Klosterman IV

Cultural insight from Chuck Klosterman from his book Klosterman IV

American culture is... obsessed with health. We are obsessed with pleasure. We are obsessed with speed. We are obsessed with efficiency. In simplest terms, we are obsessed by the desire to accelerate every element of our existence in a futile attempt to experience as much life as we can in the shortest possible time. We have all entered in a race to devour the largest volume of gratification before it kills us.

Taste

It is not that there is no accounting for taste, it is that there is no holding anyone to account for their taste.

Seen on Twitter today

Here are a couple of the fun and funny things that have crossed our Twitterscape today.

"Housewives experience the highest rate of sexual harassment in the workplace."

---Kelly Oxford

"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of payments."

"Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman."

"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship."

---Al Bergette

"To be hated for what I am is better than to be loved for something I am not."

---Girls & Her Deals of NYC

The Wisdom of Kelly Oxford

"Adulthood is the moment you switch from taking the occasional drug to trip out, to taking the occasional drug to feel normal."---Kelly Oxford

from the Hunchback of Notre Dame

Word is Victor Hugo wanted to name The Hunchback of Notre Dame, simply Notre Dame. Upon review that makes perfect sense because ostensibly Hugo saw the cathedral itself as the central character of the story, a very modern angle for his time. One can see how the cast of other characters is an ensemble not a lead and supporting roles, nor simply a hero and a villian. Rather than spoil the story for you, and if you have only seen the movie you haven't gotten the half of it, we will instead offer...

Word pearls from Victor Hugo's masterpiece


"Pride always has ruin and shame close at its heels."


"'And love?' proceeded Gringoire.
'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye sparkled. 'It is to be two and yet be one- it is a man and a woman blending into an angel-it is heaven itself.'"


"It was the abuse of impunity going hand in hand with the abuse of punishment-two bad things, which strove for one another."


"The King never grants any boon but what is wrung from him by the people."


"In order to live one must get a livelihood."


"Life without love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it revolves."


"Memory is the tormentor of the jealous."


"which imparted to her profile that ideal sweetness which Raphael subsequently found at the mystic point of intersection of virginity, maternity, and divinity."


"Oh, how hollow science sounds when you dash against it in despair [against] a head filled with passions."


"the blinder that passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable."


"Montmarte, which had then almost as many churches as windmills, but has retained the mills only; for the material bread is nowadays more in request than the spiritual."

Work

People who stand on ceremony about their job description are ultimately losers, not leaders.

from Life of Pi

some of the wisdom of Yann Martel, from his book Life of Pi,

"All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive."

(That first nugget reminds the Clarion of the brilliant, under-read, under-utilized Gavin De Becker book, The Gift of Fear.)

More from the Life of Pi,

"People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that they might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else."

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent."

(This third one goes on for four more insightful paragraphs.)

The book is well worth the read. Yes, we know, everyone else read it years ago.

Pithy F*rging Sayings (8th ed.)

"Familiarity almost inevitably breeds indifference." ---Marc Bloch

"Aging comes at you like the tide. It only feels like waves because of the way humans measure time; birthdays, anniversaries, seasons."---staff

"An attempt to rest political equality on religious truth is simply a recipe for social disaster and political failure." ---Andrew Sullivan

"He hungered to explain who he was...an orphan boy...who had been poor all his life, had grubbed for a living, and was poor in other ways too- if he was that one what was he doing in prison? Who were they punishing if his life was punishment?"---Bernard Malamud in The Fixer

"Sometimes things that go without saying should go unsaid."---staff

"Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations."---Dorothy L. Sayers

"Bad data is a far worse problem than no data."---staff

"It is...chimerical to build peace on the economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict."---E.F. Schumacher

Link to other Clarion sayings posts.