People take tedious pictures. They all take tasteless pictures of their families wearing clothes that don't match, clashing red, blue, and orange... they are all unaturally bright in mediocre suburban homes.

It can't be that hard to take a decent picture. Even with my jujurific digital camera, I've managed some almost artistic pictures... Surely you can do better with your fucking N80.

      

"If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state." -Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

"Sir Arthur turned with his knights, and smote behind and before, and ever Sir Arthur was in the foremost press till his horse was slain underneath him. And therewith King Lot smote down King Arthur. With that his four knights received him and set him on horseback. Then he drew his sword Excalibur, but it was so bright in his enemies' eyes, that it gave light like thirty torches. And therewith he put them aback, and slew much people."

      

Poetry, I detest it, rhyming is a bunch of shit, but not so much as expressive eyebrows on fat faced midwestern cows, fish and blenders and artistic peers. Yet, all these are secondary to engineers with their bland obedience, degrees and wives all with standards compliant petty lives.

Since I'm not a postmodernist, context is important. I wrote this work of real genius during my OO class. If you happen to be a postmodernist and read this and want to interpret it in some stupid way, know that you are wrong.

Twain has the idea that truly horrible things are wonderful for how genuinely horrid they are. Offhand, I can think of two examples of this right out of A Tramp Abroad. There's some terrible piano that finds its mate with a woman enthusiastically playing war hymns. Then, there is St. Mark's. Twain claims it's the most genuinely ugly building ever constructed.

His thesis strikes me as true. It's probably a desire to see things that are simple and pure. Knowing that there is genuine ugliness in the world, I suspect there is genuine beauty to offset it. Of course, I could well be wrong and everything might be nasty all the time, but I cling irrationally to a belief in symmetry.

"...one is calm before St. Mark, one is calm within it, one would be calm on top of it, calm in the cellar; for its details are masterfully ugly, no misplaced and impertinent beauties are intruded anywherel and the consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing, entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness. One's admiration for a perfect thing always grows, never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him that it is perfect. St. Mark is perfect. To me it soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while. Every time its squat domes disappeared from my view, I had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared, I felt an honest rapture -- I have not known any happier hours than those I daily spent in front of Florian's, looking across the Freat Square at it. Propped on its long row of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk."

"Some sounds are hatefuller than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, and aggravating as the "hoo'hoo" of a cuckoo clock, I think. I bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person; for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened, I would do that man an ill turn. What I meant, was, that I would break one of his legs, or something of that sort; but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind. That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory in every way." -Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, pg. 263

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