a thread for mundane ironists

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11001

[b]Joseph Heller from Catch–22

Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window, and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.[/b]

Be honest: how ripe are you?

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

Next up: some pinheads.

You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you’re at war and might get your head blown off any second.
I more than resent it, sir. I’m absolutely incensed.
You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don’t like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate.
Consciously, sir, consciously, Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. I hate them consciously.
You’re antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re a manic-depressive!
Yes, sir. Perhaps I am.
Don’t try to deny it.
I’m not denying it, sir, said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. I agree with all you’ve said.

A military thing let’s call it. Well, and other things too, of course.

From now on I’m thinking only of me.
Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way.
Then, said Yossarian, I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?

Another catch, let’s call it.

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

Next up: when I look down.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes

11002

[b]Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.[/b]

He wondered what that made philosophy then.

How boring these emotions are that we’re caught in and can’t get free of, no matter how much we want to…

For example? The part they always leave out.

I’m going to make the obvious point that maybe the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The essence of neurosis is conflict. But the essence of living now, fully, not blocking off to what goes on, is conflict

In other words, you’re probably not neurotic enough.

People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.

You know, eventually.

I don’t know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature inaccurate.

How [probably] ridiculous is that?

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.

Or, sometimes, to at least come close to not saying what I don’t want.

11003

[b]The Onion

Tide Unveils New Guy Who Will Lick Stains Off You[/b]

Just out of curiosity, anyone here been licked?

‘It’s Like I Can’t Do Anything Right,’ Says Woman Pretty Much Hitting Nail On Head

You, right?

Vegetarian Option Just Iceberg Lettuce On Bread

Whole wheat bread of course.

Twins Switched At Birth In Essentially Meaningless Mix-Up

Tell that to them.

NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God

Again, right Nietzsche?

Congress Approves Empty Paper Towel Roll For NASA To Use As Telescope

So long Webb.

11004

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

What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at school?[/b]

Indeed, tell that to the Germans.

And men will not understand us—for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us already had a home and a calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten—and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;—the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.

And that was after a war that we won. Then there was Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

And in the night you realize, when you wake out of a dream, overcome and captivated by the enchantment of visions that crowd in on each other, just how fragile a handhold, how tenuous a boundary separates us from darkness - we are little flames, inadequately sheltered by thin walls from the tempest of dissolution and insensibility in which we flicker and are often all but extinguished. Then the muted sounds of battle surrounds us, and we creep into ourselves and stare wide-eyed into the night.

Next up: PTSD.

From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us–mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him fro ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever.

Don’t even pretend to understand this.

Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago.

Don’t even pretend to understand this.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

This post too.

11005

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

The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it’s their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it—with chickens—is to clip blinders on them. So’s they can’t see.[/b]

You tell me.

But I remember one thing: it wasn’t me that started acting deaf, it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.

Tell me that’s not an important distinction.

One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

The Indian this time.

I discovered at an early age that I was – shall we be kind and say different?

Kind it is then.

But, gee, the other nurse says, what on earth would make a man want to do something like disrupt the ward for, Miss Ratched? What possible motive…?
You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.

That can make all the difference in the world.

I don’t think I can give you an answer. Oh, I could give you Freudian reasons with fancy talk, and that would be right as far as it went. But what you want are the reasons for the reasons, and I’m not able to give you those.

The reason for the reasons. That’s where we come in, right?

11006

[b]Jack Kerouac from On the Road

My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness. [/b]

You know, for starters, right Satyr?

We agreed to love each other madly.

Next stop: the mad dash to divorce court.
Or was that just me?

I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.

Not that, for some, it can’t be the other way around.

I just won’t sleep, I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.

Get back to him after about, oh, a week without it. Right, Olivia?

Sure baby baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana. A lovely word and one that probably means heaven.

Or, if you know what I mean, hell. And not just tomorrow.

Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.

Or: Better to sleep in a comfortable bed if you can easily afford it.

11007

[b]The Onion

Note From Shein Worker Hidden In Order States How Much He Loves Doing Sweatshop Labor[/b]

Of course, he was only a kid.

12-Year-Old Job Applicant Asked To Explain 12-Year Employment Gap On Résumé

Twelve years and nine months to be exact.

Leader Of Aryan Prison Gang Covered Head To Toe In Dilbert Tattoos

Yo, Alexis Jacobi! Can you top that?!

Bored Baby Wishes It Had Something To Choke On

Next up: bored fetus.

Dalai Lama Worried There’s Nothing More To Life Than Feeling Deep Connection With All Existence

Cue Keith Raniere.

Nation’s Overthinkers Convene To Determine What That’s Supposed To Mean

Let’s overthink that ourselves.

11008

[b]Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.[/b]

Anyone here totallly either one?

A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.

No, actually, it wasn’t, well, you know who.

Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.

No, actually, that might have been, well, you know who.

Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.

Next up: Great Philosophy.

It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.

What does God want?
youtu.be/yMMyfep9N_k

I said, smiling very wide and droogie: ‘Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou.’ And then we started.

Indeed: youtu.be/L9FYlo6Ao6g

11009

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

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in a place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.[/b]

Philosophiclly as it were.

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

You tell me about yours, I’ll tell you about mine.

You have with you the book you were reading in the cafe, which you are eager to continue, so that you can then hand it on to her, to communicate again with her through the channel dug by others’ words, which, as they are uttered by an alien voice, by the voice of that silent nobody made of ink and typographical spacing, can become yours and hers, a language, a code between the two of you, a means to exchange signals and recognize each other.

I’ll share The Magus with you if you’ll share The Magus with me.

I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware?

Of course: you either get this or you don’t.

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,’ Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.

Indeed, just follow the Best Seller list at the New York Times. Literature in a thriving democracy!!!

…we can not love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

Give or take an hour.

11010

[b]George Saunders from Lincoln in the Bardo

His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help, or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.[/b]

I’ve never been this optimistic myself.

Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.

If only for all of eternity.

Strange, isn’t it? To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors ultimately forgotten?

Anyone else here not find this strange at all?

When a child is lost there is no end to the self-torment a parent may inflict. When we love, and the object of our love is small, weak, and vulnerable, and has looked to us and us alone for protection; and when such protection, for whatever reason, has failed, what consolation (what justification, what defense) may there possibly be?

Of course that’s where God comes in, isn’t it?

All over now. He is either in joy or nothingness.
(So why grieve?
The worst of it, for him, is over.)
Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing.

You’ve either been there, are there now or will be.
And, for some of us, over and over and over again.

He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.

You know the routine: Birth. School. Work. Death: youtu.be/tTrG53eYcqc

11011

[b]Mieko Kawakami

Even if something happens to us, even if we die and never have to deal with them again, the same thing will happen to someone, somewhere. The same thing. The weak always go through this, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because the strong never go away. That’s why you want to pretend to be like them, isn’t it? You want to join them.[/b]

You know, if that is actually an option.

He used to tell me, People are strange, Jun. They know nothing lasts forever, but still find time to laugh and cry and get upset, laboring over things and breaking things apart. I know it seems like none of it makes sense. But son, these things make life worth living. So don’t let anything get you down.

Well, maybe some things.

Writing makes me happy. But it goes beyond that. Writing is my life’s work. I am absolutely positive that this is what I’m here to do. Even if it turns out that I don’t have the ability, and no one out there wants to read a single word of it, there’s nothing I can do about this feeling. I can’t make it go away.

Of course, lots and lots and lots of us want to read the words she writes.

What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilating. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morning never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.

Well, not counting your own actual existential death. Though, sure, for some, even that.

Memory’s funny, isn’t it? We remember some things out of nowhere, but so much of what happens, we never think about again.

A brain thing let’s call it. You know, whatever that means.

There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory.

Sound familiar, Mr. Objectivist?

11012

[b]Don DeLillo from White Noise

My life is either/or. Either I chew regular gum or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum or I smoke. Either I smoke or I gain weight. Either I gain weight or I run up the stadium step.
Sounds like a boring life.
I hope it lasts forever, she said.[/b]

Anything beats nothing at all?

Because we’re suffering from brain fade. We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information. The flow is constant, Alfonse said. Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention.

Let’s pin down the one most likely.

Self-pity oozed through my soul. I tried to relax and enjoy it.

There you go!

You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out.

Or, as some call them, gadgets.

Don’t worry about me, he said. The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things.

Trust me: the list goes on and on at “a certain age”.

The world is full of abandoned meanings.

Let’s add more.

11013

[b]Cormac McCarthy from The Road

He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.[/b]

Would – could – you take comfort in that?

As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

Tell me it gets bleaker than that.

There is no later. This is later.

Enigmatically, as it were.

The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already?

And, no, not just in a dystopia.

What is it?
Nothing. I had a bad dream.
What did you dream about?
Nothing.
Are you okay?
No.
He put his arms around him and held him. It’s okay, he said.
I was crying. But you didn’t wake up.
I’m sorry. I was just so tired.
I meant in the dream.

Dreams. See what I mean?

Not all dying words are true…

He wondered if his would be.

11014

Sooooo … I know we’re all dying but, like … you know what, whatever. Inbox me or not. How many times do I need to say it before you do it? What are the magic words? Biggy, inbox me, you matter. xInfinity… again.

11015

[b]Joseph Heller from Catch–22

Well, he died. You don’t get any older than that.[/b]

Philosophy in a nutshell?

There’s nothing mysterious about it, He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?

Next up: shortwhitecoats.com/2011/top-10 … conditions

You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.

Indeed. The pinheads here for example.

There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.

You know, if that is actually an option.

Let’s take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.

That ever happen to you?

Sure, that’s what I mean, Doc Daneeka said. A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Yossarian knew what he meant.
That’s not what I meant, Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.

Of course: language games.

11016

[b]Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

For women like me, integrity isn’t chastity, it isn’t fidelity, it isn’t any of the old words. Integrity is the orgasm. That is something I haven’t any control over.[/b]

So, any women like her here?

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty.

My guess: not all of them.

Anna, there’s something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.

About everything for example.

I am increasingly afflicted by vertigo where words mean nothing.

And, no, believe it or not, not just your words.

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag—and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement.

Starting now, okay?

…She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than anything they use for work, that they might be different creatures.

Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes
3] all of the above

11017

[b]The Onion

Woman Disgusted After Finding Out There Are Over 2,000 Calories In Recommended Daily Intake[/b]

And, at times, outraged.

Narrow Line Of Dirt Not Being Swept Into Dustpan Without A Fight

So, how do you handle this?

Man Just Having One Of Those Decades Where He Doesn’t Feel Like Doing Anything

We should all be so lucky.

CPAC To Feature Exhibit Where Visitors Can Toss Raw Chicken To Rudy Giuliani

Let’s explain this.

City Finally Safe After Every Single Resident Hired As Police

That ought to do it.

European Space Agency Proposes New Time Zone For Moon

No, really: apnews.com/article/moon-time-zo … 1b5ed5362a

11018

[b]Ivan Turgenev from Fathers and Sons

We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.[/b]

Though sometimes it’s the other way around.

Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack…The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist…And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something…What chaos! What a farce!

If only all the way to the grave.

As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly.

And now we all know that too.

So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me a long, long road without a goal…

Praise the Lord?

I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.

Actually, I do see why.

I look up to Heaven only when I want to sneeze.

God bless you.

11019

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

Billy here has been talkin’ about slicin’ his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who’d like to join him and make it therapeutic?[/b]

How about seven of us here?

When I die pin me up against the sky.

Like a rainbow.

I forget sometimes what laughter can do.

Well, provided of course you’re not the butt of it.

…I think apparatus burned out all over the ward trying to adjust to her come busting in like she did—took electronic readings on her and calculated they weren’t built to handle something like this on the ward, and just burned out, like machines committing suicide.

Imagine that. No, really.

…she likes a rigged game.

And, so much more to the point, can rig it.

I’m accustomed to being top man. I been a bull goose catskinner for every gyppo logging operation in the Northwest and bull goose gambler all the way from Korea, was even bull goose pea weeder on that pea farm at Pendleton – so I figure if I’m bound to be a loony, then I’m bound to be a stompdown dadgum good one.

Next up: the bull goose philosopher here.

11020

[b]The Onion

Man Was Himself For 27 Minutes Today[/b]

How long can you go?

Los Angeles Warns Residents Not To Touch Poisoned Food Left Out To Deal With Homeless Infestation

Let’s see if that catches on.

Lori Lightfoot Can’t Believe City She Hates Wouldn’t Vote For Her

By now though it is starting to sink is.

Reality Of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned On Man Until He Held Newborn Son’s Hospital Bill

That’ll do it.

Disney Opens New Immersive ‘Star Wars’-Themed Gay Conversion Camp

May the farce be with them.

Black Employees Board Up Break Room Against Ravenous Horde Of White Coworkers Reaching To Touch Their Hair

Is that still a thing?