"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." - The Talmud

On Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Indian Railways.

It's nice that (probably) the first "fuck" in feature-film history is uttered by a woman – during Molly Bloom's climactic monologue (9min 57sec) in Joseph Strick's 1967 version of Ulysses.

Good, no? Fun with profanity.

Bach/Mozart v Hooligans

Theodore Dalrymple writes:

[...] I was interested to read in the local newspaper how the proprietors of some stores are preventing hooligans from gathering outside to intimidate and rob customers. They play Bach over loudspeakers, and this disperses the youths in short order; they flee the way Count Dracula fled before holy water, garlic flowers, and crucifixes.
[...]
Leys was sitting in a café where other customers were chatting, playing cards, or having a drink. The radio was on, tuned to a station that relayed idle chatter and banal popular music (you are lucky these days if popular music is banal only). But suddenly, and for no apparent reason, it played the first movement of Mozart’s clarinet quintet, transforming the café into what Leys called “the antechamber of paradise.” The customers stopped what they were doing, as if startled. Then one of them stood up, went over to the radio, and tuned it to another station, restoring the idle chatter and banal music. There was general relief, as if everyone felt that the beauty and refinement of Mozart were a reproach to their lives to which they could respond only by suppressing Mozart.

Head...

Head...

Head..

Head..

Wicked funny

Browsing for info on the Mahabharata, I run into this terribly funny collection of "exam howlers". Surrealism + Joyce. Excerpts:

Some of the patients were plastered, & some were hanging from the ceiling.

Both his legs were cut off, & both his hands, & most of his brains were hanging through the side of his head; & he was lying on his bed -- crying.

These peace-loving animals start their life as small, furry balls, & they grow up and with any luck will find a mate, & have small, furry balls themselves.

My aunt has been unduly disturbed of late, having two small children through the utter carelessness of the local dustman.

The octopus wrapped his testicles round the diver & strangled him.

Sharks were infesting the area, & one of them was a non-swimmer.

As he walked through the room he heard the sound of heavy breeding.

(Phone-call to the Police): Please come at once: there has been an attempted sexual orgy, and five people are dead.

Clowns tie their trousers with string which, when it is pulled, shows a hair-raising scene.

I took out a book & settled down to read, but soon put it down because I couldn't read.

People were running all over the place, the boys in shorts & the girls in hysterics.

If he is not checked at the right age he will gradually develop into a vandal, & it will not be long before he is a magistrate.

Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100

'[...] I asked him whether he might be the author of the graffiti that I had seen etched in his 16th-arrondissement apartment building’s elevator on the way up. It read “Mort aux cons” (“Death to idiots”). Lévi-Strauss grinned at my joke, but did not deny it.'

Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn

"Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward." - Soren Kierkegaard

Because I'm bored, book list time! Read and burn!

"The difference between homicide and suicide is mostly a matter of where you perceive the door top to the cage to be." - David Foster Wallace, in the 1996 novel Infinite Jest.

Last month, Wallace committed suicide.

"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words." - John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

"I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen." - from Crime and Punishment

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" - from Moby Dick

Goosebumps.

Dylan

Prof John Sutherland: "If the grey men of Stockholm felt daring (they never do) they could give [the Nobel Prize for Literature] to the best living American poet, Robert Zimmerman [aka Bob Dylan]."