Browsing Quotes By Chuck Klosterman, page 2
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Teaching history to eighth graders is like being a tour guide for people who hate their vacation.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:50 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
It was all (of course) too predictable to believe. Which is how life always is: Pitching beats hitting, and people always want to be loved by anyone who doesn’t seem to care.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:47 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
You hear this all the time; critics of organized religion constantly say things like, “There is no way a just God would send a man like Gandhi to hell simply because he’s not a Christian.” Well, why not? I’m certainly pulling for Gandhi’s eternal salvation, but there’s no reason to believe there’s a logic to the afterlife selection process. It might be logical, and it might be arbitrary; in a way, it would be more logical if it was totally arbitrary. But the idea of questioning God’s motives will always be a fiercely American thing to do; it’s almost patriotic to get in God’s face. I’m pretty sure a lot of my friends would love the opportunity to vote against God in a run-off election. Even I’d be curious to see who the other candidate might be (probably Harry Browne).
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:35 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
This is ultimately what I like about the Born-Again Lifestyle: Even though I see fundamentalist Christians as wild-eyed maniacs, I respect their verve. They are probably the only people openly fighting against America’s insipid Oprah Culture – the pervasive belief system that insists everyone’s perspective is valid and that no one can be judged. As far as I can tell, most people I know are like me; most of the people I know are bad people (or they’re good people, but they consciously choose to do bad things). We deserve to be judged.
I realize that liberals and libertarians and Michael Stipe are always quick to quote the Bible when you say something like that, and they’ll tell you, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” And that’s a solid retort for just about anything, really. But the thing with born agains is that they want to be judged. They can’t fucking wait. That’s why they’re cool.Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:31 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
There is something undeniably attractive about becoming a born-again Christian. I hear atheists say that all the time, although they inevitably make that suggestion in the most insulting way possible: Nothing offends me more than those who claim they wish they could become blindly religious because it would “make everything so simple.” People who make that argument are trying to convince the world that they’re somehow doomed by their own intelligence, and that they’d love to be as stupid as all the thoughtless automatons they condescendingly despise.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:28 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Good intentions can’t compete with bad policy.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:20 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I would never try to convince someone not to hate the media. As far as I can tell, it’s a completely reasonable thing to hate. Whenever I meet someone who feels a sense of hatred for a large, amorphous body – the media, the government, Ticketmaster, the Illuminati, Anna Nicole Smith, whatever – I fully support their distaste. It’s always better to be mad at something vast and unspecific and theoretical, as these entities cannot sue you for defamation.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:18 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
My obsession with serial killers began when I was ten years old. My fourth-grade teacher told our class that we should never hitchhike, because the only people who picked up hitchhikers were perverted serial killers. This advice was complicated by what my fifth-grade teacher told us the following year; she said that we would all have driver’s licenses in a few years, and the one rule we always needed to remember was never to pick up hitchhikers. This was because all hitchhikers were serial killers. According to what I learned in public school, every person on every freeway was trolling for destruction. i used to imagine nomadic, sadistic drifters thumbing rides with bloodthirsty Volkswagen owners, both desperately waiting for the first opportunity to kill each other. Hitchhiking seemed like an ultraviolent race against time.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:16 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
For the past twenty-five years, culture has been obsessed with making males and females more alike, and that’s fine. Maybe it’s even enlightened. But what I’ve noticed – at least among young people – is that this convergence has mostly just prompted females to adopt the worst qualities of men. It’s like girls are trying to attain equality by becoming equally shallow and selfish. Whenever I see TV shows like Fox’s defunct Ally McBeal or HBO’s Sex and the City, I find myself perplexed as to how this is sometimes viewed as an “advancement” for feminism; it seems to imply that it’s empowering for women to think like all of the stupidest men I know (myself included).
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 5:11 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Most people consider forgetting stuff to be a normal part of living. However, I see it as a huge problem; in a way, there’s nothing I fear more. The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality. And since objective reality is fixed, all we can do is try to experience – to consume – as much of that fixed reality as possible. This can only be done by living in the moment (which I never do) or by exhaustively fling away former moments for later recall (which I do all the time).
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 5:07 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Science fiction tends to be philosophy for stupid people.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 5:04 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
As I look back at the best years of my life, I find myself wondering if maybe I wasn’t unconsciously conditioned to exist somewhere in the middle of two better stories, caught between the invention of the recent past and the valor of the coming future.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 5:02 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I once knew a girl who claimed to have a recurring dream about a polar bear that mauled Ewoks; it made me love her.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 5:00 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I didn’t care about Saved by the Bell any more than I cared about the X-Files, but the difference is that I could watch Saved by the Bell without caring and still have it become a minor part of my life, which is the most transcendent thing any kind of art can accomplish (regardless of its technical merits).
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 4:59 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Coolness is always a bear market.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 17 Sep 2009 at 7:17 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The tangible effect of pornography is roughly the same as the tangible effect of Ozzy Osbourne’s music on stoned Midwestern teenagers: It prompts a small faction of idiots to consider idiotic impulses, which is why we have the word 'idiocy.’
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 17 Sep 2009 at 7:15 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
This is why men need to become obsessed with things: It’s an extroverted way to pursue solipsism. We are able to study something that defines who we are; therefore, we are able to study ourselves. Do you know people who insist they like “all kinds of music”? That actually means they like no kinds of music. And do you know guys who didn’t care who won when the Celtics played the Lakers? That means they never really cared about anything.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 17 Sep 2009 at 5:47 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we’re simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don’t know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they’re out there.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 17 Sep 2009 at 5:16 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 17 Sep 2009 at 5:14 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Perhaps more than anything else, this is the ultimate accomplishment of The Real World: It has validated the merits of having a one-dimensional personality. In fact, it has made that kind of persona desirable, because other one-dimensional personalities can more easily understand you.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 17 Sep 2009 at 5:11 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment!