Last season I'd get to work and log my mileage on the bike, along with the calories. I'd keep it updated religiously. This season I haven't logged mileage in like three, four weeks. I just caught up. 424 miles since June 5. I'm well past caring. Last season every new book was a milestone and I cranked through them. This season I've been drinking from the goddamn firehose on Rousseau and Voltaire and allow me to state for the record: fuck French philosophers, fuck English philosophers, fuck the whole of the continent from 1700 to 1800, I'm glad you are all dead. I'm well past caring. See this fucker? This fucker is Samuel Johnson. If you've ever studied history, you've been required to give a fuck about Samuel Johnson. If you've ever studied literature, you've been required to give a fuck about Samuel Johnson. If you've ever studied philosophy, you've been required to give a fuck about Samuel Johnson. And having now sat through three fucking hours on Samuel Johnson, I have discovered why we are required to give a fuck about Samuel Johnson: Because old dead English people gave a fuck about Samuel Johnson. Know why everyone cares about Gibbon? He had rich friends. He went to all the parties. He slept with the right courtesans. All you high and mighty academics like to point at modern culture and rail at our shallowness but I'm now nine fucking thousand pages into a Pulitzer-winning history of History and fuck you all. It's Kardashians all the way down. I find myself shocked that an immersive, months-long deep dive into history has left me more patriotic than ever. And more populist. For the past five days I've found myself eager to hear about the Reign of Terror.
Whoa, kleinbl00, you're not actually supposed to read Samuel Johnson, you're just supposed to use his wittiest comments! I love the thought that great figures of literature and history were basically just party boys and today they're revered. "Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men. But he who aspires to be a hero, must drink brandy."
And that's just it - I get it that Samuel Johnson is the Jack Handey of pseudointellectuals. Just don't pretend that he's anything other than the Jack Handey of pseudointellectuals. I'll take Lichtenberg, thanks. At least he did cool shit with electricity.