Eccentric philosopher Latimore Bivens DeGroot was found
dead in his apartment today. Dubbed The Discount Nietzsche by his peers,
DeGroot believed that a philosopher’s mark was measured not in the oeuvre of
cohesive thought he left behind, but in how many times he was quoted and spent
most of his waking hours composing concise, witty, paradoxical remarks that ran
the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime. His ability to turn a phrase and receive almost instantaneous attribution from that phrase caused great jealousy among the most credentialed and rarified strata of
academia.
Martin
Buber was quoted as saying of DeGroot, “The guy was an intellectual gonif
without one shred of original thought let alone a degree. He was a complete
momzer! Latimore DeGroot was a charlatan as a thinker and couldn’t present a cogent argument to get out of a paper bag. However, he had this way of distilling in a few words what
took Kierkegaard, Kant and James
whole careers to master.”
Neighbors
said that DeGroot had a mordant wit coupled with a healthy respect for the
sublime. More than a few times when financially short, he attempted to pay the rent with a few chosen bon mots. Neighbors also state that in the past few
years DeGroot hadn’t been the same rarely leaving his apartment and that
basically he had just given up and wouldn’t be surprised if the autopsy
revealed the cause of death as “complications from indifference”.
Among
his papers were a series of quotes still in the carriage of his Royal portable
typewriter he was probably preparing to release into the public discourse none
of which were backed up by any serious consideration. DeGroot’s attitude was,
why bust my balls? He as fond of saying, “Humans only remember the greats
through their epigrams, not the dry, dusty volumes that no one gives a shit
about including their mothers”.
DeGroot
instituted efficiency into thinking. Why spend precious hours every day in deep
contemplation killing yourself, when a few hours each month was more than
enough to conjure a couple of neat, syntactical aphorisms that might allow him
entry into Valhalla some day.
Below is a sampling…
- “I have great faith in the sanctity of doubt...”
- “Capitalism tolerates racism until it affects the
bottom line.”
- “Freethinking is never free.”
- “Evolution waits for no man.”
- “As the surface show wraps its tentacles around the
throats of the masses it leaves little room for contemplation in a time
that desperately calls its name.”
- “When you contemplate cosmic insignificance it really
boils down to the notion that all of our actions are geared to getting
around this very notion.”
- “As we crest the top of the hill the bottom begins
racing toward us. It is only then we realize we were yoked to this
inevitability all along.”
- “Memorials are only performed for the living as the
dead have met their fates in the only way they can.”
- “Life is a constant struggle, which makes it the
greatest work of art of all!”
- “The conceit regarding reality is that it must be
avoided at all costs.”
- “There is nothing more certain than an uncertain
man.”
- “The Truth might not even be the truth.”
- “Laughter is the cure for the disease of life.”
- “In fealty we trust.”
- “Life is one…slow…steady…fade.”
- “The severity of man’s denial is commensurate with
the size of his cable package.”
- “If mankind were a stock I’d have to give it a ‘sell’
rating.”
- “All is lost!…eventually.”
- “It’s all a damn lie! A vital one to be sure.”
- “It’s easy to have hope. Hope is free.”
- “One of the great things about reaching your
seniority is that a completely horrible day can be salvaged by one good,
solid bowel movement.”
- “If a thousand flies land on something chances are
it's a piece of shit!”
- “If your eyes are closed does it really matter who’s
fucking you in the ass?”
- “Halloween is for people who are ashamed of their own
natural casings.”
- “A fart or as I like to call it, a fanfare for the
common man.”
- “I’m sorry your Weltanschauung doesn’t gibe with the
cosmos’.”
- “In this country the bar is very low and the short
bus is getting longer.”
- “For those of you who have attempted to pierce the
natural casing of my being by painting me as a horrific misanthrope, a
curmudgeonly, cynical, nit-picking moaner and a dyspeptic agent of the
highest order, all I can say is fuck you!”
- “The one thing you can safely say about mankind is
that it sticks to its guns by not giving a shit!”
- “Do not think hard. Think smart!”
No comments:
Post a Comment