Quote of the day

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Zadie Smith from White Teeth

Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting.

And then some will just toss you into a nursing home.

A neutral place. The chances of finding one these days are slim, maybe even slimmer than Archie’s pinball trick. The sheer quantity of shit that must be wiped off the slate if we are to start again as new. Race. Land. Ownership. Faith. Theft. Blood. And more blood. And more. And not only must the place be neutral, but the messenger who takes you to the place, and the messenger who sends the messenger. There are no people or places like that left…

In fact, we might be the last place on Earth.

It was a competition in agony. Like rich women in posh restaurants ordering ever-smaller salads.

Wow, imagine how agonizing that must be.

And in the past, Archie wondered, was it just that fewer people cheated? Were they more honest, and did they leave their front doors open, did they leave their kids with the neighbors, pay social calls, run up tabs with the butcher? The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always want to hear that from you. They want to hear it really was once a green and pleasant land. They need it.

Sure, ask me anything.

For he is in a past-tense, future-perfect kind of mood.

Nope, never been in one of them myself.

...at any time of the day, corduroy is a highly stressful fabric. Rent collectors wear it. Tax collectors, too. History teachers add leather elbow patches.

Those absolutely fucking ridiculous elbow patches!

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Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.

Next up: seeing others as they really are.

There's two kinds of people that don't ask a lot of questions. One is too dumb to and the other don't need to.

Let's run this by the pinheads.

She looked away. You make it like it was the coin. But you're the one.
It could have gone either way.
The coin didn't have no say. It was just you.
Perhaps. But look at it my way. I got here the same way the coin did.

Damnit, let's figure this out: him or her?

Sometimes you have a little problem and you dont fix it and then all of a sudden it aint a little problem anymore.

Take ILP for example.
Or KT.

What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?

Let alone trying to reason with him.

Chigurh shot him through the forehead and then stood watching. Watching the capillaries break up in his eyes. The light receding. Watching his own image degrade in that squandered world.

No, seriously, Mr. Philosopher, what would you say to bring Chigurh around to, say, Kant.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Absent-Minded Billionaire Almost Forgets To Pay $0 In Taxes

Next up: the IRS completely forgets to audit him.

Child Entertained For 5 Minutes By Plastic Toy That Will Take 1,000 Years To Biodegrade

So, should someone tell him?

Returning Parents Can Tell Son Had Huge House Fire Over Weekend

It having burned to the ground.

Jimmy Carter Gets Vasectomy Reversed

Thus explaining Rosalynn's pregnancy.

Chaperones Instructed To Turn Away Any Students Who Show Up To Prom With Pussy On Their Breath

Leaving only gay men in attendance.

New Uber Feature Allows Riders To Pretend To Fall Asleep So Driver Will Carry Them Inside

So, how did that work out for you?

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Gabriel García Márquez from One Hundred Years of Solitude

It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.

Does virtually count?

There is always something left to love.

Or, if not to love, to hate.

Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.

Nope, still can't find it. On the other hand, I did stop searching.

He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.

You know, if it actually works that way.

They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.

Fuck that, right?

Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

So, sure, by all means, move on to the next one.

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Aldous Huxley from Brave New World

...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.

And, believe it or not, not just the objectivist pinheads here. Although, for some of us, that's the good news.

All right then, said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.
Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.
There was a long silence.
I claim them all, said the Savage at last.

Any savages here who might care to elaborate on that? Explaining why, for example.

No social stability without individual stability.

Though especially the other way around.

I'd rather be myself, he said. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

Most times, me too.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

Of course: a government of the pinheads, by the pinheads, for the pinheads. MAGA say.

...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....

365 days a year, I'm up to. Not counting leap years of course.

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Philip K. Dick from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Despair like that, about total reality, is self-perpetuating.

Not to mention fractured and fragmented.

Is it a loss? Rachael repeated. I don’t really know; I have no way to tell. How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We’re not born; we don’t grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age, we wear out like ants. Ants again; that’s what we are. Not you; I mean me. Chitinous reflex-machines who aren’t really alive. She twisted her head to one side, said loudly, I’m not alive!

Rachel!: https://youtu.be/C9KAqhbIZ7o

Office gossip annoyed him because it always proved better than the truth.

And then all of the gossipers annoying us here? Better than what? The philosophy?

I can’t stand the way you androids give up, he said savagely.

Not that they have much choice, of course.

I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I - I personally - really exist; I'm just representative of a type.

Like, among our kind, children being indoctrinated.

It is over, isn’t it? Trustingly, he seemed to be waiting for her to tell him, as if she would know. As if hearing himself say it meant nothing; he had a dubious attitude toward his own words; they didn’t become real, not until she agreed.
It’s over, she said.

Next up: It's almost over, isn't it?

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Stephen Hawking from A Brief History of Time

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Wow! It's like he never even heard of God!!

If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?

Wow! It's like he never even heard of Men In Black!!

The universe doesn't allow perfection.

So much for determinism then, right?

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever, " said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!”

Down to where exactly?

Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

Of course he didn't live to hear it.
Maybe you and I might?

If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do

Well, that settles that, doesn't it?

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Aldous Huxley from Brave New World

The Savage interrupted him. But isn't it natural to feel there's a God? You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers, said the Controller sarcastically. You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

Let's imagine the Controller here, Mr. Pinhead.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

Tell me that doesn't make the world go around.

It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

Right, like that makes Him any more real.

Pain was a fascinating horror.

On the other hand, let's see how long the fascination sticks around.

A man can smile and smile and be a villain.

Especially with practice.

And that, put in the Director sententiously, that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.

Let's start with the kids then.

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Ursula K. Le Guin from The Left Hand of Darkness

One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.

Or, here, pinheads.

You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Fortelling.
No...
To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.

So, any Foretellers here?

What is more arrogant than honesty?

We'll need, say, a context?

And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was.

Tell that to Zooey Zephyr.

The machine conceals the machinations.

Okay, but does it know this?

Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going.

Of course, there are other ways to look at it.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Embarrassed Man Accidentally Says ‘Hello’ To Coworker Instead Of ‘I Feel Like Crying All The Time’

Whatever possessed him?

Janet Yellen Shoves Child Out Of Way To Get At Quarter On Sidewalk

You tell me.

Wealthy Couple Taking Real Vacation For First Time In Weeks

Wealthier couple first time in days.

Promising Report Finds Great Pacific Garbage Patch Could Support Full-Scale Ground War By 2040

Which one though? https://education.nationalgeographic.or ... age-patch/

Girlfriend Talks Through Whole Goddamn Commercial

Ex-girlfriend now.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Drops Kids Off At Summer Work Camp

Praise the Lord!

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Isaac Asimov from I, Robot

The Three Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;
3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law;
The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Tell that to the terminators.

You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.

Up in the intellectual clouds, say?

Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict—its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself—what's the expression—ah, yes, 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars.

Three words:
1] military
2] industrial
3] complex

...you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

Doing what?

All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger.

Uh, no shit?

I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.

And then the silly hypotheses here.

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Andy Warhol

I am a deeply superficial person.

Next up: the deeply superficial philosophers here. Though especially there.

The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.

Not many things you either can or can't say that about.

If everyone isn't beautiful, then no one is.

Yeah, right.

I always think about what it means to wear eyeglasses. When you get used to glasses you don't know how far you could really see. I think about all the people before eyeglasses were invented. It must have been weird because everyone was seeing in different ways according to how bad their eyes were. Now, eyeglasses standardize everyone's vision to 20-20. That's an example of everyone becoming more alike. Everyone could be seeing at different levels if it weren't for glasses.

Noted. Now, moving on...

I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

But still be Andy Warhol of course.

I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts.

Well, for one thing, you can actually eat the soup in the cans.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

New Texas Law Requires Schools To Display Image Of God Hung Like A Horse In Every Classroom

And now Florida too.

Police Officer Tells Rookie That Weapon Should Only Be Drawn To Secure Early Retirement

If you get his drift.

Man Confident That If He Lived In Nazi Germany He Would Turn Jews In Out Of Fear

What are you confident regarding here?

Fringe Catholic Sect Doesn’t Tolerate Child Abuse

Like anyone would actually believe that.

Critics Accuse Joe Biden Of Running For President For Political Reasons

Like anyone would actually believe that.

Survey Finds Nearly 6 In 10 Wealthy Americans Living Fraud To Fraud

If only until the workers of the world unite.

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Joseph Conrad from Heart of Darkness

The horror! The horror!

Don't get me started.

I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

Don't get me started.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

It may be more exciting for you. Among other things.

His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.

Not many that isn't true of.

I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.

Tell that to the Grim Reaper.

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.

Next up: the taint of life.

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Italo Calvino from Invisible Cities

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

This time really think about it, okay?

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

Your own inferno first, okay?

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

Yes, even Baltimore.

You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.

Including virtual cities like ours here.

...the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping...something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene...

So, is that postmodern enough for you?

You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.

And then all the pinheads convinced they're not wearing one.