Matthew > Recent Status Updates

“Big mistake, to conflate sincerity with truth.” (74)

“When a friend's mother asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd answered honestly that I wanted to be a weather girl: to look beautiful and talk about wind and planets, to be the least necessary member of the news team and be loved for it. I was heartbroken to learn of the rigors of meteorology.” (18)

“Ever spend time aboard a space ship amidst the marvels of technological sterility and the interminable presence of super novas, colliding galaxies and black holes? After a decade or so the effect of such astounding phenomena wears thin. You surprise yourself that you are fondly recalling scenes of urban squalor or the rustic shack in the piney woods.” (130)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it

“The issue opens with ‘On White Radicalism,’ a statement by the Black Action Movement in Kalamazoo. […] The author of the statement argues that, in the American context, Marxist analysis is not sufficient because of the ‘almost insurmountable obstacle’ of the racism of white workers.” (42)

“So, then, the antidote to meaninglessness was art. I could be the agent of my own meaning; the answers would come from my perception and understanding of the world and those around me. No systems of belief or patterns of faith would need to open my path into each new year of my life. It was the most sacred thing I’d ever learned.” (59)

“America is, in particular, such a desperate onlooker of death. […] We have been conditioned that any price is worthy to avoid being even death-adjacent. We could never do right by someone who needed it the most.” (7)

I feel like this permanently rewired my conception of the Prometheus myth the same way METROPOLIS did for the Tower of Babel

“Sir, why are you traveling with a noose in your suitcase? The only thing in your suitcase is a noose.” (118)

“The three heralds of the apocalypse: Æ, Ø, Å.” (36)

“You get angry about a lot of things and you, yourself, dying uselessly is one of them.” (139)

"I'm cosmic background microwave radiation, you love it when I'm the ionized gas that later condenses to make superclusters of galaxies." (211)

The Fifth Column