actually, I can’t say I’m sorry enough to my own daughter.

This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.

Sounds about right anyway.

I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, and therefore abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation.

On the other hand, consider the fucking alternatives.

…books are a load of crap…

Right, every single last one of them.

The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It’s more like a desire to separate a piece of one’s experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.

Maybe not, sure, but can you come any closer?

life is first boredom, then fear.
whether or not we use it, it goes,
and leaves what something hidden from us chose,
and age, and then the only end of age.

Maybe not, sure, but can you come any closer?

[b]tiny nietzsche

What’s a good time to not call?[/b]

Or, here, a good time not to post.

hot singles in your area slowly withering with age as they march towards death

And, more than anything, you wish you were one of them.

If you can’t destroy yourself, who can you destroy?

Or, if you’re like me, you’ll think of someone.

eventually you understand nothing is about you

And then you die.

everybody dies sometimes

No, really.

dogs shouldn’t have jobs unless they want them

Like cats in other words.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Fuck you, said Czernobog. Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart.[/b]

In other words, like most of us.

A novel seemed the easiest way to get what I had had in my head into the inside of other people’s heads. Books are good that way.

That’s called rubbing it in.

A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change.

With or without a happy ending.

I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.

You know, like the terminator. Well, sort of.

I am frightened of nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing.
Are you extremely frightened of nothing?
Absolutely terrified of it.
I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?
No, I most definitely would not.

Can you spot the double entendre?

You have a very open relationship with your fans.
Yes. We have an open relationship. Obviously they can see other authors if they want, and I can see other readers.

Same with me and my fans here.

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

I think after you live it’s like before you lived.[/b]

Only longer?

When you hide your face from the world, you can’t see the world.

Unless of course that’s the point.

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering.

Still, I’ll settle for it.

Writing is like pulling teeth out of your penis.

Anyone here know why?

What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you’d turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shit you’d turn brown, and if you were blue you’d turn blue. Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you’d never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you’re angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, “Congratulations!” Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you’re feeling a lot of something, but you don’t know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I’m happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!

Not the dumbest “what if?” perhaps but it’s up there.

They say that people who live next to waterfalls don’t hear the water.

You know, if they’re deaf.

[b]so sad today

i was born not ready[/b]

Of course that’s only natural.

you need to learn how to be fake better

Until, with enough practice, you can even fool yourself.

it’s not that i like satan so much as i want satan to like me

I can think of only one reason for that.

sexually transmitted anxiety

And then [inevitably] the limp dick.

can you not talk to me about nuclear war unless it’s literally happening

Besides, it won’t be long now.

when you see the emptiness in everything i’ll be here for you

Until you see the emptiness in that too.

[b]Terry Pratchett

A good plan isn’t one where someone wins, it’s where nobody thinks they’ve lost.[/b]

Not unlike the debates we have here.

Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.

So they tell me.

Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk.

As for the ethnic majority, double it at least.

My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them. My dream holiday would be a) a ticket to Amsterdam b) immunity from prosecution and c) a baseball bat.

Of course if doesn’t quite work that way here in America.

What’s a philosopher? said Brutha.
Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting, said a voice in his head.

Clearly a pragmatist.

Some things are fairly obvious when it’s a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.

You know, if that’s actually true.

[b]Philosophy Tweet

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” Friedrich Nietzsche[/b]

Ah, the phenomenal world!

“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.” Voltaire

Well, not counting every fucking objectivist that has ever lived. Or [no doubt] will ever live.

“We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.” Epictetus

You know, if you actually have hope.

“Reason is nothing without imagination.” Rene Descartes

Just don’t get carried away, okay?

“How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?” Rene Descartes

One, say, that God is having.

“One word Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” Sophocles

One other word: Unrequited.

[b]Ethan Hawke

There have always been two ways to be rich: by accumulating vast sums or by needing very little.[/b]

Or, if you’re a big Hollywood star, a carefully calibrated intertwining of both.

Pay attention: what you need to know is usually in front of you. There are no secrets, just things people choose not to notice.

So, does this sound more astute than it actually is?

Don’t fear suffering. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. The facts are always friendly. Without a little agony, none of us would bother to learn a thing. The earth has to be tilled before the seeds can be planted.

So, does this sound more astute than it actually is?

Now it’s different, and to me it was shockingly humble, but there with my girl in my arms and our child in her belly I knew I had reached the moment my life had been waiting for. I was going to be a father and a husband.
I spanked her bottom and cranked up the tunes.

A perfect balance perhaps.

Which wolf will win?..
…whichever one you feed…

Provided of course it’s not you on the menu.

We all see the world through the prism of our identity.

Dasein he mean.
Even if he doesn’t.

[b]Joseph Heller

Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.[/b]

Let’s figure out why.

It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.

The miracle though is that it didn’t make it worse.

After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. “They asked for volunteers. It’s very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I’ll write you the instant I get back.” And he had not written anyone since.

The guy was a fucking genius. You know, in a Catch-22 world.

Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.

And it didn’t help that he was a Kid.

Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and open every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

You might call him an all American hero. Loosely.

He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers’ night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar.
All right, I’ll dance with you, she said, before Yossarian could even speak. But I won’t let you sleep with me.
Who asked you? Yossarian asked her.
You don’t want to sleep with me? she exclaimed with surprise.
I don’t want to dance with you.

Based on a true story perhaps.

[b]Steven D. Levitt

If you both own a gun and a swimming pool in your backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.[/b]

Yes, but only statistically.

One thing we’ve learned is that when people, especially politicians, start making decisions based on a reading of their moral compass, facts tend to be among the first casualties.

Of course that’s only “human all too human”.

Most of us want to fix or change the world in some fashion. But to change the world, you first have to understand it.

In other words, as “one of us”.

Ideas nearly always seem brilliant when they’re hatched, so we never act on a new idea for at least twenty-four hours.

Unless of course it’s “one of ours”.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Or, more to the point [usually], the other way around.

But as history clearly shows, most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others. This doesn’t make them bad people; it just makes them human.

That or [if they’re assholes] both.

[b]Stephanie Danler

Any business transaction—actually any life transaction—is negotiated by how you are making the other person feel.[/b]

Actually, it’s in how you think you are making the other person feel. How they really feel is often their own business.

It’s an epidemic with women your age. A gross disparity between the way that they speak and the quality of thoughts that they’re having about the world. They are taught to express themselves in slang, in clichés, sarcasm—all of which is weak language. The superficiality of the language colors the experiences, rendering them disposable instead of assimilated. And then to top it all, you call yourselves ‘girls.’

Let’s describe the rendition for “boys”.

BITTER: always a bit unanticipated. Coffee, chocolate, rosemary, citrus rinds, wine.

Words. Though hardly ever unanticipated. At least not here.

Aging is peculiar, she said, moving a piece of parsnip around the plate with her fork. I don’t think you should be lied to about it. You have a moment of relevancy—when the books, clothes, bars, technology—when everything is speaking directly to you, expressing you exactly. You move toward the edge of the circle and then you’re abruptly outside the circle. Now what to do with that? Do you stay, peering backward? Or do you walk away?

Like it makes any difference. As, for some of us, it didn’t.

[b]Not being able to swipe into the subway when people are backing up behind you. Waiting for him at the bar. Leaving your purse open on a stool with a mess of bills visible. Mispronouncing the names while presenting French wines. Your clogs slipping on the waxed floors. The way your arms shoot out and you tense your face when you almost fall. Taking your job seriously. Watching the sex scene from Dirty Dancing on repeat and eating a box of gingersnaps for dinner on your day off. Forgetting your stripes, your work pants, your socks. Mentally mapping the bar for corners where you might catch him alone. Getting drunker faster than everyone else. Not knowing what foie gras is. Not knowing what you think about abortion. Not knowing what a feminist is. Not knowing who the mayor is. Throwing up between your feet on the subway stairs. On a Tuesday. Going back for thirds at family meal. Excruciating diarrhea in the employee bathroom. Hurting yourself when you hit your head on the low pipe. Refusing to leave the bar though it’s over, completely over. Bleeding in every form. Beer stains on your shirt, grease stains on your jeans, stains in every form. Saying you know where something is when you have absolutely no idea where it is.

At some point, I leveled out. Everything stopped being embarrassing.[/b]

Trust me: not everything.

We all walk in a cloud of mourning for the New York that just disappeared.

And not just 42nd Street.

[b]Malcolm Gladwell

Practical intelligence is practical in nature: that is, it’s now knowledge for its own sake. It’s knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.[/b]

Amorally as likely as not.

Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation”–that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously…within a Western cultural context, which holds that if there is confusion, it is the fault of the speaker. But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said.

I know: How dumb is that?

Horchow’s daughter, Sally, told me a story of how she once took her father to a new Japanese restaurant where a friend of hers was a chef. Horchow liked the food, and so when he went home he turned on his computer, pulled up the names of acquaintances who lived nearby, and faxed them notes telling them of a wonderful new restaurant he had discovered and that they should try it. This is, in a nutshell, what word of mouth is. It’s not me telling you about a new restaurant with great food, and you telling a friend and that friend telling a friend. Word of mouth begins when somewhere along that chain, someone tells a person like Roger Horchow.

That’s what ILP needs then: the philosophical equivalent of Roger Horchow. Well, once the Kids are gone of course.

Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It’s five-tens-nine.

So, how important is this?

…he waits for the kid to decide whether to pull the gun up or simply to drop it - and all the while, even as he tracks the progress of the gun, he is also watching the kid’s face, to see whether he is dangerous or simply frightened. Is there a more beautiful example of a snap judgment? This is the gift of training and expertise - the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience.

Let’s make this applicable here. You know, if that’s even possible.

. . . it is not possible to staff a large company without short people. There simply aren’t enough tall people to go around.

Apparently even in to NBA.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

Only a philosopher can grasp
1460: God as an infinitely simple essence
1688: the pure certainty of doubt
2017: iPhone Terms & Conditions[/b]

He means a serious philosopher.

Sociology: It looks worse than it is
Philosophy: It sounds worse than it is
Psychology: It feels worse than it is
Politics: It’s a disaster

Not counting Wall Street of course.

Art History 101: The form is (in)visible!
Art History 201: The content is (in)visible!
Art History 301: It sold for how much?!?!

So, all you artists, does this seem reasonable?

“A picture is a secret about a secret; the more it tells you, the less you know.” Diane Arbus

Not unlike most posts here.

Literary Criticism 101: the author said A but meant B
201: the “author” said A but meant B
301: “the” “author” “said” “A” “but” “meant” “B”

Only now on Kindle.

Ancient philosophy: I know I know nothing
Enlightenment philosophy: I can know virtually anything
Modern philosophy: Knowledge? Just say no!

Post-modern philosophy: Knowledge? Just say maybe.

[b]André Gide

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.[/b]

Though I’m sure that together we’ll come up with something more fatal still.

I can’t expect others to share my virtues. It’s good enough for me if they share my vices.

Unless of course you’re an ironist.

Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

Let’s file this one under, “that’ll be the day”.

ما أكثر الأشياء التي كان من السهل الإقدام عليها لولا تلك الاعتراضات التي يتفنن الانسان في ابتكارها لنفسه وكثيرا ما حيل بيننا وبين هذا العمل أو ذاك لأننا قد سمعنا صوتا من داخلنا او من المحيطين بنا يقول لنا :اننا لن نقدر عليه
ولو لم نسمع هذا الصوت ونستجيب له لكشفت لنا التجربة عن نيله والفوز به

So, is this worth translating?

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

Clearly, that doesn’t work here.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

They don’t call it “nasty, brutish and short” for nothing.

[b]Roland Barthes

Language is never innocent.[/b]

Not even counting the times it is guilty as sin.

…that ambiguous area of culture where something unfailingly political, though separate from the political choices of the day, infiltrates judgment and language.

Or, for some, unambiguous.

In 1850, August Salzmann photographed, near Jerusalem, the road to Beith-Lehem (as it was spelled at the time): nothing but stony ground, olive trees; but three tenses dizzy my consciousness: my present, the time of Jesus, and that of the photographer, all this under the instance of ‘reality’ — and no longer through the elaborations of the text, whether fictional or poetic, which itself is never credible down to the root.

If he means what I think he means, he may well mean what I think I mean.

Freud to his fiancée: “The only thing that makes me suffer is being in a situation where it is impossible for me to prove my love to you”
Gide: "Everything in her behaviour seemed to say: Since he no longer loves me, nothing matters to me. Now, I still loved her, and in fact I had never loved her so much; but it was no longer possible for me to prove it to her. That was much the worst thing of all”

Don’t be surprised however if you fall somewhere in the middle.

Now take all the delights of the earth, melt them into one single delight, and cast it entire into a single man – all this will be as nothing to the delight of which I speak.

As you may well guess, I’ve never even come close.

The other’s body was divided: on one side, the body proper–skin, eyes–tender, warm; and on the other side, the voice–abrupt, reserved, subject to fits of remoteness, a voice which did not give what the body gave. Or further: on one side, the soft, warm, downy, adorable body. and on the other, the ringing, well-formed, worldly voice–always the voice.

Not unlike that [at times] inexplicable [even confounding] distinction between words and worlds.