a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Dorothy Parker

I hate writing, I love having written.[/b]

That’s quite common, I would imagine.

Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.

We all know that tone of course.

Tell him I was too fucking busy–or vice versa.

Or, sure, the other way around.

What fresh hell is this?

On the other hand, for some, it’s probably good practice.

They sicken of the calm who know the storm.

How ass backwards is that? But point taken.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Anyone know what’s actually on it? Or, sure, is that it?

[b]Nora Ephron

I live in my neighborhood. My neighborhood consists of the dry cleaner, the subway stop, the pharmacist, the supermarket, the cash machine, the deli, the beauty salon, the nail place, the newsstand, and the place where I go for lunch. All this is within two blocks of my house. Which is another thing I love about life in New York: Everything is right there. If you forgot to buy parsley, it takes only a couple of minutes to run out and get it. This is good, because I often forget to buy parsley.[/b]

Can you say the same about your own neighborhood?
Actually, I almost can about mine.

Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all.

In other words, she was one of the lucky ones.

In a socialist country you can get rich by providing necessities, while in a capitalist country you can get rich by providing luxuries.

Let’s imagine this in, say, Pyongyang.

On some level, my life has been wasted on me. After all, if I can’t remember it, who can?
The past is slipping away and the present is a constant affront. I can’t possibly keep up.

Of course now she doesn’t have to.

I have spent a great deal of my life discovering that my ambitions and fantasies - which I once thought of as totally unique - turn out to be clichés.

What’s that say about our ambitions and fantasies then?

I think the hardest thing about writing is writing.

Damn, it would have to that, wouldn’t it.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.” W.H. Auden[/b]

Let’s file this one under, “fair is fair”.

“The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.” W.H. Auden

The mystery of music. That never goes away.

“The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.” Henri Bergson

Having first of course created the flocks of sheep.

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Henri Bergson

Of course folks like me take this much too far.

“Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” Voltaire

On the other hand, how certain can we be about this?

“I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Nikos Kazantzakis

That’s close but not quite meaningless.

[b]Erica Jong

The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.[/b]

Well, perhaps not an actual law here.

You don’t have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

Maybe, but how about a man?

Rendall’s first law of jealousy: jealousy does the cock harder and pussy wetter.

Any particular Rendall?

Yet a man assumes that a woman’s refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it’s no. When a woman says no, it’s yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves. Finally, after centuries of living under the shadow of such assumptions, they no longer know what they want and can never make up their minds about anything. And men, of course, compound the problem by mocking them for their indecisiveness and blaming it on biology, hormones, premenstrual tension.

Let’s pin down the percentages here: genes more or less than memes?

I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, ‘the absentminded professor-’ They screamed at me, but I couldn’t hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe.

Trust me: Don’t expect this to always work.

No wonder the word ‘feminism’ was feared. It had been much too narrowly defined. I define a feminist as a self-empowering woman who wishes the same for her sisters. I do not think the term implies a certain sexual orientation, a certain style of dress or membership in a certain political party. A feminist is merely a woman who refuses to accept the notion that women’s power must come through men.

Not counting Mr. Reasonable of course.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.” Thomas Carlyle[/b]

Not unlike weak minds.

“For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Really, think about that.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle

Let’s pin down the difference.

“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.” Socrates

In other words, among other things, we get old. And the more beautiful you are, the grimmer that must be.

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” Albert Camus

Still, none perhaps will ever top mine.

“It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.” Blaise Pascal

So, do you believe that this is true?

[b]John Fowles, The Magus

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.
I suppose one could say that Hitler didn’t betray his self.
You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.[/b]

See how simple it all is?

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.

Right, like they’re actually the same thing.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

Sure, if you want to call them answers.

You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.

Nope, haven’t smiled yet.

The dead live.
How do they live?
By love.

First, let’s run that by the dead.

I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic that my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope—an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose of one permanently useful thing, Oxford’s greatest gift to civilized life: Socratic honesty. It showed me, very intermittently, that it is not enough to revolt against one’s past. One day I was outrageously bitter among some friends about the Army; back in my own rooms later it suddenly struck me that just because I said with impunity things that would have apoplexed my dead father, I was still no less under his influence. The truth was I was not a cynic by nature, only by revolt. I had got away from what I hated, but I hadn’t found where I loved, and so I pretended that there was nowhere to love. Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.

Though probably true, I am myself still no less a hardcore cynic. It is simply the only point of view that makes sense.

[b]Seneca

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.[/b]

Tell us about it?

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Or sometimes all it is is luck.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

Like something like this can actually be known.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Here of course the rest really is history.

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via - There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

That’s certainly still true.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

Not counting the times you get confused.

[b]Nein

Grammar, syntax, and cynicism walk into a bar. Bartender: what wouldn’t it be?[/b]

Just out of curiosity, where is this bar?

We regret to inform you that capitalism hired a few temps to dig its own grave. Then flipped it as a luxury time-share.

Let’s file this one under, “it doesn’t surprise me”.

A gentle reminder that history can now skip the tragedy. And go directly to farce.

Cue the Oval Office.

I was told there’d be better lies.

Or: I was told there’d be better fake news.

It was the summer of our disbelief.

Next up: the autumn of our disbelief.

If we’re going to live in a dystopia, it’d be nice to at least have one we could take somewhat seriously.

Has it really gotten that bad?

[b]Günter Grass

Grownups have it in them to be creative, and sometimes, with the help of ambition, hard work, and a bit of luck they actually are, but being grownups, they have no sooner created some epoch-making invention than they become a slave to it.[/b]

Not counting us of course.

But every time I shunned books, as scholars sometimes do, cursed them as verbal graveyards, and tried to make contact with the common folk, I ran up against the kids in our building and felt fortunate, after a few brushes with those little cannibals, to return to my reading in one piece.

Tell me that hasn’t only gotten more relevant. And here we have the Kids too.

An entire gullible nation believed faithfully in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus was really the Gasman.

Of course here [for some] he’s the President.

And Oskar was kneeling at the left side-altar, trying to teach the boy Jesus how to drum, but the rascal wouldn’t drum, offered no miracle. Oskar had sworn back then and swore again outside the locked church door: I’ll teach him to drum yet. Sooner or later.

That’ll be a miracle.

The grim portrait of Beethoven hanging over the piano . . . was removed from its nail, and an equally grim portrait of Hitler was hung on the same nail. . . . Mama . . . insisted that Beethoven be placed, if not over the sofa, at least over the sideboard. This resulted in the grimmest of confrontations: Hitler and the genius hung opposite each other, stared at each other, saw through each other, yet found no joy in what they saw.

And now of course they’re both long dead and gone.

Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists.

On the other hand, is it possible that this does make sense?

[b]Neil Gaiman

It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth – not to mention sweet potato pudding and spice cabbage – and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte’s famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth.[/b]

Hell, we can’t all be Shakespeare.

Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

Ain’t that almost close to being nearly the truth?

If there’s one thing that a study of history has taught us, it is that things can always get worse.

If not will always get worse.

I think hell’s something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go. They’re doing the same things they always did. They’re doing it to themselves. That’s hell.

Of course they don’t know that. Just look at the one’s doing it here.

Small children believe themselves to be gods, or some of them do, and they can only be satisfied when the rest of the world goes along with their way of seeing things.

Five will get you ten they grow up to be objectivists.

It’s easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud.

Either that or post it here.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

…the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification.[/b]

You know, if this Deity actually does exist.

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

Probably including Michael Cohen.
Right, Don?

The principle of vis inertiae…seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress…

Hell, that’s proven here on almost any given day.
Well, whatever it means anyway.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.

We’ll need some examples of course.

…in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind - that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content - and that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on the great question of social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.

Anyone here ever been?

So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.

And not just just world one suspects.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

One eternity at a time, please.[/b]

On the other hand, try to imagine more than one.

An optimist: Everything is going to be OK!
A pessimist: Nothing is going to be OK.
A true pessimist: Think positive!

Clearly, I’m missing something here.

Ready.
Set.
Relax.
Don’t do it.

Let alone do it again and again and again.

There’s no music more passionate than silence.

Of course sometimes you can hardly hear it.

You know who definitely has a special place in hell? People who say ‘I hear you.’
As in:
You’re not listening to me!
I hear you.

I hear that.

You may believe in God, witchcraft or astrology, but you’re way more superstitious if you believe in common sense.

Or, here, what passes for philosophy.

[b]Federico García Lorca

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I’m still alive…[/b]

Let’s just say this can only go on for so long.

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone

Or, for others, five in the morning.

There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain’s tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.

What to make of this, he wondered. True? False? Good? Bad?

The important thing in life is to let the years carry us along.

Indeed, what could be clearly more opaque than that?

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

Millions of them now.

Death laid its eggs in the wound…

Let that sink in.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” Alfred North Whitehead[/b]

The rest [unfortunately] is history.

“The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Over and over and over again.

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” Victor Hugo

Close enough?

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?” Rene Descartes

Me, I must have been born that way.

“We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.” Rene Descartes

Cue the fucking objectivists.

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all.” Thomas J. Watson

Okay, but what if you triple it?

[b]C.G. Jung

Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilization. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organization disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present. In my opinion, faith does not exclude thought (which is man’s strongest weapon), but unfortunately many believers seem to be so afraid of science (and incidentally of psychology) that they turn a blind eye to the numinous psychic powers that forever control man’s fate. We have stripped all things of their mystery and numinosity; nothing is holy any longer.[/b]

Indeed, though few take this as far as I do.
Right?

I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience.

Yet another observation [qua insight] all the way up in the clouds.

Communion gives us warmth.
Singleness gives us light.
At immeasurable distance stands one single star at the zenith.
This star is the God and goal of humanity.
In this world one is Abraxas,
creater and destroyer of one’s world.

Abraxas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas
Hesse: “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”
Anyone here care [dare] to bring this down to earth?

The ordinary lunatic is generally a harmless, isolated case; since everyone sees that something is wrong with him, he is quickly taken care of. But the unconscious infections of groups of so-called normal people are more subtle and far more dangerous.

And, no, not just the lunatics in Trumpworld.

Remember that you can know yourself, and with that you know enough. But you cannot know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself, or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself. That is his limit.

Imagine him then in a discussion here with me.

When a person tries to obey the unconscious, he will often, as we have seen, be unable to do just as he pleases.

What the fuck does that even mean?
Seriously. Has anyone here ever obeyed the unconscious?
Describe it please.

[b]D.H. Lawrence

Having lived among the owning classes, he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not to care, not to care about the wages.
Yet, if you were poor and wretched, you had to care. Anyhow, it was becoming the only thing they did care about. The care about money was like a great cancer, eating away the individuals of all classes. He refused to care about money.
And what then? What did life offer apart from the care of money? Nothing.[/b]

Sure, “nothing” may be going a bit too far.

It is the masses: they are the unchangeable. An individual may emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesn’t alter the mass. The masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science…Only today education is one of the bad substitutes for a circus. What is wrong today is that we’ve made a profound hash of the circuses part of the programme, and poisoned our masses with a little education.

Just smart enough not to be dumb enough to not actually understand this.

And they fear nothing, and they respect nothing, the young don’t.

Youth isn’t wasted on them for nothing.

Ah God, what has man done to man? What have the leaders of men been doing to their fellow men? They have reduced them to less than humanness; and now there can be no fellowship any more! It is just a nightmare.

But only until Don Trump drains the swamp. Or, sure, only until Bob Mueller does.

Whatever life may be, and whatever horror men have made of it, the world is a lovely place, something to marvel over. The world is an amazing place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any woman who doesn’t have a little bit of whore in her is pretty much a dried up stick.

By the way, what’s the male equivalent?

[b]God

I’m not pro-life. In fact if you know My track record I’m far more pro-death.[/b]

Indeed, none of us have not died yet.

There is intelligent life on other planets and they’re laughing at you.

Well, tell them from us that we’re laughing at them.

The best thing humanity can do to save the planet, objectively speaking and beyond a shadow of a doubt, is die.

Wow, how loving, just and merciful is that?!

I’m deeply sorry for the racist, sexist and homophobic things I wrote when I was younger.

Maybe, but He’s still going to Hell.

I’d like to see some dirt on Trump. Six feet of it.

Yeah, like that’s not within His power.

It could be worse. And soon it will.

Of course that’s always been true.

[b]Edward St. Aubyn

Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly?[/b]

Let’s file this one under, “probably”.

The Park’s nice, his father conceded, but the rest of the country is just people in huge cars wondering what to eat next.

Of course that’s a global phenomenon now. Depending on the park.

A little Indian guy being sneered at by monsters of English privilege would normally have unleashed the full weight of Anne’s loyalty to underdogs, but this time it was wiped out by Vijay’s enormous desire to be a monster of English privilege himself.

Perhaps he’ll do better next time.

Balance was so elusive: either it was like this, too fast, or there was the heavy thing like wading through a swamp to get to the end of a sentence.

So, how balanced is this?

Thank goodness there were people who were happy with nothing, thought Julia, so that people like her (and everyone else she had ever met) could have more.

Clearly a rationalization.

There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it…

Of course power does corrupt.

[b]Tom Stoppard

There is nothing more to be said about sexual congress.
Is it the same as love?
Oh no, it is much nicer than that. [/b]

Indeed, even in solitary confinement.

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those left behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.

True, so where do we fit into it?

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

Ouch?

No one gets up after death–there is no applause–there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that’s death.

Right, like he can actually know this.

The world outside of me has no meaning independent of my thinking it. (pauses to look) I look out of the window. A garden. Trees. Grass. A young woman in a chair reading a book. I think: chair. So she is sitting. I think: book. So she is reading. Now the young woman touches her hair where it’s come undone. But how can we be sure there is a world of phenomena, a woman reading in a garden? Perhaps the only thing that’s real is my sensory experience, which has the form of a woman reading-- in a universe which is in fact empty! But Immanuel Kant says no! Because what I perceive as reality includes concepts which I cannot experience through the senses. Time and space. Cause and effect. Relations between things. Without me there is something wrong with this picture. The trees, the grass, the woman are merely…oh, she’s coming! she’s coming in here! I say, don’t leave! where are you going?!

To make a long story short, they fuck But it doesn’t work out.

If they are all so obsessed with change they should begin by changing for dinner.

Just clever enough not to be inane.

[b]Anthony Bourdain

The journey is part of the experience — an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.[/b]

You all know where I take the A train, don’t you? And how serious I am about it. Repeatedly as it were.

PETA doesn’t want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don’t want any animals to die-ever-and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don’t want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them probably less delicious.

Conflicting goods for idiots?

Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.

Simple maybe but not just burgers and fries.

Don’t touch my dick, don’t touch my knife.

Though not just in that order.

There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind.

Unless of course you count suicide.

But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.

Maybe we should amend the Constitution. Or add one more Commandment.