Ben > Recent Status Updates

“…[Hephaestus] used a sponge to wipe his face, thick neck, and hairy chest and both his hands. Then he put on a tunic,
and took a sturdy staff and limped outside.
Slaves hurried to assist their lord. They were made all of gold, but looked like living women.
They had a consciousness inside their hearts,
and strength and voices. They had learned their skills from deathless gods. They sped beneath their master”

“And yet there was no ending of the war.”

“This was the greatest challenge faced by the bourgeoisie because (unlike fascism) socialism threatened the basic capitalist principle of private ownership of the means of production.”

“Then she unfastened the embroidered strap she kept between her breasts, on which was worked every seductive spell. It had lovemaking, intimacy, desire, and flirty talk-
flirtation makes the wisest lose their minds.”

“Undoubtedly, European capitalism achieved more and more a social character in its production… [while] distribution was not social in character. The fruits of human labor went to a given minority class, which was of the white race and resident in Europe and North America. This is the crux of the dialectical process of development and underdevelopment, as it evolved over the colonial period.”

“If one accepts that the government is always the servant of a particular class, it is perfectly understandable that the colonial governments should have been in collusion with capitalists to siphon off surplus from Africa to Europe. But even if one does not start from that…premise, it would be impossible to ignore the evidence of how the colonial administrators worked…on behalf of the big capitalists.”

“Look for the helpers. It was a goddamned Mr. Rogers quote, told to a child to comfort them during times of upheaval. But damn if it wasn't true.”

“LOUIS: I think we're like the size of a lego.
PREPOTENTE: The width of a standard LEGO® brick is 15.8 millimeters. I would guess we're slightly larger, but that's a very good estimate.
LOUIS: How did you type the registered-mark thing?
DONUT: AND WHY?”

“If you go to war against drugs, drugs will always win. Drugs will win because what you're really doing is going to war against the biological imperative all living creatures have to find comfort and happiness. And if you're unwilling or unable to first provide that, artificial alternatives, no matter how destructive, will always prevail.”

“What is man in the last analysis — his philosophy— or himself!?”

“She was a level 69 Swiftie, which, much to Donut's dismay, was a dexterity-based knife wielder.”

“…war can no longer be frontal, because of the very nature of multinational capitalism…within the logic of mature capitalism, which eludes the control of individual states…the logic of the news industry demands that it sell news, preferably dramatic news…In modern wars, therefore, everyone has the enemy behind the lines…”

“Canny Odysseus stood just behind him,
and every time the son of Tydeus
approached a man and killed him with his sword, Odysseus would grab the victim's foot
and drag him to the side, because he wanted
to make sure that the splendid long-maned horses
would pass through easily and not be spooked
by stepping on the bodies of the dead.”

“Then shall evil be renewed, for it is one of two things that will persist until the sun dies, and the eternal cold brings peace...”

“A thousand fires were burning on the plain and by each fire sat fifty men, their faces lit by the gleam of burning wood. The horses stood by their chariots and chomped white barley and grain and waited for the goddess Dawn.”

“In many parts of the world, capitalism in its imperialist form accepted that some measure of political sovereignly should be left in the hands of the local population. This was so in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, and to a more limited extent in China…European capitalists came to the decision that Africa should be directly colonized. There is evidence to suggest [this] was not entirely planned.”

“Gezo, who ruled from 1818 to 1857, was a reformer, and he made sincere efforts to meet criticisms of his policies by groups such as missionaries and anti-slavery campaigners; but it soon became clear that Europeans were not bent on seeing Dahomey re-emerge as a strong state, but were rather creating excuses and the subjective conditions to justify their proposed colonization of the people of Dahomey.”

“‘Zeus set an evil lot upon us all,
to make us topics of a singer’s tale
for people in the future still unborn.’”

“The cat, being a cat, ignored me.”

“When big things happen on such a large scale, it’s easy to forget sometimes that these big things are also happening to the little things in the world.”

“HaHA Ha ZiBaRRo am KING of CoooL!”

“…a mind could be tutored in history, ethic-politics and rhetoric. A person could be taught what to think, and how to express that line of thought, but he couldn't be taught how to think.”

“This was modern warfare in a civilised place. This was man against man, inside the monolithic precincts of a cultured people.”

“It is necessary to recall that in the process of independent evolution on all continents, the increase in productive capacity was accompanied by increasing inequality at all stages except socialism.”

“I imagine it's always easier to do something monstrous if you can convince yourself you aren't going to, up to the last minute, until you do.”

“NO USE!
THOUGH I SHATTER EVERY MIRROR IN MY KINGDOM...
IN THE WORLD...
IT WILL NEVER RESTORE ME TO NORMAL!
NOTHING
CAN EVER AGAIN
MAKE ME FEEL LIKE...A MAN!
AND, WHY SHOULD I WANT TO BE A
WHEN I AM
MERE MAN?
MORE..
SO MUCH MORE??
I AM HE WHO HAS RAVAGED A WORLD...
I AM
DOOM!
DOOM!
HE WHOSE
VERY NAME
BESPEAKS THE DIRE DESTRUCTION I CAN RAIN DOWN
UPON A HELPLESS
PLANET!”

“If the garden above was a fairy tale, there was another story being told in this place, one where the children never came home, and smiling wizards drank a soup of bones.”

“

‘Thank you for listening to me all those years. It does a man good to know that what he wrote has meant something...’

“

“It is often said that the best teacher is failure. This is true. But it is also the best killer. May you be lucky enough in failure to live, and unlucky enough in success to struggle.
-Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown”

“But perhaps re-forming the truth into what you wanted it to be was not a trait merely of liars, but of all human beings.”