Friday Fun: Fact/Fiction

(Things you may choose to believe about me. Or not.)

I lose about two kilos in weight if I miss breakfast for three or four days in a stretch.

Obviously, I don't put on any if I eat regularly, more damned luck mine.


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Tsk. Hate mail is bad for you. Avoid.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Were Weird Till You Did #43

That the reason you've developed a very slight head tilt to the right, caused by all the endless hours browsing (English-language) books in a store, is simply because the spines are printed left-to-right (when placed horizontally) so that you can read it normally when it's placed front-cover upwards.

Obvious, yes?

Except.

If you are already seeing the front cover, with the title and the photo and all the other little details - why would you be reading the spine?

So. Why don't more publishers just print the spine in a vertical top-to-bottom, so that when they're stacked as per normal, my neck doesn't need to get such a horrible crick every single time?

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For those of you interested in such esoteric information - and that's pretty much all of you - here's some book-spine naming and printing conventions.

This is the way we ride our bike, ride our bike...

Keys. Helmet. Lights. Vest. Gloves.
Checkcheckcheckachinchang.

Hmm, those treetops are getting it good from Mr. Breeze today.

No, my mistake. It's Mister Wind. Mister I'm-going-to-slam-into-you-from-the-left Wind, to be precise. The Doors would have been appropriate right now.

Oh well, thank goodness for tree cove...

Uh oh.

fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Why are you honking you moron - you think I like swerving randomly into the middle of the road?

HatecyclinghatethesestupidcarsHATEthismiserableislandanditsmiserablebloodyweather.

STOP honking, you little shit - it's a cycle not a bloody tank, you try and keep it stable!

Ok let's just make it to the turning - once we go right, the wind should be behind us, and hopefully that will...

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Is it a bird? Is it plane?

HolycrapIfrikkinLOVEcycling.

Hey doofass, race you in your schmancy beemer.

...what is he grinning he abou...

Uh oh.

Two rights doth maketh a wrong.

fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Whoooaaa shit. Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to bang into you like....Hey, it's not my fault you're not looking while you're walking - and what are you doing out for a stroll on a morning like this anway? Oh yeh, well at least somebody wants to screw me. Jerk.

Just another few hundred metres and we'll be fii...

Whooooaaa shit. Sorrysorry, didn't mean to bang into....yes, simply dreadful weather, isn't it? Hmm? Oh well, it's not so bad usually, and it's good exercise too. And the same to you. Goodbye.

50 metres....

Whooooaaa shit.

Screw this.

This is the way we walk our bike, walk our bike...

"Mmmmm....cheese toast".

"Ugh!"

"....??!"

"Humans were not meant to eat cheese".

"Huh?"

"No seriously. Cheese is an alien organism which should be not ingested by us".

"Stop right there. If you're going to start on some vegan crap rant about how it's made from milk which is the fluid of another animal and would I then also drink blood - I swear I'll sock you one".

"No no. Not that - although when you think about it like that...."

"What did I just say? You love my knuckles so much?"

"Ah. Sorry. No, what I meant was - it really is an alien organism".

"Riiiiight".

"Really. See, you called that a cheese toast, but it's actually a toasted cheese sandwich, right?"

"I guess so".

"Yeh. The truth is hidden from you that way. No, if you really want to realise the truth about cheese, watch it melt under a grill*".

"And what will that show me?"

"Go see for yourself....go!"

"Okay, okay.
.......
uggh!"

"I told you so".




* No really, watch it. The Blob returns!

The worst fights are the ones you didn't know you were having.

Friday Fun: Fact/Fiction

(Warning: This may or may not be true)

Some days, when I'm feeling malicious, I go to the Google page to search for and then click on the Yahoomail link. I then go to the Yahoo homepage and search for (and click on) the Hotmail link. And just to complete the circle, I visit the MSN page and search for (and click on) the Gmail link.

I like to think it hurts their ego a bit, for someone to come to their turf and then declare an affinity for their rival. I also keep hoping it screws up all their 'Most popular searches' lists.

If I'm feeling particularly malicious, I visit the Rediff page and search for (and click on) all the other three. Because after all, it's Rediff.

Signed up for Life. Didn't read the fine print.

Sometimes I wonder how many people have wondered why they keep on going, since nothing matters in the end anyway.

I wonder if they then go on to wonder about this till the very end, even after believing it does not matter anyway.

I wonder if they wonder about the end, and about whether they will still be able to wonder then.

I wonder if at the end, they will be wondering about why they wondered if it does not matter.

I wonder why I wonder about this, when it does not matter in the end either.

Bloggysses, Bloggysez

or, How not to read Joyce

1. Without notes.

Cuz you ain't seen nothing like it, yo.

The man brings all his Latin-filled, literary-enthused, religion-obsessed chaos and thumps it right across your face. And you'll feel pretty much as if you're facing ol' Curtly at Antigua while carrying a table tennis racket. In a swimsuit.

Get an annotated version.


2. At night, in bed.

After a long day spent working, reading up on all the shittiness that is the world, and trying to keep track of all the blogs you follow (and leave some sensible comments on them), and finally getting your bleary, addled brain to a soft (so soft) pillow - that is really not when you want to be reading this book.

Especially if you happen to be reading chapter three*.


3. On a lovely, sunny day with a slight breeze floating through it.

Otherwise you will just hate yourself, anybody who ever suggested you read Joyce, all the books and articles that keep going on about it's such an important piece of literature, and the man himself.

There is also the risk that polite police officers might land up at your door wondering why you thought it necessary to give so many people a minor heart attack with all the banging and clawing against the window.


4. Simultaneously with other books.

Especially if they're of a genre or by an author that you really like. Or if they're the type of light fluff that floats out of navels. Or if they have pretty covers. Or .... basically, don't have anything else in your house that you haven't read, because otherwise you will waste endless hours wondering just why you're reading this book instead of all those others.




* Three words - no fucking clue.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Were Weird Till You Did #78

How dogs and (house)cats are pretty much the only land-based animals whose genders display almost no discernible differences in habits.

Fish and reptiles are just too different to understand, so I'm excluding them, but all land animals have quite obvious differences between the two genders. Lionesses hunt, while the lion just ambles up and hogs everything. Male birds have to perform dances and build nests and indulge in warbling competitions (and look prettier), while the females act whimsy. Bull elephants act all crazy, while the matriarchs protect the herd and bring up the calves. Male mantises and spiders offer their souls and bodies to the female. Male bees and wasps are mindless drones, while the females keep the hive together.

Another sin to the list of humankind's tab - how we've managed to train two animal (sub)species to forget that their male and female ancestors ever had disparate behavioural patterns.

So, at last count, it was three men and two women who'd prefer to be dogs, and six women and one man choosing to be cats. Two abstained, preferring to be fish and a horse, one anonymous wouldn't reveal their gender, and Feanor linked to a book instead of answering the question directly (typical math-lover behaviour).

Which confirms my hunch - that there's not much difference in the genders for those who would choose to be dogs, but cats would be overwhelmingly chosen just by females.

And while quite a bit of that would be due to the very nature of the creatures, it does raise the question whether it's also perhaps related to the subsconscious gender that we automatically associate with animals, which has been generated by language-associations.

I would be willing to bet that when most people think 'dogs', they think 'male'. Even though that's just the species, we still think of dogs and female dogs (we won't even go into why nobody but vets and dog-owners use the technically correct 'bitch'). Yes, we know that both genders exist (heck, you may even had several as pets), but most people will still instantly - for that brief moment before conscious thought kicks in - assume you're talking about a male dog when you do talk about one.

And the reverse applies to cats. You instinctively think cats and tom cats. If just the generic term is used, people will immediately associate with female overtones. Cats are so Egyptian goddesses. And Selina Kyle in all her sleek, snugly-leathered glory arching her....ahem. Right. But see?

And it's not just them - it's the animal kingdom in general. There is so much immediate association, and distinction, all because the names and the language was written up by men. All deer are female, except when they're does and stags. All sheep are female, unless they're ewes and rams. All tigers are male, all bears too - although lions and lionesses are unique, for some reason.

So, maybe it comes down to this (and yes, this is slightly far out) - that subsconsciously, equal numbers of men and women would choose to be born as males in another avatar, but men can't (won't) contemplate being born as women.

I could throw a lot of theories behind that too, but I suspect it's simply this - Men realise that they have it easier than women in this world, on so many counts (one word - periods), so they wouldn't want to change. The odd male who would consider it, would do so because they like a challenge. And most women hate men and their domineering entitled smug parochialism too much already to even contemplate being one of them. Ever.

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On a minor note, I would also suggest that men are more antipathetic towards cats than women are to dogs because cats are more obviously female than dogs are male. By which I mean that it's easy to visually distinguish between male and female dogs, but not so easy to distinguish between male and female cats. Which enhances the male-female association.

Maybe I should've added a coda - If you're a woman and you choose to be a dog, which gender would you rather be?

People often talk about the reasons why they are dog-lovers or cat-lovers (if they are either, that is). Lots of theories there. This isn't one such, but it's related.

The theory is that dogs have the kind of personality and life humans secretly wish they could have, while cats have ones which more realistically resemble ours.

Most people would love to have a life where all they did was run around, and scratch away, and be petted constantly, and be loved by (nearly) everyone, and be fed everytime they looked at somebody else with pity-inducing eyes, and be allowed to get themselves all dirty in the mud, and (of course) be able to hump who they pleased - in public too, natch.

However, what humans really do is create this big mystery about who they really are, and let others in only after they've met some arbitrary and secret standard of acceptance, and pretend to be entirely self-reliant only to come running the minute somebody offers them a warm blanket and some nice food, and still reserve the right to turn around and scratch somebody's nose off - just because they felt like it. And of course, they keep their humping to themselves.

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It certainly would be interesting to see the results of a poll in which people were asked to choose which of the two they would rather be, assuming ideal living conditions. Apart from the overall results, it would be fascinating to see the way the gender vote goes. I have my hunches about that, but let's put it to the test, small test sample though it may be.

Go on, pick one.