Harold Pinter (1930-2008)
There is a violence in me but I don’t walk around looking for trouble.
The Age of Heretics by Art Kleiner
6 – Magic, as the medievalist Jeffrey Burton Russell suggests, is a system of practice, uncanny to those who don’t understand it, that attempts to manage, instead of simply accepting, the forces that shape human life.
84 – Even the Roman Catholic church eventually admitted that Galileo’s cosmology was correct–after 359 years.
153 – What was missing, he would later say, was “existential effectiveness,” which he defined by quoting the Japanese proverb: “When there is no break, not even the thickness of a hair, between a man’s vision and his action.”
187 – Behind his politeness was universal fearful desire, spawned in all of us by institutional life and manners: the desire to figure out the rules and be safe, to know ahead of time whether our action will lead to success or failure.
187 – …salvation could take place not just by being chosen but by persevering in our muddled way toward the aspirations we know are right.
228 – As Herman Kahn noted, it cost as little as five hundred dollars a year to live as a hippie in the late 1960s and early 1970s…
246 – (Richard Gregg) Voluntary simplicity meant “singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life.
comes before God after death
NYT:
There is a teaching in the Talmud that says an individual who comes before God after death will be asked a series of questions, the first one of which is, “Were you honest in your business dealings?”
this blog ends
The sun is bursting right out of the sky
I searched the whole world for someone like you – Madonna
fans of effortless jo, Straits Times and silly PAP ministers rejoice!
i am taking this blog private, just before the year ends. i will be blogging here less but i like my loyal readers to be able to access my blog.
so far i only know of 5 people who read me regularly (iceman, indisch, hun-nuh, whoelse, igaveherahumpindog).
if you are a loyal reader and i don’t know about you, email me at cometopapa at gmail dot com if you want to continue reading. of course, you might want to get your head checked first.
i am working on a new blog on personal leadership and communication where i won’t be laughing at anyone. probably only myself. if you like that, email me.
i am grateful for your support and comments. it means a lot for a lonely, friendless, socially retarded person like myself. i mean you can only watch porn so many hours of the day.
read seth godin
good read
We are at a moment in history were we all need a lot more truth and a lot less snake oil.
oh dear
Just as unfit peacocks cannot grow splendid tails, so unfit people cannot sing well, dance well (for singing and dancing go together, as it were, like a horse and carriage) or play music well. All of these activities require physical fitness and dexterity. Composing music requires creativity and mental agility. Put all of these things together and you have a desirable mate.
the best thing i read in 2008
if i have to choose the best thing I have read this year, it would be this from David Foster Wallace:
And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
diverse and noisy and opinionated
Defending his decision to choose Rick Warren (the gays say he’s anti-gay) to deliver his invocation at his inaguration, Barack Obama said:
During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that’s how it should be because that’s what America is about. That’s part of the magic of this country — that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated.
Yes, they can (be).
The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman
56 – We sit in the kitchen,but we know where we are. We are in a land fractured by endless conflict. Our history is tragedy and heartache – to the marrow. But we will have none of it right now. We talk about which cousin is a bigger idiot. (It turns out I’m on the list.)
115 – You might notice that there are ten suitcases in the middle of my living room. “Going on a trip?” You might ask. “No.” One of them belonged to a man who fled Danzig in 1939. As if I need reminders of the Holocaust. That’s all I think about.
182 – Gershwin died at the age of 38 of a brain tumor. He is buried in the same cemetery as my husband. My husband died at the age of 49. I could collapse thinking about that. But I don’t want to talk about that now. I want to say that I love that George is nearby under a leafy tree. And Ira Gershwin too. It is very cozy.
296 -
Inside Drucker’s Brain by Jeffrey Krames
(all quotations from Peter Drucker)
29 – Opportunity favors the prepared mind. If opportunity knocks at the door you have to open it.
31 – (the most capable manager)
Can hire, fire, organize…promote
Is completely accountable for results
Knows how to delegate upstairs
Makes informed decisions after thinking through the time frame
Really thinks it through and then communicates it
Is the right person for the business plan
Asks what needs to be done and sets a new priority
Ends meetings with clear assignments…most meetings end in murkiness
33 – Yet planned, purposeful abandonment of the old and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite pursuit of the new and highly promising. Above all, abandonment is the key to innovation—both because it frees the necessary resources and because it stimulates the search for the new that will replace the old.
47 – Only a customer can define business purpose.
readers, tell me what you think
readers, tell me what you think.
i have a new project next year which will require a lot of my time and energy. this means i will have less time on this blog.
should i:
1) close this blog
2) take this blog private and continue to post infrequently
3) leave the blog as it is
if you like to drop me a private note, you can do it here:
ST readers are really passionate
Accessed 16th Dec 2008
if the Straits Times is “the most-read newspaper in Singapore”, and ST readers are mostly reading about sex (while our neighbors are not), which of the following is correct:
1) ST readers are horny
2) ST is shitty
3) this blogger who is a ST reader is horny and has too much time on his hands
4) all of the above
annie are you OK?
Of the 522 members of India’s current parliament, 120 are facing criminal charges; around 40 of these are accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape.
tell me sweet little lies
so here i was one morning at omotesando, and i saw this rather chichi burger joint, full of darkness and minimalism and simply named quarter pounder. people were staring and curious but it was way too early for burgers.
when i was done shopping for toys and a t-shirt from the uniqlo UT store (“UT is not only a place to buy creative t-shirts, but also a place where the style of buying t-shirts is creative“), it was time for lunch.
i took a peek inside.
what sealed the deal for me was that there were only 2 things on the menu – a double quarter pounder with cheese set for 600 yen and a quarter pounder with cheese set for 500 yen. that’s it – nothing else.
(it reminded me of my own unborn murakami cafe)
you can’t see it in the picture as i took it in the morning but the lunchtime queues were long. so i thought this was the hippiest thing this side of tokyo and being the trendy coolhunter you know i am, joined the queue and procured a 500 yen set that came with fries and a tasty beverage.
i stood outside to have a bite.
it tastes just like mcdonald’s. my god, IT IS MCDONALD’S!
it’s a QUARTER POUNDER, you silly silly boy.
yup, i flew all that way to eat mcdonald’s and all i can say is that they did a marvellous job. well played!
(more pics here)
the Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
19 – In Italy, most young people live at home with their parents until they marry, and most marry late. As a result, having sex in parked cars is a national pastime. It has been said that one out of every three Florentines alive today was conceived in a car.
90 – Prince Roberto was a brusque and silent man who had no love for the social life or the obligations of an aristocrat. He preferred to live in the family castle in the country, seeing only a few intimate friends. He never married and didn’t seem to have any particular female friends. Among those who knew him well, he was affectionately referred to as “the Bear” for his gruff and solitary ways. For others he was simply strange.
a masterpiece of bleakness at a perfect zero of hope
“The Best of Everything” is a masterpiece of bleakness, equal to one of Joyce’s stories in “Dubliners.” It is two days before Grace’s wedding, and her roommate has discreetly absented herself for the night, so that Grace’s fiancé, Ralph, can visit. She prepares for him—she takes from her trousseau a sheer nightgown of white nylon and a matching negligee. But Ralph turns up late in the evening, and is wholly involved with his own trivial drama: the boys have given him a surprise party, and he is expected back. Does he like what she is wearing, she shyly asks. He feels the slight material between finger and thumb, “like a merchant,” and asks, “Wudga pay fa this, honey?” Grace tries to get Ralph to stay, but understands that her appeal—“Can’t they wait?”—sounds just like “the whine of a wife.” Ralph insists on going, and says, on the way out, “So I’ll see ya, Penn Station, nine o’clock tomorra. Right, Gracie? Only, before I go . . . I’m fulla beer. Mind if I use ya terlet?” As he leaves the house, Grace says wearily, “Don’t worry, Ralph . . . I’ll be there.” And the story ends there, where it has to, at a perfect zero of hope.
Richard Yates
Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness.
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