I finished my ais paper this morning and I just hope that it would be okay and most importantly, passing.
Anyhoo, downloaded:
Far Away by Nickelback
Un Dia de Normal by Juanes
I think I am now hating the idea of having my own planner. Whenever I flip the pages... I feel swamped. I'm thinking of not using the planner anymore and go back to using my phone as a note pad or go back to using scraps of paper... but I'm so forgetful nowadays so I guess I'll go back with my planner and suck the crap in. 0.0
Will watch Jarhead tomorrow. Wanna see Jake Gylenhaal nekkid. lol. Don't find him that cute before, in Day after Tomorrow but now, err... I also have to see Brokeback Mountain and finish my book Eragon. I'll procrastinate... all will be done by Monday, hopefully.
I've been catching re-runs of Rockstar INXS and if before I'm so pro Marty and Mig, I'm now pro- Marty, Mig and J.D. But as if it would make a difference, J.D. won anyhoo.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, by Salman Rushdie [Jan. 8th, 2006|08:42 pm]
z3ro666
Does it get much better than this?
I surely don't think so. It left me almost breathless.
This... this might be my favorite literary quote of all-time.
"For a long while I have believed (...) that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as "natural" a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belonger's seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our places of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.
No sooner did we have ships than we rushed to sea, sailing across oceans in paper boats. No sooner did we have cars than we hit the road. No sooner did we have airplanes than we zoomed to the furthest corners of the globe. Now we yearn for the moon's dark side, the rocky plains of Mars, the rings of Saturn, the interstellar deeps. We send mechanical photographers into orbit, or on one-way journeys to the stars, and we weep at the wonders they transmit; we are humbled by the mighty images of far-off galaxies standing like cloud pillars in the sky, and we give names to alien rocks, as if they were our pets. We hunger for warp space, for the outlying rim of time. And this is the species that kids itself it likes to stay home, to bind itself with-- what are they called again?--- ties.
That's my view. You don't have to buy it. Maybe there aren't so many of us, after all. Maybe we are disruptive and anti-social and we shouldn't be allowed. You're entitled to your opinion. All I will say is: sleep soundly, baby. Sleep tight and sweet dreams." - Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, by Salman Rushdie [Jan. 8th, 2006|08:42 pm]
z3ro666
Does it get much better than this?
I surely don't think so. It left me almost breathless.
This... this might be my favorite literary quote of all-time.
"For a long while I have believed (...) that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as "natural" a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belonger's seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our places of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.
No sooner did we have ships than we rushed to sea, sailing across oceans in paper boats. No sooner did we have cars than we hit the road. No sooner did we have airplanes than we zoomed to the furthest corners of the globe. Now we yearn for the moon's dark side, the rocky plains of Mars, the rings of Saturn, the interstellar deeps. We send mechanical photographers into orbit, or on one-way journeys to the stars, and we weep at the wonders they transmit; we are humbled by the mighty images of far-off galaxies standing like cloud pillars in the sky, and we give names to alien rocks, as if they were our pets. We hunger for warp space, for the outlying rim of time. And this is the species that kids itself it likes to stay home, to bind itself with-- what are they called again?--- ties.
That's my view. You don't have to buy it. Maybe there aren't so many of us, after all. Maybe we are disruptive and anti-social and we shouldn't be allowed. You're entitled to your opinion. All I will say is: sleep soundly, baby. Sleep tight and sweet dreams." - Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
But though I was, in most respects, an average Joe, as ordinary as a doughnut, there was a time there when I was, in my own small part of the world, and in my own small way, as popular as Michael Jackson, as hunted as the finback whale. For I did have one small attribute that made me special. One rare quality that made me stand out among my peers like a scarlet ibis in a flock of penguins. "And what was that, Mike?" I hear you ask. Did I possess artistic genius? Intellectual brilliance? The character and personality of a Mother Teresa? Had I inherited forty million dollars and a suit once worn by Elvis Presley? Won the lottery? Discovered the Fountain of Youth or a cure for cancer or the meaning of life?
The answer is: no. None of the above.
The answer to the question "What was it that set you apart from other metropolitan men of similar education and socioethic background and gave you a notoriety and appeal usually reserved for rock stars or serial killers?" is: I was single.
As of the summer of 1986, some stockbroker in the Village and I were the only two fully operational, healthy, solvent, heterosexual males within, say, a seventy-mile radius of New York City whose sell-by date had not yet expired, who had no severe bad habits (like a tendency to violence or a toxic dependency), and who were not married, about to be married, or as good as married. And because of that one simple - and in most societies unnotable - fact, in the years that have followed 1986 as surely as the honeymoon the wedding, my entire life has been turned around and upside down.
- My Life As A Whale, by Dyan Sheldon
But though I was, in most respects, an average Joe, as ordinary as a doughnut, there was a time there when I was, in my own small part of the world, and in my own small way, as popular as Michael Jackson, as hunted as the finback whale. For I did have one small attribute that made me special. One rare quality that made me stand out among my peers like a scarlet ibis in a flock of penguins. "And what was that, Mike?" I hear you ask. Did I possess artistic genius? Intellectual brilliance? The character and personality of a Mother Teresa? Had I inherited forty million dollars and a suit once worn by Elvis Presley? Won the lottery? Discovered the Fountain of Youth or a cure for cancer or the meaning of life?
The answer is: no. None of the above.
The answer to the question "What was it that set you apart from other metropolitan men of similar education and socioethic background and gave you a notoriety and appeal usually reserved for rock stars or serial killers?" is: I was single.
As of the summer of 1986, some stockbroker in the Village and I were the only two fully operational, healthy, solvent, heterosexual males within, say, a seventy-mile radius of New York City whose sell-by date had not yet expired, who had no severe bad habits (like a tendency to violence or a toxic dependency), and who were not married, about to be married, or as good as married. And because of that one simple - and in most societies unnotable - fact, in the years that have followed 1986 as surely as the honeymoon the wedding, my entire life has been turned around and upside down.
- My Life As A Whale, by Dyan Sheldon
"It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of people in the world are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It’s not even coincidence. It’s just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety. "
~ Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
1. "But you have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."
2. "I can think of no more depressing prediction for future generations than the suggestion our progeny will fondly recall what is in construction and effect a tribute to or byproduct of homicidal psychosis."
Vladimir: Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a while?
- Waiting for Godot - Act I
Quicksand
What can I say, I'm going through my Harlem Renaissance phase. :)
The trees in their spring beauty sent through her restive mind a sharp thrill of pleasure. Seductive, charming, and beckoning as cities were, they had not this easy unhuman loveliness. The trees, she thought, on city avenues and boulevards, in city parks and gardens, were tamed, held prisoners in a surrounding maze of human beings. Here they were free. It was human beings who were prisoners. It was too bad. In the midst of all this radiant life. They weren't, she knew, even conscious of its presence. Perhaps there was too much of it, and therefore it was less than nothing.
-Nella Larsen
