I gave my life to death,
that part of me that ached
with having to live,
simply to die.

My fear,
I threw before death;
that part of me that lay frozen
at the terror of it all
simply...ending.

And my death,
I laid rest for death;
that part of me that worried
how and when this flight
would fail.

And the words
have slowly slunk back,
now that there is but one death
for me to die,
and so many lives to live till then.

Manual of Life - Alternative Definition

Betrayal*
n., The feeling you get when you realise that the city you once called home has changed, not caring that you weren't around while it did, and didn't even bother to let you know.

The moment of discovery is usually reached by the absence or modication of a minor (yet comfortingly familiar) detail of life in the city, e.g., the Chinese food stall which stands in place of the local gola-wallah, or the silence which fills the evening spot during which the bheeeeeeeeeeeeeejaaaaa-kaleji wallah used to flaunt his wares.


* Prompted by this post by The Bride.

"People need anything made of rubber here. People need anything made of plastic. People need Tupperware boxes and Ziploc bags and coated rubber bands for hair, Brooklyn Bridge cable kind of hair. People need Rubbermaid dish drainers - the metal kind, coated with rubber, and the rubber trays that go underneath them - so that the wooden counters on which dishes drain down don't stay perpetually humid and rot. They need solid Rubbermaid garbage cans, with snap-on lids to keep rats away. People need things to stack, conserve, preserve, classify, label, repair. People need things to make the things they already have, last; to repair them and organize them, for two-thirds of the population of Cuba was middle class and has devolved. If a Rubbermaid store opened in Cuba, people would be lined up around the block six lines deep. People need ties for plants. People need tomato stakes. People need gaskets. They need gaskets very badly. They need the thick gaskets that go around refrigerator doors and insulated gaskets for oven doors, and they need the rubber rings for espresso pots and canning jars. People need coated wire that bends. People need golf tees to pound into worn screw holes so that they can insert screws again, and the springs and the tiny screws that go inside locks and door handles and window locks so that the rain doesn't come in more than it already does. People need sheets of expanded metal to repair the seats of broken outdoor furniture so they can sit and play dominoes and wait for things to change, and they need Rust-Oleum so that the outdoor furniture doesn't rust through again. People need Thompson's Water Seal. People need burner parts for gas stoves, and new burners for electric stoves, so that they don't have to cook over fires in their own backyards and cut down more trees and make their asthma worse than it already is. People need asthma medicine. Cuba has the highest rate of asthma in the world, from the dust and the mold and the humidity, which they can't get rid of or escape from, for lack of parts".

- Isadora Tattlin (Cuba Diaries*)



* Quietly painful. One of those books that justify sometimes just buying a randomly picked-up book. And the violent critical reviews on Amazon...whooo. Some people just can't look beyond their own romantic notions, and hate anybody who dares puncture through and show them a glimpse of reality. These are the same people who probably still wear Che t-shirts. Doof-asses.

Intense Paranoia - Identification Method #19

Getting more convinced of the civilisation-dominating intentions of the malevolent entity that secretly controls the Big G, and how its so-called 'complete connectivity' offer is just a cover for the beta-version of the monitoring programme that it will eventually use to control us.

This feeling may be re-inforced by noticing how gradually, unnoticed, more and more of online activities continue to be tracked. eg. Realising that the blogs you subscribe to in G-Reader, get higlighted on the blogroll of any other blog, if you visit while logged in to your account.

Manual of Life - Little Known Facts #32

A woman whose skirt flies up due to a gust of wind while a man is looking in her direction, is bound to be judged unfavourably no matter what she does.

If she looks directly at him, she's a hussy.
If she blushes, she's a prissy Victorian maid.
If she grins and shrugs (even in a 'shit-happens-eh' manner), she's obviously no lady.
If she stops and desperately tries to hold it down, she's obviously not an empowered woman.
If she turns away, he begins to wonder what exactly she was trying to prevent him from seeing.
If she has no reaction at all and doesn't try to stop it flying up, she's a lesbian.

Manual of Life - Little Known Facts #33

A man who happens to be looking in the direction of a woman whose skirt flies up due to a gust of wind, is bound to be judged unfavourably no matter what he does.

If he stares, he's a pervert.
If he blushes, he's a boy-child who needs to grow up.
If he grins (even to show solidarity in a 'shit-happens-eh' manner), he's a creep.
If he averts his eyes, she thinks he thinks she's not attractive.
If he turns away, she begins to wonder just what he saw that made him take so drastic an action.
If he has no reaction at all, he's a jerk. Or gay.

Random gender-giri

You want (more) evidence of the extent of the patriarchal nature of English? I give you - female breasts.

'Boobs' are quite easily the second most distinctive feminine aspect of any girl/woman. So why is it that so many of the slang terms for breasts have a masculine or (even more oddly) aggressive connotation? When did they suddenly metamorphose into 'bad boys', and 'puppies*', and 'bazookas', and 'bangers'? Ok, there may be the occasional person who refers to 'the girls' or the 'bouncy/pointer sisters', but even when they're 'the twins', they're defined without any gender. Just 'the twins'.

And worse, you don't hear of genitalia given feminine nicknames, do you? You ever hear a man talk about his 'little princess'? Noooooo. It's all 'Mr Wiggly', and 'chhota bhai', and 'One-eyed Willy'.


* Hush? Is that it?

Breaking News

When you think about it, the usage of that phrase by TV channels is so wrong.

What is it supposed to imply? That the news is being broken? No? Oh, so the news story is breaking? But even that doesn't make sense. News doesn't break - it happens, it evolves, it is. And news stories are (taking place, developing, being discovered).

Or is the news trying to "break out (from the confines of secrecy)"? Tchah. That's just stupid.

Maybe it's journalistic license for "breaking the news (to you)". But that's even worse. You deliver the news, you bring people news, you tell them news, you pass on the news. How does breaking come into the picture?

Or is it supposed to mean "breaking up the news into digestible bits of information"? That makes some sense - but only if used in personal conversation ("I slowly broke the news about his father's death after he had settled down"). That meaning is quite unrelated to the "Breaking News" or "a story that's just breaking" that gets flashed across our screens.

So just why has this phrase become the norm?

That said, the alternatives aren't any better.
"Happening News"? Sounds like a pseduo attempt to gain hip-hop popularity.
"This Just In"? Sounds so....archaic.
"Fresh News"? Makes it sound like it's woken up, gone for a jog, had a long shower, and is now ready to face the world*.

Maybe they should just go "Alert! Alert! Alert!".


* Although, the Hindi alternative is strangely appealing. Taaza khabar. Such zing. But even there, quite a few Hindi news channels flash the words "Breaking News" in the vernacular. Doofuses.

Manual of Life - Little Observations #17

When carrying multiple beverage containers, it is easier to open doors if you are holding two (handled) mugs and a glass, rather than two glasses and a mug.

Manual of Life - Cloud in your Silver Lining #13

Warm summer days mean having to properly iron your clothes, as you can no longer hide behind sweaters, cardigans, or jumpers*.


* That word almost always brings up an image of a woollen top going bouncy-bouncy-bouncy in a field somewhere.

Manual of Life - "Ohhh hec....Oh. Fuck." moments

Those instances when you realise that a situation that at first glance seemed just bad, is actually worse than you had assumed.

e.g. Realising that the glass-panelled back door of your house has not shattered after being slammed shut by a gust of wind, but is like that because you have been targetted for the purposes of hostile re-appropriation of goods.

Such moments are likely to cause a temporary heightened awareness of senses, often resulting in much sharp glancing at shadows, startling at sudden sounds, and three-hour sleep periods at night. They can also seriously put a cramp on your weekend.

Intense Paranoia - Identification method #11

Believing that one of the concepts explained in SF&F books that -

1) Revolve around the presence of supernormal entities in the midst of humans, and our manipulation by them (American Gods, Word and Void trilogy, Dark Materials trilogy)
2) Revolve around the occurence of super-intelligent lifeforms, and their continued repression of our gaining knowledge of them (HGTG, End of Eternity)

- is true (and has been made public in order to throw us off-guard and make us believe that what's described cannot be possible, what with it being easily accessible and being sold as 'Fiction' (ha!)).

....but not knowing which of those is true.