- The Memelord Himself
Do as Diogenes did: he was unwell on one occasion when someone gave him a shove and put him in a headlock. Instead of engaging the man in a wrestling match, he took a stand before him, showed him his penis, and said “Try, sir, to wrestle me to the ground by applying pressure to this.”
~ Teles, On Self-Sufficency
- On Pleasure
Boredom compels them to invent unwholesome dishes, then to take spa treatments to combat the unwelcome side effect of such a diet. In the space of a single day they often want both breeze and a heavy cloak, heat as well as ice to offset the heat and - what’s most absurd - they hanker for hunger as well as thirst.
Addicted to sex, they nevertheless derive no pleasure from it since they do not wait until the urge arises in its own good time. The upshot is that the pleasures they pursue are joyless and disappointing in their consumation.
~ Dio Chrysostom, Oration 6
- Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchet
This is the second book in the Discworld series. It picks up directly after the first one. Although it’s not required to know the first book, it’s probably better if you do.
I liked it — as always, a hilarious concept, interesting characters, and a cute story. Although the story is more of a playground for the characters to interact with each other.
Poor Rincewind, never getting any rest.
- A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The one quality I appreciate most in a movie is creativity—and this movie has tons of it. The set and costume design alone are amazing, especially in the first half of the film, which I personally think is the best part. The second act slows down a bit, but it ends on a high note with the third. Some other noteworthy stuff:
- Half the time, I had no idea what the Droogs were saying.
- I loved the sped-up sex scene set to Beethoven.
- Also, this movie has a lot of boobies. I like.
- The music in general fits really well and has a timeless, iconic quality.
The central question the film poses is:
Can you be a good person if the only reason you don’t do wrong is because of punishment—or because you physically can’t?
The movie clearly leans toward saying that without choice, without the freedom to do wrong, being “good” becomes meaningless. Only through the contrast of being able to do evil and choosing not to, can goodness be considered praiseworthy or meaningful.
There’s an interesting parallel here to the movie No Country for Old Men, which asks:
Is virtue only worthwhile if it’s rewarded—or is its worth found in its very lack of reward?
Both films question the meaning of morality, whether vice or virtue, when it’s stripped of its existential context, i.e., the ability to choose freely.
- In No Country for Old Men, this stripping happens through cosmic indifference: bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people—seemingly at random. Virtue isn’t necessarily rewarded, and evil isn’t reliably punished. Yet people must still choose how to act.
- In A Clockwork Orange, the stripping happens through deterministic control: can we call someone the agent of their actions if they have no real choice? Or are they more like automatons? Vice is eliminated not by moral growth, but by stripping the agent of choice through psychological conditioning.
Even though the two movies come at the question from opposite angles, they ultimately arrive at the same conclusion: Virtue and vice, goodness and badness, only make sense in a context where both reward and punishment are uncertain, and where the agent of action has the freedom to choose otherwise.
Good movie. 7/10.
- Eric by Terry Pratchet
Part of the Discworld series, but it’s pretty standalone and can be read without knowing the other books. It’s one of the shortest works in the Discworld series. At first, I was a bit worried because I’d heard this was the worst book in the series—too weird and out there—but I actually found it hilarious. Maybe that says more about me than about the book.
It’s a whimsical story, very much focused on comedy, satirizing everything from classic wizard tropes to the concept of Christian hell.
Random side thought: why did the demon from the myth of Sisyphus sound like the fat girl from Derry Girls in the audiobook version? Maybe it’s because, both are irish.
Also, how the fuck does hell work? If you get promoted for being incompetent or doing something otherwise bad, does that mean all the top guys in hell are literally useless?
One of the funniest parts was this:
Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it.
This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
Also great:
It is hard to say whether the Luggage was happy or not. It had viciously attacked fourteen demons so far, and had three of them cornered in their own pit of boiling oil. Soon it would have to follow its master, but it didn’t have to rush.