Dirty Old Man Wisdom

Bukowski on Modernity

Charles Bukowski: The poet laureate of Skid Row. The great American vagrant. A man so beat he detested any association with “The Beats”. A lifelong drunk, Bukowski initially abandoned his literary ambitions and spent decades living in squalor bouncing between menial jobs.

Picking up his pen again in middle-age, Bukowski gained a cult following in the 1960s with stories and poems inspired from his life. He’s something of a godfather to the modern autofiction movement that has gained popularity of late. Employing the character of Hank Chinaski in his books as a replacement for himself.

Beneath the surface level vulgarity and nihilism, there’s a real heart in Bukowski’s writing. It has a refreshing level of shamelessness. Self-lacerating, but not going so far as to devolve into a pity party. You can appreciate the honesty of a man who admits to his perversions rather than hiding behind a veil of virtue.

Embedded in his madman screed are also timeless nuggets of wisdom still applicable to the world today…

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On Transhumanism

Think of being 80 and fucking an 18 year old girl. If there was any way to cheat the game of death, that was it.

On Dating Apps

Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

On Universal Basic Income

It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so

On The Arab-Israeli Conflict

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

On Polyamory

A gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game -it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries.

On The 4HL

the courage it took to get out of bed each
morning
to face the same things
over and over
was
enormous.

On Online Porn

Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them. What a feast!

On Medicinal Marijuana

To ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you: something else is hurting you—that's why you need pot, or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can't think.

On Imagination

To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end.

On Spontaneity

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.