Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Arthur C. Clarke from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.
Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.
But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many--perhaps most--of those alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven--or hell.
How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars.
Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never become reality. Increasing numbers, however are asking; 'Why have such meetings not occurred already, since we ourselves are about to venture into space?'
Why not, indeed? Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable question. But please remember: this is only a work of fiction.
The truth, as always, will be far stranger.


See, I told you.
And that's before we get to, among other things, dasein and pinheads.


It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

Let's run this by the barbarians here.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

THE FUCKING INTERNET!

Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.

Same here. Only up in the intellectual clouds.

. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

Next up: the newspapers in Heaven.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Next up: https://youtu.be/E7WQ1tdxSqI
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Re: Quote of the day

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Tim O'Brien

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.


And that's a fact.

A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

Let's note all the examples.

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

Unless, of course, the enemies are Nazis.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

You know, believe it or not.

They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

So, what did you carry?

War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

Next up: what peace is.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Don DeLillo from White Noise

Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past.


Starting now, okay?

This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.

Starting now, okay?

The world was a series of fleeting gratifications.

Among other things, let's say.

It's like World War III. Everything is white. They'll take our bright colors away and use them in the war effort.

He means everything is gray, of course.

In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hardware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now.

Few things being more important than that when being in accord is six figures. And I'm close to that.

This is death. I don't want it to tarry awhile so I can write a monograph. I want it to go away for seventy or eighty years.

You know, if you're 5.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Researchers No Closer To Understanding What The Fuck You’re Talking About


Yo, Meno!
Maybe next time though.


Man Endures Crippling Agony Of Proper Posture

The part "they" always leave out.

Stain On Bus Seat Hopefully Just Cum

On the other hand, what if it isn't?

Report Reveals Jesus Christ May Have Benefited From Father’s Influential Position To Gain High-Powered Role As Lord And Savior

Okay, suppose it's true. Does this change things for you?

Research Suggests Life On Earth Began Full 20 Minutes Earlier Than Previously Thought

Okay, suppose it's true. Does this change things for you?

Nation Asks For Just 5 More Minutes On TikTok Before Congress Bans It

Hell no!!!
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Re: Quote of the day

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Joseph Heller from Catch--22

Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.


Here? Let's name names.

Help! he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, as the policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. 'Police! Help! Police!' The doors were shut and bolted, and the ambulance raced away. There was a humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him. Yossarian smiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous, realized with alarm that they were not perhaps, intended as a call for police but as a heroic warning from the grave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and gun and a mob of other policemen with clubs and guns to back him up. 'Help! Police!' the man had cried, and he could have been shouting of danger.

And, no, not just if you're black.

Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

What's the rule here?

When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering.

See, I told you.

After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.

Next stop: Sweden.

The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is highest in the world, will last as long as...the frog?

New thread?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

It seems to me like this. It’s not a terrible thing—I mean, it may be terrible, but it’s not damaging, it’s not poisoning, to do without something one wants.


Not counting all the times it actually is, of course.

For better or worse, we are prepared to experiment with ourselves, to try and be different kinds of people. But you simply submitted to something.

Objectively, Mr. Pinhead.

The things that are important in life creep up on one unawared, one doesn't expect them, one hasn't given them shape in one's mind. One recognizes them, when they've appeared, that's all.

Mine for yours?

Women have this deep instinctive need to build a man up as a man. I suppose this is because real men become fewer and fewer, and we are frightened, trying to create a man.

Any real men here? Real women?

Emotion is a trap, it delivers you into the hands of society, that's why people are measuring it out.

So, how do you feel about this?

Literature is analysis after the event.

What does that make philosophy then, he wondered
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Re: Quote of the day

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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from Slaughterhouse-Five

How’s the patient? asked Derby.
Dead to the world.
But not actually dead.
No.
How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.


Anyone here dead to the world but not really?

Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

So it goes.

The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.
I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.


6.144 billion actually. Though they did all want dignity.

You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'

How do you imagine it?

If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

Next up: the Tralfamadorians and dasein.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

Of course, that's why we invented God.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jennifer Egan from A Visit from the Goon Squad

The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.


Or, sure, for some, the solution.

I go away for a few years and the whole fucking world is upside down Jules said angrily. Buildings are missing. You get strip-searched every time you go to someone's office. Everybody sounds stoned because they're emailing people the whole time they're talking to you. Tom and Nicole are with different people...And now my rock-and-roll sister and her husband are hanging around with Republicans.

That ever happen to you?

...time's a goon...

Plus you can never get enough of it.

...real computers scared me; if you can find them, then they can find you...

Or, eventually, what's left of you.

It may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.

So, what justifies the crowd here?

What I Suddenly Understand
My job is to make people uncomfortable. Plus I will do it all my life.


Lots of them around.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Zadie Smith from White Teeth

Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies.


Dasein: Pass it on.

This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.

This and [for some] joint custody.

...don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.

Schadenfreude let's call it.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Now that's true.

Please. Do me this one, great favor, Jones. If ever you hear anyone, when you are back home...if ever you hear anyone speak of the East, and here his voice plummeted a register, and the tone was full and sad, "hold your judgment. If you are told 'they are all this' or 'they do this' or 'their opinions are these,' withhold your judgment until all the facts are upon you. Because that land they call 'India' goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same among that multitude, then you are mistaken.

Next up [of course]: the West.

Where I come from, said Archie, a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her.
Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart.


Different folks, different strokes, let's call it.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

Dope.
They sell that shit to schoolkids.
It's worse than that.
How's that?
Schoolkids buy it.


The part they leave out.

This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it.

And [this time] not just in Nashville.

I didn’t know you could steal your own life. And I didn’t know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I think I done the best with it I knew how but it still wasn’t mine. It never has been.

Go ahead, steal mine.

I read in the papers here a while back some teachers came across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they'd been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So think about that. Because a lot of the time when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm gettin old. That it's one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that is that anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin gum has got a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I've got.

Can you tell the difference?

It's not about knowing who you are. It's about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody's. You don't start over. That's what it's about. Every step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it.

Well, come on, get real, some of it.

It's a mess, aint it Sheriff?
If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here.


And now it's a mess here.
Aint it?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.


Think Hitler, Stalin and...Trump?

And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek.

You know, now that he was...cured.

It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there’s no law nor order no more.

How's it stinking for you?

Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

That and [increasingly] the sociopaths.

An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you, you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also?

Yeah, what about that?

Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.

Well -- click -- anyway.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Realtor Trying To Pass Off Apartment’s Window Box Planter As Something Called ‘Romanian Balcony’


You know, what with a sucker being born every minute.

Prisoner Given 10 Extra Years For Good Behavior To Serve As Role Model For Fellow Inmates

Ironic, he called it.

Man Drinking Beer At 7:30 A.M. On Bus May Be Onto Something

On the other hand, what could that possibly be?

Financial Advisor Recommends Fraud

Late-capitalism let's call it.

Woman Tragically Succumbs To Natural Hair Color

North and South.

Man Intending To Just Take Quick Half-Hour Nap Accidentally Dies In His Sleep

That ever happen to you?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Arthur C. Clarke from 2001: A Space Odyssey

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.


Well, panic and other things.

Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.

Human history some call it.

Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.

My guess: for better or for worse.

He was prepared, he thought, for any wonder. The only thing he had never expected was the utterly commonplace.

Coming here, for example.

Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness.
At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays--especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare--or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them.
So he switched to opera--usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more.
Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart.
And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.


Cue Stanley Kubrick: https://youtu.be/QwxYiVXYyVs

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

The law of something or other.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Samuel Beckett from Murphy

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.


Anyone not new here?

Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand.

A "popular myth" let's call it. Unlike the fools.

She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said.

I won't mention Age if you don't.

The sensation of the seat of a chair coming together with his drooping posteriors at last was so delicious that he rose at once and repeated the sit, lingeringly and with intense concentration. Murphy did not so often meet with these tendernesses that he could afford to treat them casually. The second sit, however, was a great disappointment.

Next up: the equivalent of that here.

Yes or no? said Murphy. The eternal tautology.

Well, maybe.

But how much more pleasant was the sensation of being a missile without provenance or target, caught up in a tumult of non-Newtonian motion. So pleasant that pleasant was not the word.

On the contrary, pleasant is the only word for mine.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

North Korea Tests Underwater Attack Drone Capable Of Generating Radioactive Tsunami


Another one of those "no, really" stories: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/north-kor ... 6649413599

Teacher Claims She Doesn’t Discriminate Between Black Students And Students She Gives A’s To

Yes, she's of Northern European white stock.

Biden, Trump Die 2 Minutes Apart Holding Hands

Your turn to Google it.

God Accidentally Burns Down Heaven After Curling Iron Malfunctions

Your turn to Google it.

Jimmy Carter Enrolls In 2-Year Program To Become Dental Hygienist

Must be another Jimmy Carter, right?

Woman Asks Attacker For 30 More Seconds To Dig Pepper Spray Out Of Bag

The pinhead [and thank god he is one] agrees.
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