George Bernhard Shaw on the British Shipwreck

by sunil on January 21, 2012

George Bernhard Shaw on the three demands of the British Shipwreck

The typical British shipwreck, Shaw wrote, had three “romantic demands” in particular: that the cry “Women and children first” should be heard, that all men aboard (“except the foreigners”) should be heroes, and the captain a superhero, and that “everybody should face death without a tremor”.

~ from the guardian, apropos Costa Concordia

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Creep : Radiohead

by sunil on January 15, 2012

When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so fuckin’ special

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

I don’t care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice when I’m not around
You’re so fuckin’ special
I wish I was special

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell I’m doing here?
I don’t belong here

She’s running out the door
She’s running out
She runs runs runs

Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You’re so fuckin special
I wish I was special

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong here

~ Creep, Radiohead

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Those visits home, the way the young

January 3, 2012

Those visits home, the way the young come back and still follow you around or find you on the bed reading or writing, to lie down at an angle or sit cross-legged. No secret between you, not even trouble quite though it isn’t ordinary, the way the world unravels through them: what he said, what [...]

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Fitter Happier

December 25, 2011

Fitter, happier, more productive Comfortable, not drinking too much Regular exercise at the gym 3 days a week Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries At ease, eating well No more microwave dinners and saturated fats A patient better driver, a safer car, baby smiling in back seat Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no [...]

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15 great thoughts of Chanakya

November 2, 2011

1) “Learn from the mistakes of others… you can’t live long enough to make them all yourselves!!” 2)”A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and Honest people are screwed first.” 3)”Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.” 4)”There is some self-interest behind every friendship. [...]

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On Sunsets and Sunrises

September 4, 2011

Pessoa was right; there’s no point going to Constantinople to see a sunset; they’re the same the world over. But you do it anyway; you go to Constantinople and Phnom Bakheng and everywhere else, and while you’re there, you catch the sunset. While traveling, in fact, watching the sunset gives the day a purpose and [...]

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The Lost Hotels of Paris

September 2, 2011

The Lord gives everything and charges by taking it back. What a bargain. Like being young for a while. We are allowed to visit hearts of women, to go into their bodies so we feel no longer alone. We are permitted romantic love with it’s bounty and half-life of two years. It is right to [...]

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Cicero on Man’s mistakes

August 27, 2011

The 6 mistakes men keep on repeating century after century according to Cicero : The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences. Neglecting development [...]

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Brodsky living in America…

May 24, 2011

“In the country of dentists, whose daughters order clothes /from London catalogues, . . . /I, whose mouth houses ruins /more total than the Parthenon’s, /a spy, an interloper, /the fifth column of a rotten civilization…” New Yorker on Brodsky: A Literary Life, May 24, 2011

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I am what I am

May 23, 2011

- My father was a sheet-metal worker, my mother a dinner lady. The missing link? A grammar-school education. I’m a classic product of post-war settlement. And I read a lot of books — my understanding of the world became much more complex. – I grew up in one culture and my education took me to [...]

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Goodness …

May 23, 2011

Only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can’t forgive themselves. ~ Paul Auster, novelist and poet (b. 1947)

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As I walked out one evening

May 18, 2011

As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: ‘Love has no ending. ‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the [...]

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Tolstoy’s Powerpoint Slide: 10 Rules for Living

May 16, 2011

Get up early (five o’clock) Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock) Eat little and avoid sweets Try to do everything by yourself Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every [...]

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Buddha in Glory

May 12, 2011

Center of all centers, core of cores, almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet– all this universe, to the furthest stars all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit. Now you feel how nothing clings to you; your vast shell reaches into endless space, and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow. Illuminated in your infinite [...]

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i carry your heart within me

May 10, 2011

  i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever [...]

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Nietzsche ….two worlds…

May 3, 2011

Deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an [...]

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Nostalgia

September 14, 2010

Tram wires cross melbourne skies cut my red heart in twomy knuckles bleed down johnston streeton a door that shouldnt be in front of me twelve thousand miles away from your smilei’m twelve thousand miles away from mestanding on the corner of brunswickgot the rain coming down and mascara on my cheek oh whisper me [...]

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Naipaul on Gandhi…

August 20, 2010

‘He sees the Indian callousness, the Indian refusal to see. No Indian attitude escapes him, no Indian problem; he looks down to the roots of the static, decayed society. And the picture of India which comes out of his writings and exhortations over more than thirty years still holds: this is the measure of his [...]

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Eternal Return…

August 16, 2010

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and [...]

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Translated Suntory Times:

August 1, 2010

Translated dialogue from the hilarious Suntory Time whiskey commercial scene from the film Lost in Translation. Bob, who is in town to make a whiskey commercial, doesn’t speak Japanese. His director (Yutaka Tadokoro), a histrionic Japanese hipster, doesn’t speak English. In one scene, Bob goes on the set and tries to understand the director through [...]

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