Aphorisms for a new age

Nothing ventured, no time wasted in futile pursuit of what wouldn’t have worked out anyway.

It’s difficult for such twists to seem the least bit original in this sardonic age. Okay, in this post-sardonic age. (Yes, we must forsake use of “post-ironic”—it’s gone that far.) Of course, what must really be forsaken is the notion of any originality at all; the standard for judging that must instead fall to what seems the least obviously derivative. It’s all with the implicit wink in acknowledgement of how everything has been done and the best we can do these days is approximate originality.

All the more reason for humanity to relinquish its position as the dominant species and allow—what? the mice?—another breed of beast to ascend to the top of the chain. Perhaps in those creatures’ language not every conceivable witticism has been overdone.

We can only hope.