a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Miles Davis

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

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]

Jodie Foster

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

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: https://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]

Philosophy Tweets

"The politicians are there to make you think you have a choice, you don't have a choice." George Carlin

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]

Andrew Sullivan

The important things are not worth knowing because they are useful. They are worth knowing because they are true.

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]

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.

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.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"It is a known fact that almost all revolutions have been the work, not of the common people, but of the aristocracy, and especially of the decayed part of the aristocracy." Vilfredo Pareto

So, what you do think, maybe?

"What the pragmatist has his pragmatism for is to be able to say, Here is a definition and it does not differ at all from your confusedly apprehended conception because there is no practical difference." C. S. Peirce

So, what you do think, maybe?

"There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think." C.S. Peirce

Mine must be the size of a duckpin bowling ball, he thought.

"When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship." Albert Camus

Straightforward by ass is all I can think to say.

"What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves" Albert Camus

Sure, maybe 1 in a 100.

"Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.” Albert Camus

Especially with the ladies?

[iambiguous]

Roger Penrose

This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it.

In, for example, the either/or world.

And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.

No, Kids, not your little things.

But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.

That or silly.

Well I didn't actually see the Matrix but I've seen other movies where with similar sorts of themes.

Let's decide if that still counts.

The basic theory in twistor theory is not to add extra dimensions.

In other words, no strings attached.

Well, gauge theory is very fundamental to our understanding of physical forces these days. But they are also dependent on a mathematical idea, which has been around for longer than gauge theory has.

Anyone know how much longer?

[iambiguous]

Edward Witten

There is a difference between knowing what is true and knowing why it is true.

Going all the way back to...teleology?

We know a lot of things, but what we don't know is a lot more.

He means a hell of a lot more of course.

I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don't believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.

And that's before -- way before I suspect -- we come to value judgments.

But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.

Of course most of us are, among other things, hopelessly lost here.

Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.

From coast to coast at least.

I'm actually, for the most part, a complete agnostic politically.

What's that make me then?

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.” Albert Camus

Suicide, anyone?

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein

Or, sure, leave that to others.

"We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without." Immanuel Kant

Wow, how confusing is that?!

"They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.” Friedrich Nietzsche

That's why they're them, right?

"Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.” Friedrich Nietzsche

And, no, not just me.

"I don't think any word can explain a man's life" Orson Welles

Let alone a word on a child's sled.
On the other hand, it sort of does, doesn't it?
You know, this time.

[iambiguous]

Dan Savage

Really, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over.

Oh, sure it is.

I’m searching for some exit poll data from California. I’ll eat my shorts if gay and lesbian voters went for McCain at anything approaching the rate that black voters went for Prop 8.

Let's make sense of this.

Outing is brutal and it should be reserved for brutes.

Any brutes here to start with.

I don't think that sin and pursuing happiness are not necessarily the same thing.

They certainly are for some.

I'm not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type.

Hey, don't look at me.

We're living through an age of irrationality and religious "fervor" I would call it religious idiocy. It's exhausting to year after year be on the receiving end of this demagoguery.

Imagine then a Mike Pence administration.

[iambiguous]

Pythagoras

Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please.

We'll need a context of course.

None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.

Obviously: easier said than done.

Let no one persuade you by word or deed to do or say whatever is not best for you.

Unless, of course, they really do know better.

Above all things, respect yourself.

Not counting the assholes however. And most Kids.

Do not talk a little on many subjects, but much on a few.

Like me, right?

Number is the within of all things.

A little help with this one please.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out." Orson Welles

Your boat or mine?

"There never was a good war or a bad revolution.” Edward Abbey

Tell that to the military industrial complex.

"Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live." Primo Levi

Or is that too scary for you?

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." Orson Welles

The illusion that has never worked for some of us.

"In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat." Leon Trotsky

And then there is Lenin's rendition.

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” Isaac Asimov

A hell of a lot faster. Then double it.

[iambiguous]

Wanda Sykes

What gets me is when celebrities aren't allowed to have an opinion on anything political. There's the whole 'Shut up and sing' thing.

Unless, of course, they share our own opinion.

I think the most difficult thing about coming out is just getting to that place where you're comfortable with who you are and you're sayin' hey this is ok and just accepting yourself and not caring what other people think. Because if you don't have that confidence in who you are then, if things don't go the way you wish that they will, you know if people aren't accepting then they can easily tear you down if you're not prepared and comfortable with who you are.

Unless, of course, you're coming out as a nihilst. Or, sure, maybe even then it's the same.

It's easier to rip somebody to shreds while you're making them laugh.

So, how am I doing, Kids?

I had top-secret clearance and everything. I was working on a couple of projects that would keep me involved in Desert Storm. I was in the mix, which is scary.

So, is this a joke?

I'm always thinking of stuff; I just don't sit down and write it. I come up with material more as I go along; if something funny happens, I'll make a note of it on my phone.

Now unlike philosophers, right? Just not the funny stuff.

It's hard to get fired from the government. You have to, like, kill people.

So, we impeach some instead.

[iambiguous]

Rosie O'Donnell

I don't care if you want to hunt, I don't care if you think it's your right. I say, sorry, you are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison.

Anyone here agree?

Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America...

She means it could be.

I act irrationally, I defy the odds, I engage when others would run. I look for trouble, I seek chaos, it is a burden.

Just not only her burden.

I just want to say something. 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?

The bad guys. It's always the bad guys.

Are you fat because you're a lesbian, or are you a lesbian because you're fat?

Though, sure, some of us are neither.

You can imagine in China it's like: 'Ching chong hugong, ching chong kong, Danny Devito. Ching chong chong chong chong. The View. Ching chong!'

Of course we all think that.

[iambiguous]

Nein

Deletion. Still my favorite weak messianic power.

Here, of course, it's still not an option.

Oktoberfest. German for a party that begins in September. And ends in a hangover. October. And fascism.

Around the globe apparently.

Nothing. It’s what the cool nihilists are doing.

Let's do something about that.

Fall. My favorite empire.

So, don't forget to vote!

Yes, friends, it’s a cold, cruel world. But it’s the only cold, cruel world we’ve got.

No doubt about that, right?

Yes, friends, life is meaningless. I suggest you keep it that way.

As we will when we die.

[iambiguous]

Woody Guthrie

The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine.

Don't look at me.

Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.

Not all that far removed from what I'm saying. Though not far enough.

The world is filled with people who are no longer needed -- and who try to make slaves of all of us -- and they have their music and we have ours.

You know, back before Dylan went electric.

Take it easy, but take it.

And don't get caught.

One day we'll all find out that all of our songs was just little notes in a great big song!

Paraphrasing Spinoza as it were.

Life's pretty tough . . . you're lucky if you live through it.

Not a one so far.

[iambiguous]

Art Spiegelman

Comics can be pernicious, fascist propaganda or anti-authoritarian. The ones that shaped me were particularly anti-authoritarian.

I hear that. Loud and clear for example.

The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the "physical book," a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.

Even the paperbacks?

Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." ...On the other hand, he said it.

If only because what other option was there?

Well, I am not 100 percent sure of the definition of polemic, but it wasn't meant to convince anybody of anything.

Who needs that when you've got humiliation.

What we're losing culturally the fastest, aside from natural resources and oil and the idea of democracy and social justice, is the ability to concentrate.

Let alone wanting to.

I live in my own bubble. I was looking for an audience that wouldn't necessarily be looking for escapism when they came to my comics.

Hence the expression "graphic novel".

[iambiguous]

Werner Twertzog

American cinema is written by intellectual children, raised on reality television and pornography, who have never studied the Upanishads, the Aeneid, or the Peregrine.

So, what else is new?

Once, I dreamed of happiness. Now, I dream only of the absence of pain.

No, trust me, this is a real thing.

Computer security question: What is the name of the first person you imagined, falsely, would love you in return?

Sharon Konsavage, he answered.

No, Gordon Lightfoot, they would not have made Whitefish Bay, no matter how many miles they put behind her. They were doomed, from the start, as are we all.

Right, like he could actually know that.

Two reasons to get out of bed:
1. I am not yet dead.
2. I need to urinate.

Let's think up more.

You get the face you deserve at age 50. Also at age 1.

Also, the one in the coffin.

[iambiguous]

Douglas Adams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Can you say that?
Me? No fucking way.

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Sounds about right.

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.

Think about that, Kids.

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

Anyone here know for sure?

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

And that's before we get to eternal return.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

Next up: the quantum multiverse.

[iambiguous]

Bob Dylan

I'm not going to read any of these magazines. I mean, because they've just got too much to lose by printing the truth. You know that.

Actually, you probably don't know that.

The more you act the further you get away from the truth.

In other words, you have to.

Every day your memory grows dimmer - it doesn't haunt me like it did before.

And then, for some, you want it dimmer still.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

Or here: A post is anything that can walk by itself. You know, if there are any.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free

Now that's the bottom of the barrel. Or certainly one of them.

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

Never said he did, right?

[iambiguous]

Blake Crouch

In the world we came from, our existence was so easy. And so full of discontent because it was so easy. How do you find meaning when you’re one of seven billion? When food, clothing, everything you need is just one Walmart away? When we numb our minds to sleep on all manner of screens and HD entertainment, the meaning of life.

Not counting the millions that barely subsist from day to day of course.

She cut into a waffle and said, Gotta be honest—I’m not over the moon about the word ‘heist.’
No? It’s one of my favorites.

I've always liked the sound of "caper" myself.

I check the time on my drug-dealer flip phone, the one I bought to call Daniela in another Chicago. It won't make calls in this world---I guess minutes aren't transferable across the multiverse.

Or they just get swallowed whole in the quantum exchanges.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Of course he's plagiarizing John Milton here.

There are no rights anymore. No laws. Just force and fear.

How's that for predicting the future?

It's a troubling paradox - I have total control, but only to the extent I have control over myself.

One or twice a month if you're lucky.

[iambiguous]

Fiona Apple

What will an angel say that the devil wants to know?

You know, if there are any.

I keep living this day like the next will never come.

Give it time, right?

I still don't know what Episcopalian means.

It means almost the same thing as Presbyterian.

Come on. I got drunk when I was like 5.

Uh, come on?

I always assume most people are bullshitting me.

And they you.

When you're famous weird things will happen that end up hurting your feelings. I'll get a letter from somebody I knew a while ago and I'll be really touched. Then I'll turn over the envelope and their business card falls out.

Better that than a dick pic.

[iambiguous]

Neal Stephenson

Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn't afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology.

Well, that's not nothing these days.

I apologize if my limbic system has misinterpreted your gesture of emotional support.

That ever happen to you?

It wasn’t just a matter of hiding what you really felt. If you hid your feelings well enough, it actually changed you.

That ever happen to you?

Later, he was to decide that Andrew’s life had been fractally weird. That is, you could take any small piece of it and examine it in detail and it, in and of itself, would turn out to be just as complicated and weird as the whole thing in its entirety.

Me? I wouldn't rule it out.

Once you found the math in a thing, you knew everything about it, and you could manipulate it to your heart’s content with nothing more than a pencil and a napkin.

And, for some, a calculator.

There are always fuckups, and there is always a goat. Sometimes the goat is you.

And we all know who that is: σάτυρος

[iambiguous]

Miles Davis

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

You might want to try that yourself.

I don't hold it against Dizzy Gillespie, you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

So, what's the scoop here?

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

Though not just white Americans I suspect.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section.

Clones probably.

At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Sir Duke?

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

It's just weird hearing someone describe something that happened before you were even born.

[iambiguous]

God

There’s a freedom that comes with accepting you’re doomed.

A horror too.

In an ideal scenario the President of the United States and the worst human being in the world would be two different people.

Let's run this by Keith Morrison.

I know for a fact I don't exist.

But you know for a fact He does, right?

The Bible is 100% accurate. Especially when thrown at close range.

God. What a kidder.

Evolution requires believing that 3.5 billion years of natural selection and survival of the fittest led to you assholes.

Of course religion requires believing that He created us.

Seriously though, we kid around a lot here on Twitter, but impeach the motherfucker.

Or: Seriously though, we kid around a lot here at ILP, but impeach the motherfucker.