RainyCoast

“As soon as something is represented it becomes an image of itself, semiotically richer but existentially impoverished, alienated, drawn out of itself and extenuated—a potential commodity.” — Hakim Bey

All the religions had very strong views about talking to the dead. And so did Mrs. Cake. They held that it was sinful. Mrs. Cake held that it was only common courtesy. — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied … but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.” — John Berger

“An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.” ― Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues II

“It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity” ― Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“How many people today live in a language that is not their own? Or no longer, or not yet, even know their own and know poorly the major language that they are forced to serve? This is the problem of immigrants, and especially of their children, the problem of minorities, the problem of a minor literature but also a problem for all of us: how to tear a minor literature away from its own language, allowing it to challenge the language and making it follow a sober revolutionary path? How to become a nomad and an immigrant and a gypsy in relation to one’s own language? Kafka answers: steal the baby from its crib, walk the tight rope.” ― Gilles Deleuze, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature

Half of life is lost in charming others. The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others. Leave this play, you have played enough! -Rumi

“A banker? Me?” “Yes, Mr. Lipwig.” “But I don’t know anything about running a bank!” “Good! No preconceived ideas.” “I’ve robbed banks!” “Capital! Just reverse your thinking,” said Lord Vetinari, beaming. “The money should be on the inside.” Terry Pratchett, Making Money

No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and other essays

I just misread someone's username as "Streptococcus".

I hear ya!!!!

The level of sadism in the average person.

I knew (past tense!) so many people who talked about pooping constantly. One of them was my old boss, and she would go into specifics. I was screaming internally for the two months I had to work there, and I knew what was happening to her internally far better than I'd care to. I had one coworker who was obsessed with comparing everything to wiping a baby's butt. I swear if you asked her (not that anyone ever asked her anything, she was volunteering opinions throughout the shift) how you code in c++, she'd go "just like wiping a baby's butt!!" - and proceeded to explain how you wipe a baby's butt, every time! Oh and there was that guy with perpetual explosive infectious diarrhea who kept us up to date on his bms too. Not enough lysol in the world... Seriously, there's therapy for those kinds of anal fixations. I cringed just remembering all the unasked for poop talk.

The "we bonded over what a jerk her boyfriend is to her" is fashionable again, as is the resulting $#!tfest of said tortured princess ditching the knight to go back to her jerk. Yawn. Grow up.

The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless, the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible, the architecture of the soul begins to show through. — Jack Gilbert, from “Half the Truth,”

“There is no doubt that late capitalism certainly articulates many of its injunctions via an appeal to (a certain version of) health. The banning of smoking in public places, the relentless monstering of working class diet on programs like You Are What You Eat, do appear to indicate that we are already in the presence of a paternalism without the Father. It is not that smoking is ‘wrong,’ it is that it will lead to our failing to lead long and enjoyable lives. But there are limits to this emphasis on good health: mental health and intellectual development barely feature at all, for instance. What we see instead is a reductive, hedonic model of health which is all about ‘feeling and looking good.’ To tell people how to lose weight … is acceptable; but to call for any kind of cultural improvement is to be oppressive and elitist.” — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

‘To say more than human things with human voice, That cannot be; to say human things with more Than human voice, that, also, cannot be; To speak humanly from the height or from the depth Of human things, that is acutest speech.’ Wallace Stevens, ‘Chocorua to its Neighbor’

Bad luck alone does not embitter us that badly… nor does the feeling that our affairs might have been better managed move us out of range of ordinary disappointment; it is when we recognize that the loss has been caused in great part by others; that it needn’t have happened; that there is an enemy out there who has stolen our loaf, soured our wine, infected our book of splendid verse with filthy rhymes; then we are filled with resentment and would hang the villains from that bough we would have lounged in liquorous love beneath had the tree not been cut down by greedy and dim-witted loggers in the pay of the lumber interests. Watch out, then, watch out for us, be on your guard, look sharp, both ways, when we learn—we, in any numbers—when we find who is forcing us—wife, children, Commies, fat cats, Jews—to give up life in order to survive. It is this condition in men that makes them ideal candidates for the Party of the disappointed People. — William H. Gass, The Tunnel

“Inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.” — Anthony Marra, from A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena

“It occurs to me that after reading all these philosophers of futility it will be nearly impossible for anyone in the class to turn in a final paper. After reading all these unfinished or fragmentary works - after Pascal and Pessoa, after the Zibaldone and the Sudelbücher, after the diaries of Kierkegaard, Kafka, Zürn, after the rantish indictments of Schopenhauer, Bernhard, Takuboku, after the one-liners of Chamfort or Cioran, after all this, why in the world would anyone write a finished paper? I should only pass those students incapable of finishing the course.” — Infinite Resignation • Eugene Thacker

Whitehead then discussed American universities in their broad functions: “… Minds don’t classify as easily as some of my colleagues appear to think. I am profoundly suspicious of the ‘A’-man. He can say back what you want to hear in an examination, and since the examination is roughly a means of test, you must give him his A if he says it back; but the ability, not to say the willingness, to give you back what is expected of him argues a certain shallowness and superficiality. Your ‘B’-man may be a bit muddle-headed, but muddle-headedness is a condition precedent to independent thought, may actually be independent creative thought in its first stage. Of course it may get no farther than muddle-headedness. But when my colleagues chaff me for giving more A’s than they are willing to do and tax me with tender-heartedness, I reflect that I would rather not have it on my head that I was the one who discouraged an incipient talent.” Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead

“Once I was struck by a car in the street. I was walking. And for maybe two seconds I had the impression that I was dying and it was really a very, very intense pleasure. The weather was wonderful. It was seven o'clock during the summer. The sun was descending. The sky was very wonderful and blue and so on. It was, it still is now, one of my best memories.[…] I’m not able to give myself and others those middle-range pleasures that make up everyday life. Such pleasures are nothing for me, and I am not able to organize my life in order to make place for them. That’s the reason why I’m not a social being, why I’m not really a cultural being, why I’m so boring in my everyday life. It’s a bore to live with me.” — Michel Foucault, An Interview by Stephen Riggins

EVENING Here dies another day During which I have had eyes, ears, hands And the great world round me; And with tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two? G.K. Chesterton

‘It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.’ D.W. Winnicott

“We must distinguish between ‘sentimental’ and ‘sensitive’. A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimental Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimental old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimental politician may remember Mother’s Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera, especially at the Traviata.” — Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature