history’s ultimate utility
NYT:
…history’s ultimate utility does not lie in its predictive or even its explanatory value, but in its ability to teach humility, to nurture an appreciation of the limits on our capacity to see the past clearly or to know fully the historical determinants of our own brief passage in time.
less habermas, more samuel l.
Here’s the lesson: The public is a motherfucker.
what else
Wired’s bloody lovely profile on Craig Newmark:
Should craigslist ever be sold, the price likely would run into the billions. Newmark, by these lights, is a very rich man. When anybody reminds him of this, the craigslist founder says there is nothing he would care to do with that much money, should it ever come into his hands. He already has a parking space, a hummingbird feeder, a small home with a view, and a shower with strong water pressure. What else is he supposed to want?
the origin of Holga
South China Morning Post:
When the product was first tested, Mr Lee (Lee Ting-mo, founder of Universal Electronics Industries) bragged to observers that the camera was ho gwong, meaning “very bright” in Cantonese. He says some non-Chinese buyers later dubbed it “Holga“, and the name stuck.
you’d say you rather read the paper and you don’t want to talk
FT:
…Japan’s most haunted social group is the “firefly tribe”: harried businessmen who escape their wife and bawling baby by smoking alone on the balcony of their apartment blocks at night. So many of them seek this refuge that the glowing tips of their cigarettes appear like fireflies.
i truly am indeed
colleague (with a cup in her hand): do you want some honey?
me: no, this has been obvious for a very long time.
Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr.
4 – You, however, would do well to avoid those who complain about life’s unfairness, and instead get a head start on building self-restraint.
16 – … he decided his mouth had only three functions, and speaking was not one of them.
23 – … not compromised by the ravages of adult recreation.
40- When someone claims to regret nothing I just assume that he and I have different definitions for the word, and leave it at that.
48 – All they talk about is mysterious ways, and the evidence of things unseen.
299 – This is the key, you have learned—to relinquish control, to relinquish the desire for control.
302 – You wish they understood, as you do, that there is no escape and never was… You wish they understood that there is joy in this fact, greater joy and love in just this one last moment than they experienced in the entirety of their lives… Because even in this last moment there is still Everything, whole galaxies and eons, the sum total of every experience across time, shrunk to the head of a pin, theirs for the asking, right here, right now. And so anything, anything, anything is possible.
Naked Youth (1960)
- And you still want other men to look at me and desire me like animals.
- I thought if I beat up some idiot, you’d feel better.
- This is a cruel world and it destroyed our love.
- Apart from your theories, the fact is that you like money.
- We can only sell ourselves in order to go on living. No matter how I fight it, that’s what the world is like.
Close-up (1990)
- “I asked the Muse why she was hiding. She replied, ‘It’s you who are hiding.’”
- Prison is good for good people and bad for the wicked. It teaches good people a lesson but the wicked get worse.
how a single man combats lust
a single man, like myself, has various strategies to combat lust.
one could exercise and keep busy. one could eat, so that one’s brain uses all the excess energy digesting. one could pray for divine grace and the blood of jesus.
but none of these strategies work as well as the one i discovered yesterday – one could think about ho ching breastfeeding.
a name for a novel
a certain Wong Kum Meng wrote in to the ST today.
nothing noteworthy about his letter but he has a nice name, one i would use if i were to write a novel titled Scream My Name.
who is they
Han Tan Juan in Invisible City:
How can history be made by only winners and not the losers? The passions and aspirations of the Chinese school students in the ’50s and the ’60s have their purpose. Do not think lightly of it. The historical status of Chinese school students has not been given a proper conclusion. This is regretful. Are they waiting for all the Chinese school students to disappear from the face of the earth before giving us a fair judgment?
worth a try
NYT:
Lilycat reports the little-known fact that “if you moan for long enough you can become lightheaded and almost pass out”…
Yes, yes, yes…
a friend spotted this book at a holland village book store:
i decided to pick up a few juicy quotes from this book using Amazon’s Surprise Me feature:
- Why a man gotta bleed his pockets dry to show a woman a good time in order to get a little sniff of that kitty cat? See here, I can make that cat purr…groowwl…you hear me?
- “Accept him, Danita. This is for you,” Hawk insisted, softly… With a moan of acceptance, her body and mind having a tug of war of denial versus hot anticipation, her body won.
- The walls of her pussy grabbed onto his cock desperately, causing flames to shoot electric fire directly from his balls and cock straight to his gut like a bolt of lightning.
- “Please tell me you have a condom,” he pleaded, his breath coming out in harsh gasps… “Yes. Side drawer. Hurry.”
- When she shivered, the smile he gave her before he captured her lips were pure sin.
- Brandan clenched his teeth together, and grunted deep in his throat when her inner walls pulsed on his dick with delicate yet robust ferocity.
you can see why there’s a lot of screaming involved.
Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger
8 – France had two hundred thousand cafes in 1960; by 2008, it was down to forty thousand…
9 – The average meal in France now sped by in thirty-eight minutes, down from eighty-eight minutes a quarter-century ago.
9 – France, in turn, had become its (McDonald’s) second-most-profitable market in the world.
13 – Consider, he (Guy Savoy) said, a freshly caught turbot that has just arrived in the kitchen. “It is a fat, perfect turbot—magnificent to look at, to smell, to touch. It is maybe twenty or thirty years old, with a story of its own. In a matter of minutes, we entirely change its story. We cut it, we season it, we cook it; we instantly turn something that was completely primordial into something refined and sensual; a thing of pleasure. This transformation—for me, that was the magic.”
suggestions for Lee Kuan Yew prizes/awards
according to this breaking news in the ST, the MM (not mental) has many prizes/awards named after him including the Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship to Encourage Upgrading.
after reading his rebuttal of NMP Viswa Sadasivan, i humbly suggest we add the following prize:
the Lee Kuan Yew Award for Bringing the House Back To Earth While Doing Physiotherapy And Reading Newspapers
Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein
4 – …the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and acheivements and the reality is simply grotesque.
5- The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
7 – Therefore give heed to your clever and patriotic womenfolk and remember that the Capitol of mighty Rome was once saved by the cackling of its faithful geese.
8 – I also believe that a simple and unassuming life is good for everyone…
9 – To inquire after the meaning or object of one’s own existence or that of all creatures has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view.
9 – The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth.
9 – The trite objects of human efforts—possessions, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me comtemptible.
9 – I am truly a “lone traveler” and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude—feelings which increase with the years. One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, of the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people. No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
257 – Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it… You have to pay attention to what’s real, what’s in the world. Not some imaginary alternative, as if it’s a choice we could make.
267 – Hachiko’s story has become widely enough known that strangers passing through Shibuya station recognize him at once… There are stories of people bursting into tears at the sight of the dog sitting and waiting.
387 – …I’m telling you right now I’m not trustworthy. I was once, but not anymore. No promises. Nowadays I’m reckless and unpredictable.
408 – He loved ordinary things, ordinary days, ordinary work.
408 – Myself, I believe in God, but I just don’t want to lose an entire morning at church.
457 – So much of the world was governed by chance.
who watches the taxi operators?
You may wonder: if the demand is not there, why there is still an oversupply? The answer lies in the fact that the taxi operating companies do not care about the demand in ridership. They only care about collecting rentals from the drivers. In the time of economic downturn, many people become jobless and they are the abundant source of supply of potential taxi drivers. The taxi companies recruit these people, train them, give them the license, and get them sign a taxi hiring contract for at least 6 months. In my case, if I quit within 6 months, I have to pay the company $300 for breaching contract. If I quit after 6 months, that is not a problem for the company either, as they constantly run the “training course” to recruit new taxi drivers. The government figures say that fresh taxi drivers’ license is given out at the rate of more than 5000 a year.
Every day, they transfer $77.04 from my bank account, even if I am sick or unable to work for any reason. If my car is in the workshop for repair, the rental will be offset by so-called “down time”. The way they calculate “down time”, the rental divided by all the minutes in 24 hours, is really not fair to people like me who work in one man operation, because it disregards our rest time. But, rest or no rest, sick or well, it is not their concern. The thing they stressed over and over again during the orientation day was that we have to have “sufficient funds” in our bank account by 12 O’clock midnight everyday.
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