a thread for mundane ironists

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10981

[b]Don DeLillo from White Noise

Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn’t say that to a dying man.[/b]

Why not? What more does he have to lose?

I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don’t have the dispoisiton, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We le death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it’s like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions. In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation.

In theory for some, sure. In reality, however, for others.

They had to evacuate the grade school on Tuesday. Kids were getting headaches and eye irritations, tasting metal in their mouths. A teacher rolled on the floor and spoke foreign languages. No one knew what was wrong. Investigators said it could be the ventilating system, the paint or varnish, the foam insulation, the electrical insulation, the cafeteria food, the rays emitted by microcomputers, the asbestos fireproofing, the adhesive on shipping containers, the fumes from the chlorinated pool, or perhaps something deeper, finer-grained, more closely woven into the basic state of things.

Next up: being evacuated from here.

Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag?

Nope. But then it’s not like he bags groceries 24/7. If you know what I mean.

It is when death is rendered graphically, is televised so to speak, that you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself. A network of symbols has been introduced, an entire awesome technology wrested from the gods. It makes you feel like a stranger in your own dying.

Let’s explain that.
Assuming, of course, that’s even possible.

The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

Lucky stiffs let’s call them.

10982

[b]The Onion

Male Birth Control That Paralyzes Sperm For 2 Hours 100% Effective In Lab Mice[/b]

Any lab mice here?

Conservationists Tout Successful Restoration Efforts After Dolphins Spotted On Mars For First Time Since 1973

You know, all those canals.

Man Terrified To Realize He Could Easily Go On Like This

You know, all the way to the grave.

Woman Still Holding Onto Hope That Toxic Friendship Could Blossom Into A Toxic Relationship

Next up: the toxic children.

‘It’s Been A Long Time Since I’ve Done This So I Need To Take It Slow,’ Says Woman On Date Attempting To Smile

Nope, couldn’t do it.

Disappointed Baby Takes Plastic Bag Off Head After Reading ‘Warning: Not A Children’s Toy’

Still, not all babies can read.

10983

[b]Cormac McCarthy from The Road

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.[/b]

Cue the unbearable lightness of being.
Though, in the interim, cue the distractions.

When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

Yeah, right.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said.

You know, until you forget them.
You know, if you can.

What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

Suppose you were the last one left?

On the whole fucking planet, in other words.

Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.

Whatever consolation that is.

10984

[b]Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

What’s terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.[/b]

No, what’s terrible is having no options to change it.

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.

Ah, of course: my point.
Only considerably more fractured and fragmented.

Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me…

Nope, nobody here.

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

Even fewer here. Though especially there, among the Nazis.

Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching out for happiness.

Objectively as often as not.

For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away.

Though trust me: every once and a while it’s the other way around.

10985

[b]The Onion

Girlfriend Makes Fun Of Man For Loving Sports Even Though She’s Obsessed With Taking Care Of Dying Mother[/b]

Yes, these things actually happen.

Evangelical Leaders Announce J.K. Rowling Finally Bigoted Enough That It’s Okay For Kids To Read About Witchcraft

You know, for now.

Man’s Problems Really Don’t Seem So Bad After Therapist Completely Trivializes Them

Hey, whatever works, right?

Man Up To 8 Soul-Searching Walks A Week

Pick one:
1] too many
2] not enough

U.S. Successfully Shoots Down Kid Jumping Too High On Trampoline

Incredibly, the kid was not a spy.

Biden Informs Zelensky He’s Only There To See Ukrainian Woman He Met Online

Go ahead, give it a try: uadreams.com/meet-ukrainian-ladies/

10986

[b]Erich Maria Remarque from All Quiet on the Western Front

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.[/b]

Pick one:
1] Me too once
2] Me too still

The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.

Nestled snuggly in their dormitory rooms.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances.

He means ten of course.

The train goes slowly. From time to time it stops, so that the dead can be taken off. It stops a lot.

You know, before they had C-130s.

Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour’s worth of drill. Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants “the same grub and the same pay,” as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the “wrong” people currently do the fighting.

Or: Cue the military industrial complex. And on both sides as often as not.

Beside us lies a fair-headed recruit in utter terror. He has buried his face in his hands, his helmet has fallen off. I fish hold of it and try to put it back on his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet off and like a child creeps under my arm, his head close to my breast. The little shoulders heave.

War let’s call it. Though not always.

10987

[b]Ken Kesey from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.[/b]

And, no, not just in the cuckoo’s nest.

I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.

To wit:
“The story is not based on any one true story, but the way the mental patients and treatments that are used are based on Ken Kesey’s experiences working at a mental hospital.”

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

For example, coming here.

I’d think, That ain’t me, that ain’t my face. It wasn’t even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn’t even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever have been me.

Damn straight this is a real thing.

I can’t do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can. You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey, Billy, you should know that as well as anyone. What could I do? I can’t fix your stuttering. I can’t wipe the razorblade scars off your wrists or the cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can’t give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness till what little dignity you got left is gone and you shrink up to nothing from humiliation, I can’t do anything about that, either.

And we all know how that turned out.

Society is what decides who’s sane and who isn’t, so you got to measure up.

Most times let’s say. Though no fucking way it’s always.

10988

[b] The Onion

Woman Surprised By How Easy It Is To Get Along With Sister Now That They’re Adults Who Never See Each Othe[/b]

Wow, that is strange.

Study Finds More Americans Turning To Own Feverish Imaginations For News

Pinheads let’s call them.

God Admits He’s A Little Flattered When Someone Kills In His Name

I knew it!

Study: Average Person’s Life Plan Can Only Withstand 25 Seconds Of Direct Questioning

Anyone here actually make it to a minute?

Teen Wondering Whether Boyfriend Even Loves Her If He Unwilling To Exploit Relationship For TikTok

Someone explain this please.

Scientists Speculate Universe May Be Simulation After ‘Trial Version Expired’ Appears Across Sky

What to make of that, right?

10989

[b]Jack Kerouac from On the Road

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.[/b]

Still, it depends on the road, I suspect.

A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

At least until the next one.

The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.

Next up: distorted experiences.

I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.

Trust me: not just on the road.

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

Or, as likely as not, somewhere in between.

Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ‘till we get there.
Where we going, man?’
I don’t know but we gotta go.

And go they did.

10990

[b]The Onion

'10 Palestinians Dead After Israeli Raid,’ Reads Headline That Could Have Run Any Week For Past 75 Years[/b]

Actually, this time 11…one died later from his wounds.

Woman Just Has One Of Those Faces Strangers Feel Comfortable Masturbating To

Not yours though, right?

Parents Trick Child Into Eating More Vegetables By Hitting Him If He Doesn’t Eat Vegetables

Would that trick your kid?

War-Weary Americans Not Sure How Much Longer They Can Occasionally Glance At Headlines About Ukraine

Next up: war-weary Canadians.

Bill Gates Ponders What He Could Have Accomplished If He Didn’t Waste Time Becoming Billionaire

I guess we’ll never know.

Panicked ‘Cocaine Bear’ Producers Scrambling To Expand 4 Minutes Of Social Media Clips Into Actual Movie

We’ll know today, right?

10991

[b]Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?[/b]

Tell me that can’t get problematic.

We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.

So what? As long as you can keep others from reading it.

But what I do I do because I like to do.

Let’s call them sociopaths.

I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.

Let’s call them even more twisted sociopaths.

It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.

Hilarious. Well, if that’s really true.

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.

Clockwork orange. Good title for a book.

10992

[b]Italo Calvino from If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Sections in the bookstore

  • Books You Haven’t Read
  • Books You Needn’t Read
  • Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
  • Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
  • Books Too Expensive Now and You’ll Wait 'Til They’re Remaindered
  • Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
  • Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
  • Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too
  • Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages
  • Books You’ve Been Hunting for Years Without Success
  • Books Dealing with Something You’re Working on at the Moment
  • Books You Want to Own So They’ll Be Handy Just in Case
  • Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
  • Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
  • Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
  • Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time to Re-read[/b]

- Books to ban or burn.

If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

Kind of, let’s say.

Don’t be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it.

Wouldn’t amaze me at all. Or not much anyway.

One reads alone, even in another’s presence.

Also, one dies alone, even in another’s presence.

This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .

Then there’s what we think he means.

You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

Being optimistic.

10993

[b]The Onion

Man Kicks Himself After Thinking Of Perfect Gun He Could Have Used To Win Argument[/b]

Though, for some men, any gun at all. Or even a knife.

6-Year-Old Didn’t Cause Parents’ Divorce But Didn’t Exactly Step Up To Prevent It Either

Let’s chalk it up to dasein.

Psychotic Break Really Helping Man Come Out Of Shell

Next up: the body count.

Nation In State Of Emergency After Entire Population Goes Missing

On the other hand, who is there to notice?

Pentagon Warns U.S. That They Had Scary Dream About China

Better double the defense budget.

Newly Single Man Adds ‘For One’ After Every Item On Sad Little Grocery List

Trust me: not all newly single men.

10994

Newly single woman writes “for one” on the first item, “for two” on the second item, and “and another thing!” on the third item… like it’s a 95 Theses or Declaration of Because I Independently Want It, That’s Why!

”This is healthy; let’s keep doing this,” she thinks out loud in aisle #11.

10995

[b]William S. Burroughs from Naked Lunch

In lifeproof houses they hover over the young, sop up a little of what they shut out. Only the young bring anything in, and they are not young very long.[/b]

Next up: lifeproof threads.

And all that I was before is out there in the darkness looking for me.

Me? It’s never come close.

The junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today. Since Naked Lunch treats this health problem, it is necessarily brutal, obscene and disgusting. . . . As always the lunch is naked.

That explains something I suppose.

Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con men? Like ‘raise,’ letting someone know you are in the same line?

Anyway, start noticing it now.

Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.

Maybe, maybe not. Just don’t fuck with mine.

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.

If only going back [so far] to the Big Bang.

10996

[b]Mieko Kawakami

People like pretty things. When you’re pretty, everybody wants to look at you, they want to touch you. I wanted that for myself. Prettiness means value. But some people never experience that personally.[/b]

Any pretty things here?

Happiness can be defined all kinds of ways, but human beings, consciously or unconsciously, are always pulling for their own version of happiness. Even people who want to die see death as a kind of solace, and view ending their lives as the only way to make it there. Happiness is the base unit of consciousness, our single greatest motivator.

Not much this doesn’t explain, is there?

We’re all so small, and have such little time, unable to envision the majority of the world.

Not much this doesn’t explain, is there?

…her voice was amazing, like a 6B pencil…

A voice like this: “Almost pointless. The shine will ruin your drawing. Use it to add grainy texture, and not to block in.”

People are willing to accept the pain and suffering of others, limitless amounts of it, as long as it helps them to keep on believing in whatever it is that they want to believe.

Starting with God, sure, but there’s really no end to all of the other things.

You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?" She exhaled through her nose. It’s really simple, I promise. Why do people think this is okay? Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it’s not an act of violence. You force this other being into the world, this other being that never asked to be born. You do this absurd thing because that’s what you want for yourself, and that doesn’t make any sense…I know how this sounds. You think I sound extreme, or detached from reality. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is real life. That’s what I’m talking about - the pain that comes with reality. Not that anyone ever sees it…Most people go around believing life is good, one giant blessing, like the world we live in is so beautiful, and despite the pain, it’s actually this amazing place.

Note to Mieko Kawakami:
I think I’m in love with you.

10997

She reminds me of the old me. The new me is def less pretty & …well. Depends what day it is. jk but srsly

Whew, dodged a bullet there.

10998

[b]Don DeLillo from White Noise

…the half-concealed disasters that constitute a life.[/b]

Those that were, those that are and those that will be.

Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone.

Not counting all the times it’s the other way around.

Mainly we looked at people in other cars, trying to work out from their faces how frightened we should be.

Think The Last of Us. But in reality.

Nothingness is staring you in the face. Utter and permanent oblivion. You will cease to be. To be, Jack. The dier accepts this and dies. The killer, in theory, attempts to defeat his own death by killing others. He buys time, he buys life.

The somethingness let’s call it.

I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.

Thank goodness for virtual reality, he thought.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot.

That’s certainly the plot of my posts here.

10999

[b]Cormac McCarthy from The Road

He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.[/b]

Your God perhaps.

When the shooting starts would you rather be armed or legal?

Armed with a bazooka, right henry?

He can give me what you cannot.
Death is not a lover.
Oh yes, he is.

You might disagree of course.

When we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say: where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?

Nothing. And it can’t come too soon for some.

The man watched him. Real life is pretty bad?
What do you think?
Well, I think we’re still here. A lot of bad things have happened but we’re still here.
Yeah.
You don’t think that’s so great.
It’s okay.

Okay compared to what?

Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

Time is always tricky of course.

11000

Note to self=other: What if those chanting “Never again Auschwitz!” overcorrect and turn the entire planet into one?