Reason why the universe wasn't intelligently designed: the horrible fact that children are born into ignorance and each generation must relearn the wealth of human knowledge again. That all the advancements of thought and idea are built upon the previous generation (which is good, because otherwise everyone would be constantly reinventing the wheel), but in the terms of ideas this is a double edged blade because while theory might have discarded some useless idea (which if I discover on my own will have to realize that so and so thought of it first) but that a child needs to re-read the great in order to comprehend the present. But that leaves little time for enjoying the present. I'm talking of course about books mostly, that focusing only on the classics means that one will probably start to sound like Harold Bloom and condemn the modern literary scene to drivel. That the wealth of human knowledge must be learned and experienced starting from the beginning and working towards the present day, building and building until we are standing upon the shoulders of giants. It would be easier if we could just have all this knowledge inside of us to begin with. Maybe.

I told my mom that she should read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Every time she's asked for a recommendation because her friend wants to start up a book club, it's always been this one. But I've never really expected her to pick up that book. Most people never read what I recommend. And with mom, I'm constantly watching or reading with censorship in mind, there are so many things which she finds offensive, although maybe this has gone down a bit. Will this bother her or worry her? Is there something the character does that goes against her moral values? It is tiring to watch with other views in mind. Not necessarily will others find this good, but what will this say about me if she hates it? I should only recommend books to strangers.

But it's a wonderful book, and I hope that her book club friends will encourage her to enjoy it (they seem more the type).

I haven't written on this thing for a while, because myspace offers a count, and an upload to facebook. More readers, except that sometimes I don't want more readers. I just want to write something that isn't going to sit on my laptop for forever and a day, waiting for me to delete it. But when I have something clever to say, such as I'm forever interested in talking to people who work low level jobs in the film industry, I don't want my "friends" to see that.

Besides, the myspace blog has this horrible problem with looking like a live journal, and not respecting that I want my type to look a certain way.

So, here's to the revival of "post-ironic quotation marks." It will not be discussing anything to interesting. It will be horribly written, and it will be more or less for me.

What does post-ironic mean. It's not ironic. It's not sincere. It's an ironic form of sincerity, when a person knows that the word he is using is not appropriate word for the context, it is the right word, but is not the word he wants to use, meaning that it is actually a false or insincere word because he does not agree with it. (In that last rambling statement, right should have been written with quotation marks around it.) When the word is not your word, when it is not something you agree with, use the air quotes. It is after all another person's choice of word, not your own.

But, dear readers (who have found this blog after an abysmal hiatus) keep in mind that the use of the air quote calls to mind your values as well. If you use the air quote to signify words and ideas which you must use (because society, language, or something dictates that it is the sincere or proper use) which you don't necessarily agree with, then everything not surrounded by air quote can be assumed that they are words and ideas which you have no problem using.

This is akin to newspapers running corrections on the minor details they get wrong, or when an editor will comment upon the misspelling of a word in a quote by writing [sic], and there were many larger errors in the paper which were never mentioned or recanted, and not everything in the editors corrections were noted or corrected.

Because the words the person chooses to say are still his own, even when she feels that she must choose a word because it is appropriate to the situation or subject matter. By using the word she is agreeing with it, and there are probably many things that she says that she feels are not true or wrong that she does not set aside by using air quotes. It's realizing that she is parroting someone else, and that she is trying to be sincere or appropriate and still isn't, but its not playing games with the word in question. It's not ironic. It's beyond that.