On The Ning Nang Nong

Dude, now I am genuinely piqued by the Goncourt Brothers and their double-life maid, Rose Malingre, and that Devil’s Journal. Holy Piqs!

 

The Harafish of the Confused Mind

What is more frustrating — confusion over what book to read next, or, having nailed the book selection, utter despair that there's no ebook of the same.

Guess, both. After a gruelling start of the day pitting "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" by Tadeusz Borowski with "Wittgenstein's Mistress" by David Markson, Witty's Mistress enamoured me. I searched in libraries, kindle, kobo, zilch! No sign of the ebook. How do I lay my hands on it?




I am plotting. Whilst I plan devious, good time to write up an absurd post. Thinking divergent, I stumbled on odd facts about Andre Dubus and Boris Vian.

Dubus was seriously injured in a car accident on the night of July 23, 1986. He was driving from Boston to his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and he stopped to assist two disabled motorists—brother and sister Luis and Luz Santiago. As Dubus assisted the injured Luz to the side of the highway, an oncoming car swerved and hit them. Luis was killed instantly; Luz survived because Dubus had pushed her out of the way. Dubus was critically injured and both his legs were crushed. After a series of unsuccessful operations, his right leg was amputated above the knee, and he eventually lost the use of his left leg.

And ...

On the morning of 23 June 1959, Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf for the screening of the film version of I will Spit on Your Graves. He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work, and he publicly denounced the film, stating that he wished to have his name removed from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!" He then collapsed into his seat and died from sudden cardiac death en route to the hospital.

Both are tragic outcomes. But Vian's outburst and fatal outcome on maladaptation of his book seems like a gothic legend.

 

What was the right answer to the question?

Many summers ago, when Ira was a waif, she agreed to be part of an editorial team. She shirks responsibility and since the staff were her friends who desperately needed to fill in roles she was compelled to join as a minion. No visible responsibility. She would silently pluck a keyboard in the corner. She had no big picture of the samizdat magazine she was colluding with but for some hack things she agreed to revise. She was introduced to the staff as: 'the saucered-eyed girl might look babyish like a puffer fish but she has the jaws of the piranha, so team, tone down your sarcasm with her because she would turn it around with doubled sarcasm'. She was mighty snarky with her venomous teeth.

Before long, the magazine was the brunt of the critical mouths. This is ridiculous! This is partisan! I would have been more conscientious! Mind you, Ira would never write serious stuff so her articles were never pilloried, let alone read, but she was enraged at the mistreatment of her team with harsh rabble. How could anyone run a magazine to everyone's taste and pleasure? She advised that they mock up a impersonation day and invite the disgruntled to run the show for a day to grasp how difficult it was to administer such initiatives. Like that teacher's day mock-up where high-school kids impersonate teachers and marshal the kids of the lower classes. Such quick-witted impersonation is planted to make the high-strung kids bear the labour of the teacher, even for a day. She thundered that her team must do the same, invite the indignant crowd to administer the magazine. Like her frothy writing, her goofy team never took her strategy also seriously.

Today we indulge lazily in an online world teeming with virtual clubs and forums but the hardship of the coordinators even in the online realm is still disputed and at times slandered. I counsel the same when I hear from online moderators in clubs and forums who are constantly indicted for their actions. Why don't you ask the righteous to moderate then? Give them the baton and invite them and ask them to moderate. Let them act up all the right answers to the questions. What questions, eh? Detour: We remember passages of abandoned books than completed books as those haunting bookmarks serve as a reminder why we discarded those books partway. One such book for me is "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce. I hardly read thirty or so pages from that book and snoozed it. But an amusing dialogue impressed upon me.

Then he went away from the door and Wells came over to Stephen and said: —Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?

Stephen answered: —I do.

Wells turned to the other fellows and said: —O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed.

The other fellows stopped their game and turned round, laughing.

Stephen blushed under their eyes and said: —I do not.

Wells said: —O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed.

They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar.

Stephen Dedalus was confused about the right answer. What is the right approach? Aren't we all conflicted on the right way to handle situations? No matter what we say or do, we can never please everyone. Hence I counsel my careworn friends that if a detractor assails them with: they can think better and tackle better, then by all means invite them over to volunteer and demonstrate that poised strength. Give them a taste of frayed Stephen for the Wells they have been to you.

 

There are obtuse or illustrative memes to explain capitalism to the worker class. But how does one choose the most suited from that plenitude to debunk the inherent guile in capitalism? Having vaguely heard about the ‘Great Money Trick’ metaphor on several occasions, finally, this week, I got down to read it in entirety. Though the scene has been pastiched and adapted several times through modern rendition, the original narrative still retains the anguish and ingenuity of getting down to the brass tacks, in this case — bread squares.

The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, by Robert Tressell

 

What do Bible, the works of Homer, and the works of Virgil have in common? They are all sort of Sortes!

Sortes Sanctorum - Wikipedia

 

You have been snailed!

I emptied the trash bin and set the bag aside. In an hour I returned to the trash bag to dispose of in the dumpster.

Holy Slime! Is that a snail? Seriously, a snail? I haven't seen a snail wandering around in this decadent city. Are there snails in this country? How did it crawl the flight of stairs and enter the premises of my flat? What a doughty snail which sleemed and sleemed all those hundred plus steps, or may be it was a stowaway in the elevator. I cannot carry my shopping bags across the stairs and that thing blinking its eye-ish slits at me lumbered with a boulder of a shell.

How long would it have taken for it to reach my place? May be the snail embarked last winter intoxicated with my aromatic biryanis (hehe!) and willed to sleem its way to my flat and reached here after an arduous three-month wriggle through the steep and tiring stairs. What am I supposed to do with it? Arrange for biscuit and let it rest while it makes its way down again. Whatever fancied it to visit, I am happy to see a gritty snail reach my premises like never before.

 

Hubba hubba! Should we be mindful about “mindfulness”, the million-dollar inventive uplift? Here’s an integrated article on spawn of “mindfulness” as a lifestyle hack: What the Mindfulness Movement Leaves Out

There’s a short clip at the bottom of the article which flashes less than a minute gist of the textual content.

Also, the slant mention of Shanyuan monks
lead me to the YouTube video below. Indeed, a sight to behold.

“Walk into the courtyard of Shanyuan Temple, in China, about an hour’s flight away from Pyongyang, North Korea, and you’ll be greeted by a formidable formation of 500 unique, life-sized, red-robed statues of arhats, all arrayed around another figure several times larger, in similar garments—Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha.”

 

Hola Rakhii,

I don't have the haunting desire for accuracy in life. There is no absolute pronouncement — this is definitely worth edict from me. I go with what suits me. During one such intuitive stints, I have discovered much about fulfilment through enrichment over promises of sustainability. Women who are ferociously independently and savagely resilient exercise their latitude to diverge into off beaten paths tailored to suit their needs and fancies. I might have been constrained had it not been for my self-determination that my conviction to withstand my visceral madness prevails over other conventional guiles.

Dating single moms and dads might not be conceivable for other child-free singles who seek abiding and reciprocal forms of romance. I have never been hindered by false leads. I exactly know what I want in life even before venturing into what I seek. Also, dating single parents is apparently challenging because one cannot pack their bags and head out to Borobudur for a holiday with no or little AirBnb. Even the most advanced planning has to be worked out to the minutiae to facilitate the other parent as full time care taker during that period likewise coordinate with school events.

However, these interruptions are daunting only in the beginning but eventually all the involved parties fall into a pattern of coordination and concession and gratuitous help to restore fulfilment than normalcy for couples juggling in well-reasoned partnership of no longer spouses yet are parents and incipient lovers and longstanding good friends and at times unforeseen inspirers in the shifting dynamics of love and estrangement.

In general, what a child-free person wants from a relationship with child-ed person depends on how well they know themselves and is willing to surmount (like: disarray, petty and inconsequential wrangles, skewed roles; with: concerted effort, yielding conversations, roted logistics - tell me again, whose week is this) over such entanglement, because the level-headed people and not the conventional wisdom feels, its worth.

I don't know how much of what I have written is comprehensible but the fearful barriers in life are those we set in our minds than those which transpire for real as insurmountable hurdles.

The measure of a relationship for me has never been the longevity of such celebration but the intensity and irreversible enrichment from that instinctual sense — I want this man in my life, indifferent and fearless to how long or short such involvement may last. Things are worth for how they foremost reshape you more than how they facilely gratify you. Note: I deliberately crafted the post vague and frothy to dissociate my general creed from my anecdotal harangue. My experiences in life have undoubtedly been unique and life-affirming, cannot say the same for others.

 

Do men baby talk?

.. the inquiry startled me. I never realised that while women delight in baby talk, men indulge the other gender in baby talk grudgingly, if not hesitantly. That is so emasculating! he scorns. Huh! Why is baby talk emasculating to men?

Tracing the roots back to the transcendence when infant girls are about to graduate from kindergarten to first grade, our nannies have instilled the efficacy of such baby talk. Listen, you pigtails and scrunches, never shed your ability to baby talk. Those barbaric pigtails nod. In the other room across the quad, infant boys were weaned off from baby talk. Today is your last day to utter in that gibberish tongue. Those nose pickers wave their heads into a doodly "yes".

The boys, ascended into adolescence, are again reacquainted with their sworn off baby talk when they are enamoured of those fair blinks. She mildly teases him: you silly whoobly coobs. He briefly relapses and serenades her with baby talk before his senses make better of him and sidle away from that enticement. Baby talk and me?! he shrugs.

Women since primitive ages have relied on this baby talk to wheedle men from the 'koochie twoobie shunz' to order dinosaur soup from that chop house to a 'tloloo blitlifoo' to command the remote and finally a 'jupli honz whoolibon' for even the hard-boiled men to decidedly agree with them. Women would never part with the potency of such gurgled baby talk.

When men notice that their women are gaining a upper hand with the deviant machinations, they goad themselves to reactivate that stifled and earliest known expressions. Alas, too late, women have mastered in baby talk by then with 'joolu honiker whoolaboola' to overturn their IPL matches with their Big Little Lies.