8 faks about Nietzsche, one of which is a fake fak.

TIM FOOTMAN hit me for this one.
Go, read, worship. The man is GOOD. He also looks like Buddy Holly in certain lights.

And FOR SHITSAKES PEOPLE TRY AND TAKE YOUR MEDICATION FIRST. Every single time I give out a link for this mans blog all the goddamn crazies come out of the woodwork and go harrass him. The man is a serious writer, ok? If you want to say stupid shit say it here; because chances are if you're too dim to get Footman then you won't get it when I subject you to cruel mockery and sarcasm and I always get a big kick out of that. OK? We straight?

This is a meme. A meme is actually supposed to be a self-replicating thoughtform. An internet meme is more along the lines of a chain letter or one of those folklore things that get passed around at offices...like, the picture of the frog sitting at his desk looking disgusted with the saying "I'm so happy here I could just SHIT" captioning it? Or the one where it's a whole list of ways that the word 'fuck' can be used? Like, for instance, it says 'NAUTICAL USAGE: 'Fuck the Admiral'

Oh ha! Ha ha ha! Fuck the Admiral! Get it? See, because an admiral is nautical...?

Yeah.

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1. Nietzsche was a philosopher. Except other philosophers of the time thought he really wasn't much of a philosopher. Or, more like, they thought he was OK at coming up with philosophies, he just didn't express them in the approved philosophical format. My question is: Why should we care?
See, that was a pretty philosophical statement right there. Was it Nietzscheian? The fuck do I know? My knowledge of Nietzche is right on a par with my knowledge of gas phase ion chemistry. Actually no, thats a lie; I picked up a copy of 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' back around 1971...and found myself so laughably out of my depth that I just put that bad boy down and backed away slowly. I mean, at that point I'd just barely made it through Thoreau without putting my head through a plate glass window. You know, like that chick in 'The Stand'?

2. There are no pictures of Nietzche wearing a ladies' dress on the Internet. There are a couple of him wearing a Superman outfit. Now thats just dumb. Geezly Christmas people, 'Ubermensch' doesn't mean 'Superman'. It refers to 'higher' or transcendent' man, or more specifically a higher or more transcendent human nature that mankind should strive for in the absence of a God. Incidentally Hitler can go fuck himself.

3. Nietzsche once asked Richard Wagner to buy two pairs of silk underpants for him. Wagner was that guy who wrote that 'Hi ya tee yah!' Valkyries thing? The Ring of the Niblet Corn? With the Rhinemaidens and the evil dwarf and shit, and you have to take four separate evenings out of your life just to see the whole thing and it's all singing in German? That guy. And if you go by that I guess he does seem like the kind of guy who knew his way around a pair of silk underpants.

4. Nietzsche liked playing the violin and smoking a large, foul pipe, which he frequently loaded from a cache of rough shag stored in the toe of an oriental slipper on the mantlepiece. Many were the evenings when I crouched furtively behind some second rate novel, wincing at the alarming screeches and fantastic glissandoes of -one could scarcely call it 'music' -which issued from the tormented strings of his violin, while clouds of foul smoke blued the atmosphere around his head.

5. Nietzsche might have been gay. Or not. Nobody really knows what he was tapping. It is a mystery, like Area 51. When he finally went round the bend and ended up in an asylum Wagner wrote a letter to his doctor and told him that the reason that Nietzsche was crazy was because he jacked off too much. This does little to clarify the issue of Nietzsche's sexuality although it may point toward a preoccupation with World of Warcraft on the part of Nietzsche, or lingering bad feeling about the whole 'pick me out a nice pair of silk underpants, Rick' thing on the part of Wagner.

6. Nietzsche wrote a lot of books, and he read a lot of books. He liked Machiavelli and Burckhardt, and I like Machiavelli and Burckhardt! That means I'm a lot like Nietzsche, I guess!

7. Nobody really knows how to pronounce 'Nietzsche '. Nobody knew how to pronounce MY maiden name either. See? The parallels are mounting up!

8. Nietzsche comes up a lot on Myspace and Livejournal sites where the person quoting him (typically 'What does not kill me makes me stronger') professes an interest in BDSM. He is also mentioned frequently by atheists and Goth kids in Europe. This guy likes him, for example. Some of his pictures are worth enlarging. I like the one where he's wearing a pair of black socks and not a whole lot of anything else.