Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Eric Hoffer

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

Ah, the MAGA morons. You know, if they are morons.

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

Here? the "yak, yak, yak" crowd.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate whenever they meet.

Well, not counting Maia's of course.

The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.

Cue [among others] her and him?

...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.

Well, along with contingency and change of course.

The radical and the reactionary loathe the present. They see it as an aberration and a deformity.

And both loathe me with a vengeance.

[iambiguous]

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley from Frankenstein

The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.

See, I told you.

Man, I cried, how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!

Well, sure, of course they had pinheads back then.

Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!

Ah, the real world.

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.

Ah, the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

Of course: starting here.

Hateful day when I received life! I exclaimed in agony. Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.

Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Less Popular Friend Proposes Combining Birthdays Into Single Party

Sure, try this yourself.

Report Finds Billionaires Paying Zero Dollars In Income Taxes By Writing ‘No Thank You Please’ On Return

Sure, try this yourself.

I Don’t See Race; I Only See Grayish-Brown, Vaguely Humanoid Shapes

Thump him, AJ!

MLK’s Family Urges Nation To Spend Anniversary Of His Death Twisting His Words To Fit Own Political Agendas

How'd you spend it?

Andrew Tate Defense Team Assembled From Dozens Of Lawyers Trafficked From Eastern Europe

Hey, practice make perfect.

New Parenting Trend Involves Just Handing Children Bulleted List Of Things To Accomplish By 30

Includes getting IC to link them to that video.

[iambiguous]

Tom Stoppard from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?

Anyone here know?

Pirates could happen to anyone.

Nope, not so far.

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it.

It was March 12th, 1958. About 10 after 11 in the morning. Of course, I'm just making that up.

Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not being. You can't not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no, no---what you've been is not on boats.

Though for you it might not be a boat that you're not on at all.

Stark raving sane.

If that's actually possible of course.

It would have been nice to have had unicorns.

Them and dragons of course.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Chic Apartment Features Exposed Brick Right Outside Living Room Window

Your idea of chic may be different.

God Pissed After Learning Cost To Replace Earth’s Core

Or, for that matter, some suspect, even the mantle.

Girlfriend Talks Through Whole Goddamn Commercial

During the Super Bowl no less!!!

Authorities Reveal Murderer Googled ‘How To Leave Obvious Trail Of Homicide Evidence’ Prior To Crime

A pinhead murderer, it turned out.

More Companies Cutting Costs By Replacing CEOs With Prison Labor

And, it turns out, not just in China.

Blue Cross CEO Admits It Would Really Help If Sick Insured People Just Killed Themselves

You know, the bottom line.

[promethean75]

"inherently selfish". how many times have u heard some philosopher defending capitalism use that in an argument?

https://www.quora.com/Is-communism-an-u ... chtenstein

although i would grant a unique exception to comrade Rosa's thesis. that with stirner i believe in a case of genuine 'altruism', e.g. the many examples she gives, we still have the egoist in action. only in this case the 'higher cause' is the love, honor, respect, dignity, that is offered by the opportunity to make personal sacrifice for the benefit of another, that compels one. u simply have an involuntary egoist here as opposed to a voluntary egoist... the former type believing in such spooks as love, honor, respect and dignity, etc. in short, one who forfeits some immediate and direct physical advantage for an idea held as sacred; martyrdom for some cause.

if not (and at best) you'd have some kind of kin altruism instinct going on in which case you'd end up at the selfish gene then... and the mother's 'instinct' to run into the burning building would simply be an autonomous mechanism which she couldn't be given credit for.

Damn so unless u are deliberately choosing to do so after some reflection, u made a snap instinctual judgement u can't be given credit for.... and yet if you do reflect and then deliberately choose to do so, chances are you're being selfish and/or u believe in spooks.

[iambiguous]

Emil M. Cioran from The Trouble with Being Born

Time, fertile in resources, more inventive and more charitable than we think, possesses a remarkable capacity to help us out, to afford us at any hour of the day some new humiliation.

Like, for the pinheads here, posting. Time after time after time.

In Buddhist writings, mention is often made of “the abyss of birth." An abyss indeed, a gulf into which we do not fall but from which, instead, we emerge, to our universal chagrin.

And it's not like we were asked our permission.

If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?

Like he didn't have 84 years in which to end his own.

“Ever since I was born”—that since has a resonance so dreadful to my ears it becomes unendurable.

So, his solution? To endure it for 31,000 days

Every phenomenon is a corrupt version of another, larger phenomenon: time, a disease of eternity; history, a disease of time; life, again, a disease of matter. Then what is normal, what is healthy? Eternity? Which itself is only an infirmity of God.

You know, being optimistic.

An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.

Not counting Nietzsche's of course.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Distracted God Accidentally Puts Baby’s Soul In Envelope To Utility Company

That doesn't surprise me given this...

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages..."

Recently Divorced Man Understands Working Through Emotions Might Take 2 To 3 Days

Me? About 20 minutes.

Man’s Family Too Ugly To Elicit Incestuous Fantasies

As luck would have it?

Man Figured Drug Addiction Would Take Up A Lot More Free Time

Fortunately, there are more to choose from: https://yourroom.health.nsw.gov.au/a-z-of-drugs

U.S. Blows Itself Up So China Can’t Have It

You know, if it comes to that.

Man Who Donated Sperm 25 Years Ago Contacted By Young Man Claiming To Be Guy Who Drank All His Sperm

Go figure?

[iambiguous]

Albert Camus from The Stranger

Anyway it was an idea of mother's and she often used to repeat it, that you ended up getting used to everything.

Trust me: there is no fucking way that this is true.

I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

Whatever that means, eh?

The day of my arrest I was first put in a room where there were already several other prisoners, most of them Arabs. They laughed when they saw me. Then they asked what I was in for. I said I'd killed an Arab and they were all silent.

And then what?

Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come...

Sounds about right.

For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

Ah, much like the pinheads cursing me here, he thought. And, of course, wishing me dead.

There, too, in that Home where lives were flickering out, the dusk came as a mournful solace. With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again.

Either that or oblivion.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Elderly Rite Aid Patron Stretching Out Conversation About Toothpaste To Prolong Human Contact

And don't think this can't happen to you.

All Of Artist’s Nudes Look Terrified

Let's discuss possible reasons.

Maid Of Honor Specifically Selected For Ability To Take Emotional Beating

Modern love, right?

Man Googles Matt Damon's Address Because, Well, He's Crazy And Wants To Murder Him

Either that or he went belly up in the crypto scam.

Budget Nursing Home Just Giant 100-Foot Hole

And a sinkhole at that.

Alito, Thomas Share Laugh After Discovering They Both Leaked Dobbs Decision

The irony being that for both abortion ought to have been mandatory.

[promethean75]

in 1872 a letter wuz discovered while a disaster response team salvaged the remains of a trainwreck in eastern Vienna.

My dearest Balbaderos,

i received your telegram just yesterday and the plans for the Ploofigus modification look magnificent. what on earth led you to believe that reducing the thrust tensors would balance the centripetal force produced by the Ploof synthesizer? i would have never thought it! i will immediately get to work and register the plans with the committee. they'll be delighted. the quartz quarries are almost dried up now, just as i warned. If your idea works, we should be able to double the production of Ploofronium. We must keep this secret!

Your beloved brother,
Johannes Habbletrap

p.s. Beatrice sends her love.

....

it wuz never determined what the Ploofigus wuz, but scientists and engineers speculate that it wuz some kind of machine. Saint Balbaderos del Aksinata and Johannes Habbletrap were never found or notified of the lost letter, and their identities remain a mystery.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Study: Majority Of NFL Owners Wouldn’t Let Their Children Purchase Football Team

You know, the risk of concussion.

Man Coming To Terms With Fact That Shower Not Getting Any Hotter

Some, of course, never do.

FDA Recalls Millions Of Chili Peppers, Citing Fact That If You Chop Them And Touch Your Junk, Your Junk Will Burn

There's that word again: junk.

Exterminator Kind Of Surprised Apartment Doesn't Have Roaches

And then there's this exterminator: https://youtu.be/0pMVgzrBFiM

‘What If We Put M&M’s On Top? Would They Eat That?’ Doritos Exec Wonders Out Loud

Next up: 'What If We Put Rat Turds On Top? Would They Eat That?’ Doritos Exec Wonders Out Loud

Man Who Has Never Seen Horseshoe Crab Before Understandably Freaking The Fuck Out

Then moving on: https://english.alarabiya.net/News/worl ... -the-world

[iambiguous]

Milan Kundera from The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I have no mission. No one has.

If you know what he means. Though what are the odds of that?

Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.

Want to hear mine?

The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.

Well, obviously.

A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.

Of course: the gap! Right, Rummy?

Another image comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse of Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.

I'm thinking: Why can't that "final break" happen to me?

The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…

Personas let's call them.

[iambiguous]

Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.

Until it wasn't.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat.

Just out of curiosity, has that changed?

If I was going to fall, I would hang on to my small comforts, at least, for as long as I possibly could.

Or, as I call them, distractions.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.

1] to live
2] to die

My heroine would be myself, only in disguise.

Any heroines in disguise here?

I wondered what I thought I was burying.

Now we know.

[iambiguous]

Ralph Ellison from Invisible Man

Play the game, but play it your own way – part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate.

And, no, not just up in the clouds, okay?

And let's remember that science isn't a game of chess, although chess may be played scientifically. The other thing to remember is that if we are to organize the masses we must first organize ourselves.

Forgotten it already?

...on the other hand, it would be a great mistake to assume that the dead are absolutely powerless.

Not that they know this.

Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He tell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and birds and trees, or your face if you'd looked into its dulling mirror -- and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after awhile, became dull then dusty, then dried.

Pretty grim as facts go.

They were very much the same, each attempting to force his picture of reality upon me and neither giving a hoot in hell for how things looked to me.

Fortunately, that will never happen here, of course

I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth.

My guess: that one person's honest truth is another person's deceitful lie.