a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

[b]Dan Savage

Owning a gun in America is one way for conservative white males to demonstrate their anger at crime, liberalism, feminism, and modernity. [/b]

Let’s decide: genes or memes?

Every American may have equal access to ice cream, but there’s no guarantee that the outcome of eating ice cream will be equal.

This certainly trivializes something.

Actual gay people can make many others feel uncomfortable and paranoid because they don’t know and can’t articulate what makes a person gay, and they worry that maybe they themselves are gay.

Next up: Actual philosophers.

The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War and justified it.

Gasp!

I get letters every year from women who think Valentine’s Day is an empty exercise, but are ironically pretty exercised when their boyfriends neglect or forget it.

Let’s explain this.

Relationships are monuments build on lies.

Ain’t that the truth.

[iambiguous]

[b]Pythagoras

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. [/b]

Next up: blah blah blah.

Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that… As a wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with others, yet it is always the same wax. So, the Soul being always the same, yet wears at different times different forms.

Just what we need…more fucking Soul crap.
You know, if it is crap.

Hate and fear breed a poison in the blood, which if continued, affects eyes, ears, nose and the organs of digestion. Therefore, it is not wise to hear and remember the unkind things others might say about you.

Like that has ever had anything to do with wisdom.

Silence is better than unmeaning words.

What do you think…a typo?

Each celestial body, in fact each and every atom, produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony in which each element, while having it’s own function and character, contributes to the whole.

Unless of course I’m wrong

Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul.

He was left with no choice:

[iambiguous]

[b]Existential Comics

Socialism will never work, people are too selfish. That’s why we have a system where you work your entire life to make your boss richer while you get the scraps. To accommodate your natural selfishness.[/b]

He does have a point, right?
Well, if not yours of course.

Philosophy is important because without it how will we ever answer questions like “is philosophy important?”

Or, perhaps, ask questions like that?

British novel: let’s go to a party and find a wife.
German novel: let’s go to the wilderness and find ourselves.
Russian novel: let’s go to the depths of despair and then find out there is an even deeper level of despair we didn’t know about and go there.

American novel: Let’s turn this into a blockbuster movie.

Haven’t you heard? Communism is awful, millions died.
But haven’t millions died under capitalism too?
Yes, but under capitalism poor people deserve to die.

Among other things, two different takes on the masses.

A good philosopher is one who is obviously right, and no one can possibly refute.
A great philosopher is one who is obviously wrong, and no one can possibly refute.

Someone run this by Ecmandu.

I’ve been trying to follow all the Brexit drama, but the one thing that still confuses me is how did the English conquer the world?

My guess: In the same way that America elected Trump.

[iambiguous]

[b]Wanda Sykes

Since when did I become the spokesperson for nappy-headed hos? [/b]

Anyone here know?

Some black people want to get in touch with their African roots. But then you got some black people that just don’t give a damn. You tell them, ‘Hey, I just got back from the motherland.’ "They’re like, ‘Where’d you go - Detroit? Did you see The Temptations?’

If I were black, I wouldn’t give a damn, he thought.

Being gay is harder than being black. I didn’t have to come out black. I didn’t have to tell my parents about what its like to be black.

Makes sense to me.

That’s proof right there that men and women are on different levels because men can watch two women together and that’s a turn-on. It doesn’t work the same way for us, does it, ladies? No, uh-uh - it doesn’t work the same. You ask any woman in here her sexual fantasy, and I will bet you a million dollars that it’s NOT to go home and catch your man bent over with some big, burly guy standing behind him.

Maybe even five million dollars.

I enjoy stand-up because it has the biggest reward: instant gratification. You can hear the people laughing.

Hopefully with and not at you.

I knew something was wrong with the economy when the shampoo girl at my salon closed on a six bedroom house.

Hell, that might make anyone suspicious.

[iambiguous]

[b]Woody Guthrie

It’s a folk singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.[/b]

Unless of course you go electric.

I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns.

Nope, nothing like that yet.

Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.

Unless, of course, you go too far and it just becomes simplistic.

Some men rob you with a six-gun – others rob you with a fountain pen.

Fuck them both, he thought.

If we fix it so’s you can’t make money on war, we’ll all forget what we’re killing folks for.

Not counting the Nazis.

I love a good man outside the law, just as much as I hate a bad man inside the law.

Cue, among others, Pretty Boy Floyd: youtu.be/G4YKUJZI5Bg

[iambiguous]

[b]Werner Twertzog

It is important,
To tell the young,
They can be “Anything they can dream,”
So that, one day,
They’ll blame themselves,
Instead of the system.[/b]

Yep, that still works like a charm.

Jerry Seinfeld meets death.
Asks, “What’s up with the scythe?
Is the scythe really necessary?
Are we wheat?”
He dies.
The rest is silence.

Of course we’ll need to hear death’s side of it.

Sorry, that was a butt-dial, Your Holiness.

Butt-dialing. Is that a real thing?

Ducks, in a row, can be devoured more efficiently.

The part they always leave out.

I do not want a menu, just tell me what to eat.

Someone try this and get back to us.

Time is running out for me to become a “honky tonk man.”

Actually, it’s never even occurred to me.

[iambiguous]

[b]Oswald Spengler

Once upon a time, Freedom and Necessity were identical; but now what is understood by freedom is in fact indiscipline.[/b]

Cue, among other things, pop culture and mindless consumption. Though not necessarily in that order.

Optimism is Cowardice.

He means philosophicallly I suspect. And certainly politically.

By understanding the world I mean being equal to the world. It is the hard reality of living that is the essential, not the concept of life, that the ostrich philosophy of idealism propounds.

Let’s just say that here you know who you are.

In other words: what we call history is the specific form in which the cycles of nature are acted out in man-made form.

Of course he’s just paraphrasing Satyr.

Is there a logic of history? Is there, beyond all the casual and incalculable elements of the separate events, something that we may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, something that is essentially independent of the outward forms — social, spiritual and political — which we see so clearly?

Nope. No way. Nada.

At all times and in all places, the men and women of every culture deserve each other.

And that was never more true than today. And, no, not just in America.

[iambiguous]

[b]Art Spiegelman

Comics are a gateway drug to literacy. [/b]

Trust me: not always.

No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.

That might even be true for all of us.

I became a degenerate artist. My parents were shaped by their own experiences, and artists weren’t so useful in the death camps.

Surely, a non sequitur.

When a technology is replaced by another technology, the previous technology either becomes art or it dies.

Example?

With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.

Worth its salt? Really, what’s that a measure of?

What’s called art now probably has some legitimate things happening in it, but I’ve become more and more distrustful of a lot of it because it seems like an extension of the fashion trade and the stock market.

Or the soup can folks.

[iambiguous]

[b]tiny nietzsche

a coworker asked if he should get a twitter account. I asked if he had ever seen a river filled with garbage on fire[/b]

Of course there is a bit of irony here.

hot girls in the time of cholera

Hell, for that matter, hot girls in the time of Trump.

let’s ruin it together

I’ll go first.

might as well face it, you’re addicted to drugs

You know, paraphrasing Robert Palmer.

other types of sobriety:
eventually
pretty close
court ordered

And then death of course.

a cool date would be leaving me alone

If only from the cradle to the grave.

[iambiguous]

[b]Bob Dylan

Art can lead you to God. I think that’s the purpose of everything. If it’s not doing that, what’s it doing? It’s leading you the other way. It’s certainly not leading you nowhere. [/b]

Let alone nowhere fast.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

Not unlike my posts, he thought.

Somebody had to be Bob Dylan. I guess I was best equipped to do the job.

Well, until he went electric some say.

Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.

Not much that doesn’t cover I guess.

The only person you have to think about lying twice to is either yourself or to God. The press isn’t either of them. And I just figured they’re irrelevant.

Not a lot press in our lives though.

The warrior who’s strength is not to fight.

Something to strive for, perhaps? I know: just not in this world.

[iambiguous]

[b]Blake Crouch

There was simply nothing in his experience that even compared with the thrill of killing to protect his family. In this moment, it was the purpose of his existence. He felt, possibly for the first time in his life, like a fucking man.[/b]

Imagine then the thrill of going postal.

Most astrophysicists believe that the force holding stars and galaxies together—the thing that makes our whole universe work—comes from a theoretical substance we can’t measure or observe directly. Something they call dark matter. And this dark matter makes up most of the known universe.

Of course that’s all determined too.

'Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in, or walling out.’ Robert Frost wrote that.

Trump’s already figured that part out.

You’ve killed a hundred and thirty people, and you’re getting squeamish at sticking your finger up a girl’s ass? Some people pay to do it.

Anyone ever said that to you?

It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.

And then the actual youth it’s all wasted on.

Do you know how a gun works?
They hurt you.
They can. I shot a bullet into the back of Molly’s head so she wouldn’t be sick or sad anymore.
Did it hurt her?

So, would it?

[iambiguous]

[b]so sad today

is anything worse than everything?[/b]

Not even close.

when people say “how are you?” i never really know

Actually, he suggested, you never really can know.

can’t believe this giant disgusting thing is just a feeling

And there are hundreds more lined up.

even my fantasies reject me

Though, so far, not my dreams.

brb, i’m imagining the worst

I’ll tell you what I’m imagining if you’ll tell me what you’re imagining.

the revolution will be monetized

And then turned into bets at Vegas.

[iambiguous]

[b]Fiona Apple

It’s calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion.[/b]

Dead calm eventually.

I read on the Internet that I was dead.

I Googled it: nothing.

I only write when I’m angry or sad, so because that’s when I just have to write… If I’m having a good time and I’m happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I’m doing to go and write at the piano?

For some of us, nothing could be more reasonable.

I never went to concerts when I was a kid, so I never knew if what I was doing onstage was right.

Anyone know if she figured it out?

As a person who performs on stage, it’s good to be emotionally open. If you mess with someone when they are in that state, it’s like you’re messing with an animal when it’s eating.

How about when we’re performing here?

I got into therapy in the fifth grade because I said in a sarcastic way that I was going to kill myself, and they didn’t get it then. Nothing’s changed.

The fifth fucking grade?!

[iambiguous]

[b]Neal Stephenson

The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code—but their children believe it for entirely different reasons.
They believe it, the Constable said, because they have been indoctrinated to believe it.
Yes. Some of them never challenge it—they grow up to be small minded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel—as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw.
Which path do you intend to take, Nell? said the Constable, sounding very interested. Conformity or rebellion?
Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded—they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.[/b]

Ah, the simple-minded objectivists again.

Seven billion who need to be kept happy, and docile, until the end. How do you do that? What’s the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever.

Ah, the happy, docile objectivists again.

Juanita believes that nothing is provably true or provably false in the Bible. Because if it’s provably false, then the Bible is a lie, and if it’s provably true, then the existence of God is proven and there’s no room for faith.

Looks like we’re gonna be stuck here for at least forever.

Even the word ‘science’ comes from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to cut’ or ‘to separate.’ The same root led to the word ‘shit,’ which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us ‘scythe’ and ‘scissors’ and ‘schism,’ which have obvious connections to the concept of separation.

Or the reality od separation: Either/or. Is/ought.

It’s not about how women are deficient. It’s more about how men are deficient. Our social deficiencies, lack of perspective, or whatever you want to call it, is what enables us to study one species of dragonfly for twenty years, or sit in front of a computer for a hundred hours a week writing code. This is not the behavior of a well-balanced and healthy person, but it can obviously lead to great advances in synthetic fibers. Or whatever.

There’s something important in this. Let’s find it.

The revolution proceeded routinely and according to the rules of networked 21st-century protest.

Among other things, all ones and zeros.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“In the end, when it’s over, all that matters is what you’ve done.” Alexander the Great[/b]

Right, like you’ll be around to defend it.

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” C.G. Jung

So, is that right or wrong?

“I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.” Jean-Paul Sartre

How empty?

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.” Jean-Paul Sartre

And there are more worms where that one comes from.

"To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.” John Locke

Things only philosophers say.

"No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.” John Locke

Of course that’s when me and my ilk cue dasein.

[iambiguous]

[b]Miles Davis

We don’t play to be seen. I’m addicted to music, not audiences.[/b]

Hell, we don’t post here to be seen either, right?

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

And not just technically.

People will go for anything they don’t understand if it’s got enough hype.

Two words:
1] pop
2] culture

It’s like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people’s shit?

Like all the other races don’t have their own shit.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

And that goes [at least double] for bad music.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

Or even ten minutes for that matter.

[iambiguous]

[b]Jodie Foster

Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from. [/b]

Try getting further away from it than I am.

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age.

You know, being Jodie Foster.

People are always surprised when I say that I’m an atheist.

Join the crowd: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a … nd_theater

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.

Though it might be in the top ten.

How could you ask me to believe in God when there’s absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that’s out there that we haven’t discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don’t know any better.

Maybe can’t even know better.

Privacy above all else. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.

I’ve got mine, Jack.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The politicians are there to make you think you have a choice, you don’t have a choice.” George Carlin[/b]

Imagine then his reaction to Trumpworld.

"We must become just by doing just acts.” Aristotle

In other words, do what he did.

"He who has many friends has none.” Aristotle

Uh-oh. We’re all friends here, right?

“Choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” Aristotle

Define destiny?

"Those who act receive the prizes.” Aristotle

And thus “reality” TV was born.

“There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.” Aristotle

Not to mention the other way around?

[iambiguous]

[b]Andrew Sullivan

The important things are not worth knowing because they are useful. They are worth knowing because they are true. [/b]

In your head, for example.

The first person I came out to was God. And the first conversation I ever had with anybody was in prayer.

Of course we’ll need to hear God’s side.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

When it’s someone else’s?

The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

That’s how it is all right. On both sides.

I’m not one of these people who thinks everybody’s gay.

Indeed, some of us are miserable as hell.

Even if it’s deep unhappiness, it’s your unhappiness.

Does that actually make sense to anyone?

[iambiguous]

[b]Jane Campion

One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. [/b]

You know, being from different planets.

Because there is that sort of feeling that people don’t know what to do with gaps in their lives. It’s a scary notion, but actually, if you can stand in space just for a little while, a new door will open, or you’ll be able to see in the dark after a while. You’ll adjust.

Among other things, don’t expect this to actually work.

It’s harder being a woman director because on the whole women don’t have husbands or boyfriends who are willing to be wives.

Not being women for example. Though, sure, point taken.

I seem to have been able to make a career out of doing what I feel like doing, so why not keep doing it? What’s corrupting is wanting to be more important. You want to be more arty - you get your identity from that. Or you get your identity out of making more money.

Being authentic as some will babble on about.

Tragedy makes you grow up.

When it doesn’t crush you instead.

My musical knowledge is so bad it’s embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo.

Senses and emotions? As though for some [like me] that isn’t the whole point of listening to it.