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Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, May 20, 2017.

  1. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    The young lady of travel
    Inquired on her displaced arrival
    If the calendar had been stale
    As she looked no aged and frail
    Convinced of the miracle of light
    Triumphed in her anti-age fight
    Sought her youthful dream
    With no expensive cream
     
  2. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    I have been reading bit of Anthony Horowitz these days. I found him enterprising (if you may say so of a writer who has ventured into the continuity of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels with much trepidation). He also writes Young Adults fiction in the same thriller and mystery genre. I found his enthusiasm to cater mystery to both adults and young adults impressive. Usually, a writer creates a niche of audience and restricts himself to that compatibility, but Horowitz struck his niche at both levels writing James Bond fiction and The Diamond Brothers (YA) with other stuff.

    upload_2019-9-19_18-32-8.png

    This Diamond Brothers series for young adults interested me. So, I read "Public Enemy Number Two" in the series. The book is replete with wordplay and gangling metaphors. Also, his character descriptions are daunting. This is how he writes about a punctilious fellow skeptical of customary utterances: "..couldn't even say 'Good morning' without written evidence from a weather office."

    Such entrants in real life are unnerving! In a fictional converse, the spiky characters are amusing.
     
  3. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Cheeniya, I have been investigating children's literature these days. Furiously reading board books, picture books, chapter books, storybooks of Terry Deary, Jacqueline Wilson, Judith Kerr, Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate fame), EL Konigsberg, Gary Northfield (Julius Zebra fame), Ted Hughes (Iron Man), Matt Haig, Saviour Pirotta, Julia Donaldson, Vashti Hardy, Padraig Kenny, Vivian French, Clare Balding, Dick King-Smith, David Williams, Humphrey Carpenter in no preferential order but just random pickings while scouring the internet forums for unheard works of children's writers, for that best-kept secret not prevalent but is distinguished in creation of children's works. Thus, I found Jeanne Willis.

    You cannot estimate my joy, because even your most generous calibration of my joy is still a gross underestimation of having discovered Dr Xargle series of books.

    Dr Xargle is a cadet instructor of planetary excursions to a bunch of alien kids, specializing on Earth. He is seen preparing them for imminent Earth visit explaining humans, cats, dogs, automobiles to clueless alien cubs. Wit shines through Xargle's travel guide!

    upload_2019-9-19_19-31-7.png

    I was thrilled beyond!

    Dr Xargle series are pictures books for toddlers just sighting text but so creatively blended in wit even for that age. I was aghast! How do these accomplished minds create such impressive work with sparse text underneath funny images. One of the cute and ludic works I have discovered in recent times for precocious kids -- precocious because the fun is loud but the wit is subtle, it's like Wodehouse for fledgling delight. This series is a showstopper in the ramp of other children's literature. Jeanne's other creations are equally outlandish.

    I know you would sense my glee at such discoveries.
     
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  4. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    I found this analysis while reading the best-seller 'A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life' by Mark Manson interesting:

    A recent example from my own life: “It bugs me that my brother doesn’t return my texts or emails.” Why? “Because it feels like he doesn’t give a **** about me.” Why does this seem true? “Because if he wanted to have a relationship with me, he would take ten seconds out of his day to interact with me.” Why does his lack of relationship with you feel like a failure? “Because we’re brothers; we’re supposed to have a good relationship!”

    We are rattled on breakdown of our suppositions. Aren't brothers supposed to be close, in universality, aren't brothers supposed to be close, the conscientious, but not the concessional, are brothers supposed to be close. Can I be familiar, fond of, in my self-stylized commitment to this person in this accepted relationship.

    Further,

    Two things are operating here: a value that I hold dear, and a metric that I use to assess progress toward that value. My value: brothers are supposed to have a good relationship with one another. My metric: being in contact by phone or email—this is how I measure my success as a brother. By holding on to this metric, I make myself feel like a failure, which occasionally ruins my Saturday mornings.

    We are preset in our values and metrics ordained in received wisdom. The representative value of the relationship, and the foremost metric to ascertain it. Though both are sourced from cultural gospels on how relationships are supposed to be conducted and evaluated.

    Can I change my value: Bro, I know you hate to socialize, so I would value you as a compadre for our mutual interest in comics. Can I change my metric: Bro, I know you hate to text, so I would count the gallons of gasoline you filled up in my car on return from your holiday.

    Mostly our metrics are at fault more than our values, because we are deluded by the statistical, which to us is authoritative, definition of a viable relationship. I find the shift in value-metric palliative for the fret and discontent in life. I was just contemplating while reading the book, are our indoctrinated and deep-seated metrics the gremlins of our head.
     
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  5. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Going through my photo album, noticed an observational picture clicked and forgotten.

    The picture is of an elderly man and woman on an uphill destination, the ruins of an amphitheater.

    upload_2019-9-19_21-16-15.png

    The romanticized interpretation is that of a genial couple willing to ascend for a vantage point, to see the treasured ruins in broad glory. But the amused me thinks one of them is a history buff and the other is reluctantly plodding, muttering: What is wrong with the ruins on the ground, could you not have been satisfied with the rocks and roman graffiti merciful to my knees.

    I adore wryly bickering couples more than overtly doting couples. Even in bicker, holding arms.

    upload_2019-9-19_21-17-43.png
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2019
  6. Rihana

    Rihana Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    I went running to another tab in the browser to check if he has written a new book. : ) Turns out an older one is being referred to by its more elegant sub-title.

    Deep yet so simple to apply. To my combined chagrin and relief that it is so simple, I could immediately relate this to two conversations and five hundred thoughts from today.

    Most of us do arrive at this conclusion but later in life than sooner.

    Novalis, a pleasure to behold your posts. The other day the Nevermind thread was resurrected, I though it was by you. It was not.
     
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  7. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Feeding further the omission in main title to the bowdlerization filter in IL, I doubted the scrubbed title would have retained any identity, so I opted for the sub-title.

    I have that uncanny feeling with all kinds of self-help books, the principles deduced independently by us in our everyday hacks, yet it is the glossary which appeals to me. Value, metrics -- so simple yet vivid. I would have rolled into a pompous umbilicus trying to assert those terms. I would have exhausted myself and lost out on such clear terms.

    I don't find these books too epiphanous, as most of us sense these behavioral tricks to survive the rough and tumble of our fertile minds: suspecting, reconciling, withdrawing, however, the indexing of these blinks in a book format activates those instructions to the fore had any of that been dormant risking erasure so that we don't spend again an hour in our analysis to rebirth the same conclusions.

    I expected that Amulet would post something on Cokie Roberts. We might have to resurrect that thread to keep Amulet (prosperously) occupied so that she does not stray too much into fraught minefield. She has the potential of an intellectual whale with the direction of a restless viper, we'd better keep her agreeably motivated.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2019
  8. Rihana

    Rihana Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Yes, the terms "value" and "metrics" are breviloquent in: Mostly our metrics are at fault more than our values. I toyed with putting that in my status, but couldn't without citing the source, and desisted as we don't want what we don't want to happen to this thread.

    That's true. In addition to the restless viper direction, she has a phorengi's view of things Indian such as black magic and hence is prone to unwittingly turning a sedate vent thread into a tempest.
     
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  9. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    I mused on how a desi would pronounce "A whale of a viper". Never mind.
    Between Rihana and Novalis, I see that I have two Captain Ahabs (cf. Moby Dick) on my tail.
    Ok... ok... ok. I shall look into Cokie Roberts.
     
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  10. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Novalis
    1420 Film Critics
    That picked my interest in Film critics. I have never had any idea about the stuff film critics are made of. I went into some world-famous critics and the likes of the stuff that they came up with. I was amazed by what I could gather from the web. I could lay my hands on an interesting overview of the world's best critics.
    I read about the legendary Andre Bazin who had a premature death. Learned about the 'auteur theory', a term I had never heard of before.
     

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