Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Joker...

Murray Franklin: I'm waiting for the punchline.
Arthur Fleck: There is no punchline.

Bang, bang, you're dead?

Arthur Fleck: How 'bout another joke, Murray?
Murray Franklin: No, I think we've had enough of your jokes.
Arthur Fleck: What do you get...
Murray Franklin: I don't think so.
Arthur Fleck: ...when you cross...
Murray Franklin: I think we're done here now, thank you.
Arthur Fleck: ...a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?
Murray Franklin: Call the police, Gene, call the police.
Arthur Fleck: I'll tell you what you get! You get what you fuckin' deserve!

No, seriously, what do you get?

Arthur Fleck: I've been the man of the house for as long as I can remember. I take good care of my mother.
Murray Franklin: All that sacrifice, she must love you very much.
Arthur Fleck: She does. She always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She says I was put here to spread joy and laughter.

Of course, we know how that turns out.

Arthur Fleck: Have you seen what it's like out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don't. They think that we'll just sit there and take it, like good little boys! That we won't werewolf and go wild!

On the other hand, he does have a "condition".

Social Worker: They don't give a shit about people like you, Arthur. And they really don't give a shit about people like me either.

So, don't forget to vote!

Arthur Fleck: Comedy is subjective, Murray, isn't that what they say? All of you, the system that knows so much: you decide what's right or wrong the same way you decide what's funny or not.

Just out of curiosity, who decides that here?

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“Most people are just filler- like extras in the background of movies exist to make the scene appear fuller- they exist only to make earth appear fuller. But, really they are vapid, substanceless, in fact I avoid most people like the plague.” Mohadesa Najumi

Here? Let's name names.

“Nihilism brings us down to earth by forcing us to confront our puniness, our failures and our finitude. It reminds us that we are not gods, and thus helps to put us back into our appropriate place.” John Marmysz

I'm a hero then!

“Perhaps I can follow a heroic existential nihilist’s sterling example of surviving the harshness of reality by employing an attentive narrative examination of my recalcitrant life to extract shards of personal truth and elicit a synthesizing purposefulness of my being from the darkness, anarchy, and chaos of existence. Perhaps through the act of engaging in a deliberative examination of the ontological mystery of being and investigating the accompanying stark brutal doubt that renders a materialistic life intolerably senseless, absurd, and meaningless, I can confront the baffle of being and establish a guiding set of personal values to live by in an indifferent world. Perhaps by using the contemplative tools of narrative storytelling, I can strictly scrutinize the key leaning rubrics veiled within an array of confusing personal life experiences. Perhaps by engaging in a creative act of discovery I can blunt the pain and anguish that comes from the nightmarish experience of suffering from an existential crisis.” Kilroy J. Oldster

On the other hand, trust me: perhaps not.

“Unless you don't get the sense that everything is senseless, you are not making any sense to me.” Anupam S Shlok

Don't, won't, can't...they all make sense to me.

“I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular what he had done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me. Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist.” Kurt Vonnegut

Lucky him?

“Our galaxy is some small part of universe, and it’s just a fluke that bunch of chemical reactions can somehow support a life system. You see, we aren’t special. There’s no watchman looking over us, there’s no sin or deed. It’s just that you balance universe every second, and you cannot change a thing about it.” Supreeth Mithunkul

Thank God?

[iambiguous]

God...

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” Lenny Bruce

Does He know that?

“Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith.” A.W. Tozer

Only truly blind leaps of faith count.

“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.” Leo Tolstoy

And that certainly includes posting here.

“Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire days sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them.” Neil Gaiman

Well, at least that's settled.

“That God does not exist, I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Like me in other words.

“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” Graham Greene

If He is merciful at all of course.

[iambiguous]

Existentialism...

“No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no self-doubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right—that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next.” Karen Maitland

Objectivism!

“If one shifts the center of gravity of life out of life into the 'Beyond' – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its center of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct, all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Yeah, okay, but [in your head] you get to live forever.

“...to be sure, all that pointless standing about and waiting day after day always starting all over again without any prospect of change, will wear a man down and make him doubtful, and ultimately incapable of anything but that despairing standing about.” Franz Kafka

And the equivalent of that here, of course.

“Death is a continuation of my life without me...” Jean-Paul Sartre

Whatever that means.

“As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world---and finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that I’d been happy, and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred." Albert Camus

Then back to the boulder.

“Sometimes, I used to sit under the sky, on a clear night, and gaze at the stars, saying, in my croaky voice: 'Lord, if you’re up there somewhere, and you aren’t too busy, come and say a few words to me, because I’m very lonely and it would make me so happy.' Nothing happened." Jacqueline Harpman

Try this yourself. And, if something does happen, tell us about it.

[iambiguous]

Absurd...

“I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.” George Carlin

He's still dead, right?

“Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.” Yogi Berra

For example?

“I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?” Werner Heisenberg

Given free will of course.

“The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.” John Cleese

Based on a true story?

“If warm air rises, Heaven could be hotter than Hell.” Steven Wright

Nope. 72 degrees Fahrenheit 24/7. Right, IC?

“That pompous phrase 'graphic novel' was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.” Alan Moore

Of course he's only paraphrasing Rorschach.

[FrankGSterleJr]

“Death is a continuation of my life without me...”
______

I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare / where having died I’m yet again being forced to be reborn back into human form / despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace. //

My bed wet from sweat, I futilely try to convince my own autistic brain / I want to live, the same traumatized dysthymic brain displacing me from the functional world. //

Within my nightmare a mob encircles me and insists that life’s a blessing, including mine. //

I ask them for the blessed purpose of my continuance. I insist upon a practical purpose. //

Give me a real purpose, I cry out, and it’s not enough simply to live / nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers! //

I’m tormented hourly by my desire for emotional, material and creative gain / that ultimately matters naught, I explain. My own mind brutalizes me like it has / a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance! //

Bewildered they warn that one day on my death bed I’ll regret my ingratitude / and that I’m about to lose my life. //

I counter that I cannot mourn the loss of something I never really had / so I’m unlikely to dread parting from it. //

Frustrated they say that moments from death I’ll clamor and claw for life / like a bridge-jumper instinctively flailing his limbs as though to grasp at something / anything that may delay his imminent thrust into the eternal abyss. //

How can I in good conscience morosely hate my life / while many who love theirs lose it so soon? they ask. //

Angry I reply that people bewail the ‘unfair’ untimely deaths of the young who’ve received early reprieve / from their life sentence, people who must remain behind corporeally confined / yet do their utmost to complete their entire life sentence—even more, if they could! //

The vexed mob then curse me with envy for rejecting what they’d kill for—continued life through unending rebirth. //

“Then why don’t you just kill yourself?” they yell, to which I retort “I would if I could. //

My life sentence is made all the more oppressive by my inability to take my own life.” //

“Then we’ll do it for you.” As their circle closes on me, I wake up. //

Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves they sincerely want to live when in / fact they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown? //

No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes. //

Nay, leave me be to embrace, engage the dying of the blight!

[iambiguous]

John Steinbeck from The Grapes of Wrath

I'm jus' pain covered with skin.

On the good days.

This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we".

Amen.

The bank -- the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die...When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

Maybe, but only until the workers of the world unite.

You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.

We know exactly what He looks like: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=5 ... =610&dpr=1

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.

Enough said?

“Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there." Tom Joad”

https://youtu.be/CumZ9dugKKU?si=7bxRpcPN081Io__O

[iambiguous]

Despair...

“A hopeless man is a very desperate and dangerous man, almost a dead man.” Robert F. Kennedy

Cue [among others] the assassins?

“Urgency and despair don't get along well.” N.K. Jemisin

Why would they?

“This is hell. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen.” Primo Levi

Next up: virtual hell.

“The point is that we are not doomed because we are homosexual, my dear, we are doomed only if we live in despair because of it, as we did on the beaches and the streets of Suck City.” Andrew Holleran

Note to the Nazis here:

To gas or not to gas?

"In the depths of horror and despair, one comes to a new steadiness. There is no farther to fall.” Winston Graham

Remember when that was actually true?

“I might just end up writing again
a howl instead
of an era ripped open;
poetry that is soaked in the sweetness of
euphoria
is not taking shape in my mind.” Suman Pokhrel

Try philosophy?

[iambiguous]

Jodi Picoult from My Sister's Keeper

Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.

Not much that can't be.

Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.

Not much that can't be.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

Let the Christians tell you? Here I mean.

Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.

So, what did you find here?

The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to.

Another rendition: https://youtu.be/bOH-toABAG8?si=hrV4_t2kkPxMsYZO

It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you.

Not unlike some things that you do see.

[iambiguous]

Suicide...

“No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.” Albert Camus

Next up: a posteriori

“The body tries to stop the mind from killing itself, no matter the cost. It is only the lack of strength, the fatigue that lets the jumpers fall at last.” Thomm Quackenbush

And he knows this...how?

“No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life.” Al Alvarez

So far, he means.

“I can just close my eyes and let myself fall into oblivion. Maybe I'll hit the exact same rocks and my blood will mingle with his and maybe there's some kind of life after death and he's waiting for me there with his hand outstretched just like mine.
But...
I don't want to die.
I try to twist my body backwards and pain shoots up my neck.
It's too late.
I chose life too late.” Cat Clarke

Really, try to imagine that moment yourself.

“You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body.” Ryū Murakami

You first.

“It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true—unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward—shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.” Martin Amis

Unfortunately, it's still no less a mess "out there" too.

[iambiguous]

Joker...

Arthur Fleck: I don't want you worrying about money, mom. Or me. Everybody's telling me that my stand-up's ready for the big clubs.

Rupert Pupkin in particular.

Penny Fleck: I mean, dont you have to be funny to be a comedian?

Let's just say that she gets hers.

Arthur Fleck: Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?

On the other hand, does this clown: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=5 ... =610&dpr=1

Murray Franklin: And finally, in a world where everyone thinks they could do my job, we got this video tape from Pogo's Comedy Club right here in Gotham. Here's a guy who thinks if you just keep laughing, it'll somehow make you funny. Check out this joker.

He'll come to regret that, of course.

Open Mic Comic: I think most women look at sex like buying a car. You know, like, "Can I see myself in this long term?" "Is it safe?" "Is it reliable?" "Could it kill me?" Most guys look at sex like parking a car. We're like, "There's a spot". "There is another spot, that would work." "Oh, I have to pay? - Never mind." "Handicapped? - Hope no one sees us."

Cue vegetariantaxidermy?

Hoyt Vaughn: How the fuck do I know? Why does anybody do anything?

Let alone a cartoon character.

[iambiguous]

The Man Who Wasn't There

Reidenschneider: They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can't know the reality of what happened, or what would've happened if you hadn't-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no "what happened"? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds... our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the "Uncertainty Principle". Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy's on to something.

Strings?

Ed Crane: And then it was Riedenschneider's turn. I gotta hand it to him, he tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I'd lost my place in the universe; how I was too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind the D.A. made me out to be; how there was some greater scheme at work that the state had yet to unravel. And he threw in some of the old "truth" stuff he hadn't had a chance to trot out for Doris. He told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make; that I wasn't the kind of guy to kill a guy; that I was The Barber, for Christsake. I was just like them - an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a world that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner, sure. But not a murderer. He said I was modern man, and if they voted to convict me, well, they'd be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. He told them to look, not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. It even had me going...

I learned a thing or two from it...

Ed: Frank.
Frank: Huh?
Ed: This hair.
Frank: Yeah.
Ed: You ever wonder about it?
Frank: Whuddya mean?
Ed: I don't know... How it keeps on coming. It just keeps growing.
Frank: Yeah, lucky for us, huh pal?
Ed: No, I mean it's growing, it's part of us. And we cut it off. And we throw it away.
Frank: Come on, Eddie, you're gonna scare the kid.
Ed: I'm gonna take his hair and throw it out in the dirt.
Frank: What the...
Ed: I'm gonna mingle it with common house dirt.
Frank: What the hell are you talking about?
Ed: I don't know. Skip it.
Later...
Ed Crane: I thought about what an undertaker had told me once - that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, "What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it's gone?"

God's will?

Ed Crane: I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what I'll find, beyond the earth and sky. But I'm not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.

Maybe. That just about encompasses it.

Ed Crane: Doris and I went to church once a week. Usually Tuesday night.
Priest: B-9. I-29.

Next up: BINGO in Heaven.

Ed Crane: It's like pulling away from the maze. While you're in the maze, you go through willy nilly, turning where you think you have to turn; banging into the dead ends. One thing after another. But you get some distance on it, and all those twists and turns, why, they're the shape of your life. It's hard to explain. But seeing it whole gives you some peace.

Seeing it whole?
Right.

[iambiguous]

Ernest Cline from Ready Player One

I didn't think anyone would anticipate this move, because it was so clearly insane.

Or: I didn't think anyone would anticipate his post, because it was so clearly insane.
A "condition" let's call it.

For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.

Not unlike the twentieth century for some of us.

'Dilettantes,’ Art3mis said. ‘It’s their own fault for not knowing all the Schoolhouse Rock! lyrics by heart.'

Just in case: https://www.google.com/search?q=jailhou ... kCegQIJxAC

The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language.

Cue the outer force fielders here.

I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame.

Or playing solitaire.

Now that everyone could vote from home, via the OASIS, the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists.

The law of intended consequences let's call it.

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“'...when all of them have gone your way, humanity will be buried, and on its tomb I, sole master of myself at last, I, heir to all the human race, will shout with laughter.' And so, among the ruins of the world, the desolate laughter of the individual-king illustrates the last victory of the spirit of rebellion. But at this extremity nothing else is possible but death or resurrection. Stirner, and with him all the nihilist rebels, rush to the utmost limits, drunk with destruction.” Albert Camus

Or hungover...and vengeful.

“Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.” Iris Murdoch

Down out of the clouds as it were.

“I’m a eunuch’s dick.” Supreeth Mithunkul

Go on...what's that like?

“Nihilism, denying the significance of our actions, makes no sense. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe that we are not going to make it, we will actually not do anything.” Agustin Argelich

And [of course] it never, ever gets more complicated than that.

“When the English prosecuting attorney observes that “from Mein Kampf the road led straight to the gas chambers at Maidenek,” he touches on the real subject of the trial, that of the historic responsibilities of Western nihilism and the only one which, nevertheless, was not really discussed at Nuremberg, for reasons only too evident. A trial cannot be conducted by announcing the general culpability of a civilization. Only the actual deeds which, at least, stank in the nostrils of the entire world were brought to judgment.” Albert Camus

Uh, blah, blah, blah?

“Pearl would smile helplessly back with the sickening feeling that she was collaborating with God. Not the God of her mother's faulty and romantic vision, but the true one. A God of barbaric and unholy appearance, with a mind uncomplimentary to human consciousness.” Joy Williams

See, I told you!

[iambiguous]

God...

“And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.” Mark Haddon

God's will let's call it.

“Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to Hell?'
Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.'
Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?' Annie Dillard

No, really this time.

“Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith―acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.
Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that we have proof the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.” Dan Brown

Blasphemy!

“The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.'
'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.'” Brennan Manning

Tee-hee?

“I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me.” Donald Miller

Of course, we don't send the pancakes to Hell, do we?

“My arms are too short to box with God.” Johnny Cash

Plus, He is omnipotent.