Evam

Indian test cricket is dead,long live..

2012-01-16T00:13:00.000+11:00

This particular blog title pretty much sums up about what all,I am sure,Indian cricket fans would have felt this afternoon,a sense of bewilderment,rage,confusion on yet another abject overseas test series defeat.THIS was supposed to the best chance ever for the "Fab 4" to be part of the winning side in a Down-Under series.But Murphy's Law had other plans.
Amidst the ever increasing clamor for the seniors to retire,let us not forget that three of the quartet have served with distinction for Indian cricket for more than a decade and a half and they deserve to go out in a winning series,not one which leaves bitter memories of "if only", for years to come.The BCCI,people,fans.media owe them that much at least, especially since India plays all it's test series at home for the next two years,it would be ideal for the Big 3 to play their last test at their respective home ground.
As for the next-gen players,here are a few,which I am sure,would form the core of the team at least for the next decade: Abhinav Mukund,Ajinkya Rahane,Che.Pujara (ideal for the no:3 slot),Virat Kohli (captain),Rohit Sharma,R.Ashwin (he is a good enough batsmen to play as high as num:6,more like a batting all-rounder),Manoj Tiwary,Dinesh Karthik (w.k/v.c),Robin Bist (opening batsmen,the best in Ranji for the past two years),Robin Uthappa (gutsy opening bat option), Ambati Rayudu (the most exciting talent before being sucked into the "other" IPL..ICL),Suresh Raina (potential captian,surely someone can teach him how to play the short stuff), Srivats Goswami (back-up w.k), Pragyan Ojha (he is a must in the test team).Umesh Yadav,Varon Aaron,Praveen Kumar,Ishant Sharma,Kamran Khan (left arm sling action fast bowler,played under Warnie in IPL,was highly recommended) and probably Irfan Pathan if he can get back his pace,would be a good medium pace all-rounder.There will definitely be few others in the mix,due to loss of form,injuries to the afore-mentioned players,but potentially they will be the guys who will be taking over the mantle sooner than later.
A good way of simulating over-seas match conditions for these players,is for the BCCI to allow them to participate in tournaments like the Big-Bash etc.Not the ideal way to get prepared for the "proper-formats",but not the worst either.

Indian cricket is dead,long live Indian cricket.

Zindagi na...quickie review

2011-07-30T23:17:00.002+10:00

Films dealing with life-altering epiphanies are always shot in stunning locations. And Hindi films dealing with the same, need a stunning cast as well. A possible rationale: beautiful places relieve stress and bring things into perspective. And beautiful people experiencing divine realizations can hold your perspective on the screen, often resulting in a ‘ka-ching’ sound at the box office. ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ (ZNMD) is one such film.
The film isn’t as simplistic as it seems and each character has a back story and internal conflicts that surface intermittently between thrill-seeking stunts, sugary love, drunk talking and some seriously childish pranks. What is aesthetic in this film apart from the charming Spanish countryside is that scenes which would usually be served with heightened melodrama are quite well contained and subtle, yet convey the emotion.
For a roadie movie about three guys the film’s overall humour quotient is not very high and is mostly situational and there are usually more people laughing on the screen than in the audience.
The best about the movie: Corrida de toros,La Tomtatina ,Sky-Diving,Abhay Deol & Nasseruddin Shah

Once In A Lifetime: On not making fun of Australians

2011-07-17T09:10:00.000+10:00

Once In A Lifetime: On not making fun of Australians

Cool Hand Luke-review

2010-06-02T22:36:00.000+10:00

I saw An American classic, Cool Hand Luke (1967),last Sun.It has one of my all time favorite actors,Paul Newman in one of his most memorable roles.It is as much a product of its time as any important movie ever made. CHL marks the beginning of the end of the cycle of American movies about rebels standing up to authority. In many ways it is the apotheosis of such movies, providing in one fell swoop both one of the most appealing of the rebels, while at the same time fundamentally questioning whether the "establishment" is at all vulnerable to rebellion. It is, at its core, a pessimistic film... pessimistic about the possibility of justice, of reform, and of individualism. In the end Luke dies for his sins, and to an outside observer, his reification as a folk legend among a small band of convicts seems like a hollow victory at best.

Compared to James Dean's whiny Jim Shark (Rebel Without a Cause (1955)), Marlon Brando's moronic Johnny (The Wild One (1954)), and Dustin's Hoffman's proto-slacker Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate (1967)), Paul Newman's Lucas (Luke) Jackson is a more fully-formed and appealing character. A war hero, Luke is sentenced to two years in prison for cutting the heads off parking meters. This minor act of rebellion lands him on a chain-gang, consigned to hard-labor on dusty southern roads. Why does Luke engage in petty destruction? Well, he's drunk at the time, but that isn't a sufficient explanation. We're told later in the movie that Luke has always been a non-conformist, and the movie seems to feel that is enough. Personally, I suspect that the Luke is working through issues related to his wartime service (and, indeed, at one point Luke apologizes to God for killing during the war). In any case, whatever the reason for his behavior, he ends up in prison.

At first, the other prisoners are suspicious of Luke. They see him as a glib con-man. The top-dog, Dragline (George Kennedy), warns him and the other new prisoners to learn the rules, thus echoing the instructions of the warden (Strother Martin) and barracks guard (Clifton James). The rules include obeying all instructions, asking for permission to do virtually anything, and, of course, not trying to escape. The warden, who goes by "Captain," succinctly warns, "Now, it's all up to you. Now I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean son-of-a-bitch. It's all up to you."

Slowly, though, Luke's infectious spirit wins over the other inmates. He faces off against Dragline in a weekend boxing match which is the guards' way of allowing inmates to settle disputes among themselves. Dragline beats him to a pulp, but despite the entreaties of the other prisoners and ultimately Dragline himself, Luke refuses to stay down. Finally Dragline is too disgusted to continue. He walks away, leaving the ring to the battered and wobbly Luke. This is the turning point of the movie, and ostensibly demonstrates its main theme, that spirit can overcome material adversity.

Later on, Luke turns himself in a prison idol. First he coolly bluffs another prisoner out of a big hand at poker, thus earning his nickname. He later leads a revolt of sorts by spurring the men to pave a road faster than the guards could imagine (thus robbing the guards of the satisfaction of seeing the men suffer through a particularly brutal job). Finally in a famous sequence, to pass the time on a rainy day, Luke bets that he can eat 50 hardboiled eggs in an hour. As the seconds tick down, a sickly-looking Luke manages to choke down the last egg to win the bet. Again, Luke's indomitable spirit seems to triumph.

But this is just a prelude to the main dramatic portion of the movie. Luke's popularity with the prisoners makes him unpopular with the guards who see his effect on the men. The guards are an interesting mix. Some are clearly time servers, in many ways as much prisoners as the inmates themselves. Others are portrayed as more sadistic, deriving pleasure from seeing the men broken and suffering. Ultimately, however, Luke runs into problems with Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward). Godfrey doesn't speak at all throughout the movie, and he always appears either in shadows or with his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses. He is a crack shot, however, a skill he demonstrates on several occasions. Godfrey represents the silent, immutable, repressive (and deadly) power of the establishment.

One day Luke receives a telegram that his mother has died. Captain takes this as an opportunity to break Luke, locking him in the "box" until after the funeral to prevent Luke from trying to escape. He portrays this preventive punishment as routine, but clearly he is responding to Luke's temperament and personality as much as anything else. Of course, being a rebel, Luke's confinement encourages him to try to escape. Luke doesn't have much on the outside and he seems relatively content to serve out his time in prison until his punishment gets him in a rebellious mood.

Luke saws his way through the barracks floor, and manages to elude his pursuers for a day. As he's running, he is constantly smiling, enjoying the adventure of it all. Finally, though, he is recaptured. Upon his return, Captain has him fitted with leg irons telling Luke it is for his own good. Luke's reply, "I wish you'd stop bein' so good to me, Captain," enrages the warden who cracks him with his whip and then observes, "What we've got here is failure to communicate," thus triggering a couple of generations of bad Strother Martin impersonations.

Almost immediately, Luke escapes again. This time he manages to avoid the law for several days... long enough to send a picture of himself with a gorgeous woman on each arm to Dragline. Naturally, this seals his status as prison idol. Unfortunately, Luke is soon recaptured. He is brought back to the barracks, brutally beaten and bloody. The inmates crowd around him, hoping to hear about his adventures on the outside. But Luke is no longer able or willing to sustain the hopes and imaginations of 49 other men. Instead, he confesses that the picture was a fake, and that all he did on the outside was work a couple of menial jobs. The process of disillusioning the other inmates continues as Captain and the guards wage a brutal campaign to break Luke's spirit. He's worked nearly to death and beaten when he pauses. Finally, he collapses and begs for mercy. Satisfied, the guards return Luke to the barracks where the other prisoners now shun him. In many ways, this is the most scathing scene in the movie, as his former idolaters now turn their backs on him when he shows he is human after all.

Still, Luke is not completely beaten. Although acting the toady, his spirit soon revives. One day on road detail, he manages to escape in a truck having stolen the keys from all of the other trucks first to prevent pursuit. As he's escaping, Dragline hails him down and climbs aboard. The two drive away and hide the truck. Dragline is exuberant about their escape at first, but Luke is still a loner at heart. He suggest they split up. At first, Dragline is crestfallen and wonders what he'll do without Luke, but he manages to put a brave face on things and he heads in one direction while Luke approaches an empty church. Inside the church, Luke launches into a soliloquy where he asks God for guidance. But God's answer when it comes is an abandonment in the form of police cars surrounding the church and Dragline appearing to talk Luke into surrendering in exchange for preferential treatment. Dragline seems almost relieved to be recaptured, and it isn't difficult to understand why. Inside the camp, Dragline is a big man, while on the outside he is a poor, illiterate farm boy with no status or future. Luke seemingly realizes he is doomed whether or not he surrenders peacefully. He approaches a window and shouts out, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," mocking Captain's earlier comment. Boss Godfrey responds by shooting him through the throat. It isn't actually clear what Captain and the other guards think of this. They seem surprised by the shots, but Captain is not obviously angry.

The local police want to take Luke an nearby hospital, but Captain loads him into a car and insists on driving him over an hour back to the prison infirmary. It is a death sentence, of course, but as the car pulls away we see Luke grinning, either in victory because his spirit remains intact or in relief for his impending death. I think the scene can be read either way frankly. The final scene has Dragline telling the story of Luke to a group of inmates by the side of the road. In this sense, Luke's spirit lives even after his death.

Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks

2009-06-04T19:59:00.001+10:00

Malcom Gladwell and spaghetti sauce..:)

2009-06-04T19:39:00.000+10:00

Aditi's 3rd b'day pix

2009-05-26T01:10:00.001+10:00

Ramayan 3392 AD

2009-05-11T23:13:00.000+10:00

Ramayan 3392 AD 04 Ramayan 3392 AD 04 api_user_11797_piyushchourasia

Publish at Scribd or explore others: hinduism asaram bapu ashram

Do aur do panch

2009-04-28T15:11:00.000+10:00

ROMANCE MATHEMATICS (there is NEVER "in" between R and M:)

Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair

Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

______________________________

OFFICE ARITHMETIC

Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime
_____________________________

SHOPPING MATH

A man will pay $20 for a $10 item he needs.
A woman will pay $10 for a $20 item that she doesn't need.
_____________________________

GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
_____________________________

HAPPINESS

To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.
______________________________

LONGEVITY

Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

Once Upon a Time in the West

2009-04-01T00:18:00.000+11:00

Sergio Leone made a fistful of great films, but none better than 1968's ode to the fading American frontier, Once Upon a Time in the West. The film, about four lives headed on a collision course in a grimy, ramshackle town of the Western plains, is set against the backdrop of the encroaching railroad, which promises to bring civilization to this unruly, harsh country. And with progress, the coal-devouring locomotives also bring death—death for the American West's unspoiled beauty, death for an uncomplicated rugged individualism, and death to the cowboy, who has no place in the newfangled modern world of corporate villainy and commerce.

Leone, an Italian stylist who made a career out of transforming melodramatic genre pictures into wild, fiery, violent statements about the country that had inspired his cinematic dreams, uses West as a means of dramatizing that fateful instant when the Old West of gunslingers and shootouts mutated into the New West of manifest destiny-inspired greed and corruption. But as its fairy-tale title implies, the film is also interested in casting this historical turning point as a parable about the death of the western itself. Much like The Wild Bunch (except with more beauty and pathos than Sam Peckinpah would ever deign to muster), Leone wants his multi-pronged fable to be not only history, but myth as well.

This mythologizing was a somewhat predictable turn for Leone—his cinematic landscapes had grown more expansive and daring throughout the course of his Clint Eastwood-headlined Man With No Name trilogy. On the other hand, West's devotion to classic western iconography and archetypes can be seen as a mildly startling departure from the revisionist westerns he had become famous for. The Man With No Name trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) was infamous for its upending of traditional western tropes, the most obvious being the notion of the cowboy as a noble, stabilizing force of purity and honesty.

With West, Leone made certain that surface similarities existed between the film's characters and those found in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—Charles Bronson's stoic harmonica-playing loner can be equated with Eastwood's "Good" Man With No Name; Henry Fonda's vicious Frank is Lee Van Cleef's "Bad" Sentenza; and Jason Robards's wily bandit Cheyenne is Eli Wallach's "Ugly" Tuco. But unlike his previous work, Leone eschews the pervasive amorality that gave his earlier films their groundbreaking vitality, choosing not to overhaul western clichés, but to incorporate them into essential components of his majestic mise-en-scène.

This modus operandi can be gleaned from the film's riveting opening scene, in which a trio of rough-and-tumble killers quietly awaits the arrival of a train at a dilapidated local station. The men, calmly standing in the noonday sun with the sweaty swagger and bloodthirsty eyes of desperados, are stock characters from a hundred previous westerns. The way Leone orchestrates their waiting game, however, is something akin to the way Beethoven arranged his symphonies. Using a mixture of intense close-ups (Leone's signature stylistic flourish) and painterly long shots, and casting the scene in almost complete silence (thus enhancing the immediacy of the environment's sounds), Leone instills this rather routine setup with near Biblical grandiosity.

One of the men's vain attempts to dissuade a fly from resting on his face becomes transfixing in Leone's tight Panavision close-up, and the director's patient camera wisely lingers on these nasty, no-nonsense thugs just long enough to instill in them a sense of legendary vileness. When the train finally arrives with Bronson in tow, Leone marries Ennio Morricone's hauntingly skuzzy guitar riffs to a gorgeous deep-focus shot angled upward from the ground near the trio's boots, with Bronson a tiny but nonetheless imposing speck in the distance. The effect is a transcendent moment that encapsulates the quintessential, doom-laden instance in all westerns that occurs right before hands flash down to holsters and gunfire erupts.

Bronson's Harmonica (he gets no formal name, as befitting a ghostly renegade) has arrived in town to meet with Henry Fonda's wicked, power-hungry Frank. After disposing of Frank's goons at the station, Harmonica slowly finds himself drawn into a drama involving Claudia Cardinale's Jill McBain—the feisty and jaw-droppingly gorgeous widow of a slain local businessman—and Robards's scruffy outlaw Cheyenne, who's being framed for the murder of Mr. McBain and his three children. Since Leone shows us their execution, we know that Frank has killed the McBains, but the motivation for their murder is revealed with great prudence.

Repeatedly, West's most flawlessly executed moments involve acts of exposure or revelation. Each character's face is initially revealed to the audience either through measured zooms or graceful, swirling pans around the character's body, and Leone uses his elegantly dreamy pace to consistently tantalize us with hints of things to come. Mrs. McBain, a former prostitute, arrives from New Orleans at her new home to find a funeral procession, and Leone conceals the scene's payoff—the sight of McBain and his children's corpses sprawled out on picnic tables—only after his delicate tracking shot, positioned from Mrs. McBain's perspective, has leisurely moved down the line of mourners. Similarly, the identity of the man present in Harmonica's periodic visions remains cloaked in an unfocused haze, so that Leone may intrigue his audience without divulging key information too soon.

Much has been made about the influence of Italian filmmakers Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci—who are credited with helping Leone conceive the story (written by Leone and Sergio Donati)—on the film. Still, even though West's pensive, tragic romanticism recalls vintage Bertolucci, and its abundant use of visual and aural signifiers brings to mind Argento, the film's seductive interplay between image and sound—a relationship that would reach its apex with the director's final film Once Upon a Time in America—is trademark Leone. The director harmoniously links disparate sounds and images: the buzz of a fly or a gunshot segues into the howling whistle of a train and the squeaking of a weathervane becomes the plaintive whine of a harmonica. Leone similarly uses the sounds of the natural world as a means of slowly revealing information—when the crickets stop chirping while McBain and his kids prepare for Mrs. McBain's welcoming feast, it's clear that trouble is brewing—and punctuates the action with Morricone's passionate, haunting score.

Leone employs his florid, expressionistic directorial style to convey an overriding tone of wistful resignation over the land barons' arrival. Although Mr. Morton, the sickly railroad tycoon who wants McBain's strategically-situated plot of land, pays the dastardly Frank to do his dirty work, Leone reserves compassion for this frail man intent on fulfilling his dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean before he dies of tuberculosis. Morton—who doesn't entirely agree with Frank's methods, and dies as a result of his naïveté and bad luck—isn't evil but merely pathetic, and his quest to trample through the West is portrayed not as reprehensible but merely inevitable. West recognizes that Morton is only the first in what will be a long line of industrialists plundering the land, and that the future he brings is no more distasteful, and might be slightly more tolerable, than the ugliness, corruption, and immorality of the old world embodied by Frank.

Inside his opulent cable car, Morton asks Frank (who is seated in Morton's throne-like chair), "How does it feel sitting behind that desk, Frank?" Frank, sensing the changing tides, replies, "It's almost like holding a gun. Except much more powerful." Frank desperately desires the power that Morton's money and influence commands, and the film becomes, in part, a portrait of his failure to straddle the line between old world (shoot first, ask questions never) and new world (wielding money as a weapon) criminality. "You've learned some new ways," Harmonica tells Frank before their climactic showdown, "even if you haven't given up the old ones." This, ultimately, is his undoing. Frank dies not because of a lack of proficiency with a six-shooter, but from an inability to wholeheartedly reject the gun in favor of the checkbook.

If Frank's death provides a fitting conclusion to the film's conventional good-versus-evil conflict, it provides little closure for Harmonica or Cheyenne. Like Frank, the two men are relics of an earlier, extinct species that cannot exist in the burgeoning modern world. Harmonica tells Frank they're "an ancient race. Other Mortons will be along, and they'll kill it off." Frank knows it's true, admitting that his desire to kill Harmonica makes him not a shrewd businessman but "just a man" who knows "the future doesn't matter to us." In their long dust jackets, tall leather boots, and Stetson hats, these nomadic, mythic gladiators accept their fateful destinies and, with a mixture of sadness and inexorableness, ride off into legend. It may not have been the final eulogy for the western the director had envisioned—even Leone himself would return to the high plains for the Mexican Revolution pseudo-western Duck, You Sucker just three years later—but in its beguiling, magnificent depiction of the end of an era, Once Upon a Time in the West has become what Leone had perhaps always hoped: the antiquated genre's triumphant final masterpiece.

Songs from the Deep

2009-03-23T14:08:00.000+11:00

Tuning in to why humpbacks sing
By Virginia Morell
Smithsonian magazine, February 2008

One of the most enchanting mysteries about humpback whales is their songs. Only the males are known to sing, although both males and females sound certain social calls while they're feeding, and calves make other calls when they're near their mothers.

The humpback's haunting songs are among the most complex animal vocalizations. They have a hierarchical syntax, one of the basic elements of language, according to recent studies. That is, they sing units of sound that together form a phrase. The phrases are repeated in patterns known as themes. Each song is composed of anywhere from two to nine themes, and the themes are sung in a specific order. Some phrases sound like the low moan of a cello, while others are more like the chirp of a songbird.

Initially, researchers thought the males sang to attract females. When scientists played the songs on underwater speakers, however, other males—not females—showed up. Still, that doesn't mean the females aren't listening. Some people speculate that the whale songs are best compared to those of birds—vocalizations that alert both males and females to a new guy in the neighborhood. Compounding matters, humpbacks sing not only at their breeding grounds but also during their long migrations.

Intriguingly, humpbacks in different populations sing entirely different songs from those elsewhere in the world. And the songs evolve: each year, a few whales in a breeding area add new elements to a song that other males then adopt. "Individuals don't seem to stand out for very long," says Adam Pack of the Dolphin Institute based in Honolulu.
I hear the song late in our whale-watching day. Lou Herman, also of the Dolphin Institute, stops the boat in the middle of a seemingly empty sea and kills the engine. Whale spouts shoot up in the distance. "Listen," he says.

From beneath the boat, a sighing, almost mournful sound rises into the air. It is surprisingly loud and has a yearning edge—a pipe player alone, sounding the plaintive notes of love? Or is he calling for a buddy to join him? Or singing to let all whales in Hawaii know that humpbacks rule?

"The songs fascinate everyone," says Herman. "We know now that all the males here sing the same song, and when they stop the song for this season, they'll pick it up again right where they left off next year. Why and how?" Herman gives a hands-up shrug.

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The Western at Rest

2009-03-05T23:20:00.000+11:00

Last week I saw an John Wayne flick,El Dorado,after ages.I have never been a big fan of The Duke.I mean if you have seen one movie of his,you have seen all.But this one was refreshing to say the least and rekindled by desire to meet The Duke all over again.This movie works,at least for me,perhaps because the lead people associated with it were more relaxed about what they were doing.As Wayne would say..."they didn't have to prove a darn thing to nobody anymore".I will elaborate..

1967 was a strange crossover time in American film. Directors like Howard Hawks had been canonized by the French "auteur" theory, and critics-turned filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Peter Bogdanovich were freely citing Hawks as an influence. At the same time, younger moviegoers were becoming attracted to new, hip cinema like Blow Up, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, and Hawks and John Wayne were considered fogeys, way past their prime. When El Dorado was released, half the public was celebrating and hero worshipping, and the other half was sneering.

A lot of the films that were considered hip in the 60's have become transparent, and the values that were once topical that attracted the young have become ancient. Looking at most of the movies from that era on video, from a new melliniuem's standpoint, its more refreshing to see a master craftsman like Hawks keeping the status quo than to see some first-timer showing off and trying to be self-consiously brilliant.

El Dorado is a pretty standard Western. It's not flashy and electrified like Once Upon a Time in the West or The Wild Bunch, but it moves gracefully, charmingly along. It's essentially a remake of Hawks' earlier Rio Bravo (with writer Leigh Brackett updating her own script). John Wayne, instead of sheriff, plays an aging gunman, who is getting too wise for the game. Robert Mitchum, as the drunken sheriff, takes over the role of the drunken Dean Martin, and James Caan is the fresh faced greenhorn last played by Ricky Nelson (thankfully, Caan doesn't sing). Hawks and Brackett take their time in setting up this story, giving Wayne and Mitchum plenty of backstory, before the stand-off in the town of El Dorado.

Wayne is so much better in Hawks films than in John Ford films. He seems more relaxed, and he actually acts. At the time of El Dorado, he had been in over 150 films and was finally growing relaxed in front of the camera. He moves naturally, as opposed to his stiff, jerky performances in movies like The Quiet Man (1952). Hawks, too, seems relaxed, like he knows nothing more is at stake, he had nothing more to prove, with this film. He had been in movies for five decades, and his craft was perfected. He seems to make movies with his guts, without even thinking about them. His skill is in his hands and in his eyes. El Dorado is an effortless movie, and it draws you in easily.

How to blog?

2009-03-05T23:14:00.000+11:00

It’s your own voice on the web. A blog is where you can collect and share things that you find interesting in almost the same way as you would on a ‘social networking site’ like Facebook, Bebo or Myspace. Good blogs might include a political commentary, personal diary, photos, music, videos and links to websites you want to remember. Look at blogs on The-Latest if you want some ideas.

What do you like or dislike in your everyday life? Does something bugger you off or make you laugh? Turn your thoughts into a blog to which perhaps many a reader can relate.

Don’t just re-cycle what you’ve read somewhere unless you have a novel, interesting comment on it.

Many bloggers decide to use a blog to organize their thoughts, while others command influential, worldwide audiences of thousands because what they have to say makes people sit up and listen.

People’s voice
Blogs have reshaped the web, changed politics, shaken up journalism and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others throughout the world. That why business leaders, politicians, top journalists and celebs have joined the internet’s merry band of bloggers

Foreign correspondent
Make a point of blogging when you travel abroad. Blogs from Latest.comers while they are abroad have provided fascinating insights into events in places like Darfur, in Africa, Lebanon, and Jordan, in the Middle East, and China. Observations while you are on holiday could be just as gripping.

Fame and fortune
A blog that everyone wants to read might provide you with your moment of fame and even make money for you. For instance, The-Latest sometimes offers cash prizes for the best blog on the site.

Spark a debate
You can receive instant feedback on your posts in the form of comments and sparked a fascinating debate with others on the web as well as make new friends.

Whatever you want to say, The-Latest can help you say it, with the aid of the professional journalists who sub-edit your contributions.

Link to past posts
If you are writing a post that mentions something related to what you have written before simply link to it, by typing the URL address, from within the post.

This helps to engage your reader by providing them with more related material that they are likely to be interested in.

Make headlines snappy

Grab the reader’s attention with a succinct headline. Look at national newspapers, especially popular tabloids, to see how they do it.

Be consistent with your style

Once you have settled on a style of writing or voice for your audience stick to it. Generally, people like to know what to expect.

Write a series
Writing a series of posts on a topic is a great way of increasing your reader’s length of stay on your blog.

Encourage comments
Ask questions of the reader at the end of each post. When a reader comments reply to the comment and try to keep the conversation going. Soon you will find other readers joining the conversation.

Edit and legal blogs
Before you hit the submit button check your facts, spelling and punctuation and cut out the material that you don’t really need. Alert the Editor to any legal concerns like possible libel or copyright infringement before you submit a post.

Be interactive
Readers will want to stay longer on a blog that is interactive. You can achieve this by starting a forum debate (see The-Latest forums) or conducting a quiz. You can also start a project and involve the reader.

Use pictures and sound
Images, still photographs, video and music, make the blog more interesting and can be integral to its.

Limbo

2008-11-08T00:58:00.000+11:00

If there’s one thing that stands out about Thomas Ikimi’s first feature film “Limbo”, it’s that despite of (or perhaps because of?) being shot on digital black and white video, this is one impressive looking film. Ikimi clearly has a good eye for frame composition, and there’s an innate intelligence on the screen and laudable ambition behind the script that you just don’t see a lot in low-budget independent films. Purportedly made for under $10,000, “Limbo” makes a fine first feature, even if it does get a bit ponderous at times, and the middle is not quite as sharp as the rest of the film.

Christopher Russo stars as the improbably named Adam Moses, a lawyer with a shady past who comes into possession of incriminating evidence against a crime boss. When the Mafioso’s attempts to pay for said evidence is spurned, the service of a notorious assassin who never misses is called for. Lured to a city rooftop, Adam is subsequently shot, but death doesn’t come. Instead, our man wakes up from the assassination attempt, unharmed, and for reasons unknown, finds himself stuck in a seemingly endless loop that repeats itself every hour, leaving only Adam to remember the hour previous.

Although the world continues on, resetting every hour, Adam remembers everything that has transpired. His only clue is the attempt on his life, which sends him in search of answers. Adam believes that the answers lie in his capturing of the elusive assassin. Or does it? Is Adam dead, and somehow existing only in limbo, trapped between Heaven and Hell? If that’s the case, why does a woman named Rebecca (Etya Dudko), who Adam first meets in a bar, also seems to be stuck in limbo as he?

For much of its first hour, and despite occurrences of a fantastical element like a time loop, “Limbo” is fashioned very much like an old fashion detective story, the noir qualities of those old stories made even more obvious by the black and white. It’s only later on when, in a spurt of manic anger, Adam kills a homeless man, that the film takes on more overt philosophical intentions. And because “Limbo” (purposely) has none of the whimsical of the similarly themed “Groundhog Day”, Adam’s actions do not involve hitting on the pretty girl in hopes of getting laid, but rather trying to keep himself from continually killing that mugger who keeps trying to mug him, or harming that prostitute who refuses to “just talk”.

God, religion, the nature of man’s free will, and what one should or should not do if there were no consequence to his actions, all come to the fore before all is said and done. These are, without a doubt, pretty heady topics, and Ikimi certainly knows more than his share of Philosophy 101. “Limbo” is indeed a very intellectual film, and if one were uninterested in the subject, one might be inclined to calling Ikimi and his movie overly pretentious. Then again, the fact that the film knows its subject very well would seem to indicate that “Limbo” is very much a heartfelt approach to, as well as a genuine attempt to explore, the subject matter at hand.

A major plus for “Limbo” is leading man Christopher Russo, who carries the entire film from beginning to end like a champ. Russo is a fine actor, and to watch the character slowly unravel from a man who thought he had left his checkered past behind to a man who slowly comes to embrace what he once was, you can’t help but wonder why this guy hasn’t done anything major yet. Less successful are the rest of the cast, but because Ikimi’s script is so Adam-centric, this isn’t an insult. Etya Dudko has little to do as Rebecca. Likewise with John Holt, as a stranger who seems to know what’s going on, or perhaps he’s just crazy.

Another sign of “Limbo’s” success is that you wouldn’t know the film was low-budget if nobody told you. It is that visually impressive, not an easy feat considering the digital video format, which has never been all that kind to visually-inclined filmmaking. Ikimi and company have a fantastic understanding of cinematic aesthetics, and take every natural advantage supplied by the choice to use black and white. Despite some slow spots in the middle, it’s startling how good “Limbo” is, especially for a first feature shot on a meager budget. Mark Thomas Ikimi as a filmmaker to watch.

You can watch/download it here..http://www.jaman.com/movie/Limbo/0QtZDraGdlOk/

A SOULFUL RELATIONSHIP

2008-07-21T20:53:00.000+10:00

A SOULFUL RELATIONSHIP

by Ronald McFadden

f you're not married yet, share this with a friend.

If you are married, share it with your spouse or other married couples and reflect on it.

An African proverb states, "Before you get married, keep both eyes open, and after you marry, close one eye."

Before you get involved and make a commitment to someone, don't let lust, desperation, immaturity, ignorance, pressure from others or a low self-esteem, make you blind to warning signs.

Keep your eyes open, and don't fool yourself that you can change someone or that which you see as faults aren't really important.

Once you decide to commit to someone, over time his or her flaws, vulnerabilities, pet peeves, and differences will become more obvious.

If you love your mate and want the relationship to grow and evolve, you've got to learn to close one eye and not let every little thing bother you.

You and your mate have many different expectations, emotional needs, values, dreams, weaknesses, and strengths.

You are two unique individual children of God who have decided to share a life together.

Neither of you are perfect, but are you perfect for each other?

Do you bring out the best in each other?

Do you compliment and compromise with each other, or do you compete, compare, and control?

What do you bring to the relationship?

Do you bring past relationships, past hurt, past mistrust, past pain?

You can't take someone to the altar to alter him or her.

You can't make someone love you or make someone stay.

If you develop self-esteem, spiritual discernment, and "a life", you won't find yourself making someone else responsible for your happiness or responsible for your pain.

Manipulation, control, jealousy, neediness, and selfishness are not the ingredients of a thriving, healthy, loving and lasting relationship!

Seeking status, sex, wealth, and security are the wrong reasons to be in a relationship.

What keeps a relationship strong?

Communication, intimacy, trust, a sense of humor, sharing household tasks, some getaway time without business or children and daily exchanges (a meal, shared activity, a hug, a call, a touch, a note).

Leave a nice message on the voicemail or send an email.

Share common goals and interests.

Learn each other's family situation.

Respect his / her parents...regardless.

Don't put pressure on each other for material goods.

Remember "for richer or for poorer..."

If these qualities are missing, the relationship will erode as resentment, withdrawal, abuse, neglect, dishonesty, and pain replace the passion.

The difference between 'United' and 'Untied' is where you put the " i "

"Beyond Salmon"

2008-07-15T04:29:00.000+10:00

I stumbled across a delightful blog by a very delightful lady,Helen Rennie.I use the words "delightful lady" to describe someone whom I have never met or even communicated through the net and whose blog i came upon just 5 mins ago of my blogging on her blog, for the simple reason that 5 mins of skimming through her blog,her passion and love for what she does for a living shone through it.She is a culinary instructor.No big deal one might opine.Read her profile in her blog,the link of which I have given in the title...and you will know just what I am talking about here.

Bon Appetit

“The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”

2008-07-14T04:05:00.000+10:00

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

On a tangential note...how come all the Ivy league business schools invite world famous people who haven't ever studied at the aforementioned schools,who haven't even finished college (well most of them) to deliver the key note address to their students on importance of dreaming,achieving goals...basically being successful and also loving what they do? I mean students dream about getting into these Ivy leagues and after slogging their gluteus maximus off for their graduation,end up being told on THEIR day that they were better off dreaming elsewhere.....
Harvard even has a case study in their curriculum on........"What they dont teach you at Harvard business school" byMark McCormack.

Go on folks...dream...and if you can make gallons of green-backs through it...tell me your secret:)

DIY

2008-07-14T03:45:00.000+10:00

For all you DIY's out there and believe me there ARE certain things which one is better of DIY than OUT-SOURCING them. lolll.The above link dares to answer all the queries one might have,in high quality video presentation.I use th word "dare" literally 'cos this is one portal which makes no bones about the fact that some of their "solutions" are down right moronic.In fact they seem to be pretty smug about it and have passed it on as some kind of Kafkaesque humor (what, you nerds don't believe that Kafka had a sense of humor??).

So go on folks,be a true blue DIY expert..:P

So you want to be more creative - by Hugh McLeod

2008-07-14T03:21:00.000+10:00

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

14. Dying young is overrated.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

16. The world is changing.

17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.

18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

19. Sing in your own voice.

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.

24. Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

25. You have to find your own schtick.

26. Write from the heart.

27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

28. Power is never given. Power is taken.

29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

31. Remain frugal.

Eight simple anger management tips

2008-07-12T06:34:00.000+10:00

One of the biggest obstacles to personal and career success is anger. When we fail to control our anger, we suffer several blows:

Anger impedes our ability to be happy, because anger and happiness are incompatible.

Anger sends marriages and other family relationships off-course.

Anger reduces our social skills, compromising other relationships, too.

Anger means lost business, because it destroys relationships.

Anger also means losing business that you could have won in a more gracious mood.

Anger leads to increased stress (ironic, since stress often increases anger).

We make mistakes when we are angry, because anger makes it harder to process information.

People are beginning to wake up to the dangers of anger and the need for anger management skills and strategies. Many people find anger easy to control. Yes, they do get angry. Everybody does. But some people find anger easier to manage than others. More people need to develop anger management skills.

For those who have a tough time controlling their anger, an anger management plan might help. Think of this as your emotional control class, and try these self-help anger management tips:

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #1
Ask yourself this question: "Will the object of my anger matter ten years from now?" Chances are, you will see things from a calmer perspective.

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #2
Ask yourself: "What is the worst consequence of the object of my anger?" If someone cut in front of you at the book store check-out, you will probably find that three minutes is not such a big deal.

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #3
Imagine yourself doing the same thing. Come on, admit that you sometimes cut in front of another driver, too ... sometimes by accident. Do you get angry at yourself?

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #4
Ask yourself this question: "Did that person do this to me on purpose?" In many cases, you will see that they were just careless or in a rush, and really did not mean you any harm.

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #5
Try counting to ten before saying anything. This may not address the anger directly, but it can minimize the damage you will do while angry.

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #6
Try some "new and improved" variations of counting to ten. For instance, try counting to ten with a deep slow breathe in between each number. Deep breathing -- from your diaphragm -- helps people relax.

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #7
Or try pacing your numbers as you count. The old "one-steamboat-two-steamboat, etc." trick seems kind of lame to me. Steamboats are not the best devices to reduce your steam. How about "One-chocolate-ice-cream-two-chocolate-ice-cream", or use something else that you find either pleasant or humorous.

ANGER MANAGEMENT TIP #8
Visualize a relaxing experience. Close your eyes, and travel there in your mind. Make it your stress-free oasis.

If these tips do not help and you still feel you lack sufficient anger management skills, you might need some professional help, either in the form of a therapist specializing in anger management or a coach with a strong background in psychology.

"Mostly Harmless"

2008-07-12T06:04:00.000+10:00

"One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it’s prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some kind of a grip, whether it’s the intoxicating seas of Santraginus V, where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in. the fire storms of Frastra, where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere."

"It will even live in New York, though it’s hard to know why."

"Very little of (the subject of parallel universes) is, however, at all comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and since it is well established that all known gods came into existence a good three millionths of a second after the Universe began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week, they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is, and are therefore not available for comment on matters of deep physics at this time."

"The first thing to realize about parallel universes ... is that they are not parallel."

"It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you don’t try to realize that until a little later, after you’ve realized that everything you’ve realized up to that moment is not true."

"The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or a Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn’t actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did."

"Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the processes of evolution discovered, certain drawbacks."

"Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks as logically as it does. The easiest way to fool a completely logical robot is to feed it the same stimulus sequence over and over again so it gets locked in a loop."

"Hmmm. Well, I think we’ve sorted all that out now. If you’d like to know, I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in three dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability. After that it gets a bit complicated, and there’s all sorts of stuff going on in dimensions thirteen to twenty-two that you really wouldn’t want to know about. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-quotes

2008-07-12T05:22:00.000+10:00

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (11 March 1952 - 11 May 2001) Started as a comedy radio play on the BBC and expanded into a TV series, a series of novels, and a feature film. The story follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, the last human who hitched a ride off Earth moments before it was destroyed to make way for an interstellar bypass.

"This planet [earth] has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy"

"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..."
"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -Ford Prefect

"Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our future successes." - Ford Prefect
"[The Guide] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."
"How do you feel?" he [Ford Prefect] asked.
"Like a military academy," said Arthur, "bits of me keep on passing out."

Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.
"Oh good," said Arthur.
"We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."
"Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
[Ford Prefect:] "Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
"Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power two hundred and seventy-six thousand to against--possibly much higher. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure of what is normal anyway."
"One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide that fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was so renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid..."
He [Arthur] had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

[...] in fact the message was this: So long, and thanks for all the fish. - Final message from the Dolphins, as they escape just prior to Earth's destruction,
"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" -

Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.
Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
The answer to "the Great Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything",
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.
"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold. -

"What's up?" [asked Ford.]
"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another [theory] which states that this has already happened.
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at the idea of holding a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on.
Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon.
Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion.
"Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name."
"What is it?" asked Arthur.
"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth."
"What?"
"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!"
"The Fourth?"
"Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..."
"What?"
"There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate."
"Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, "Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"
"Count the heads," said Zaphod in a low rasp.
The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.
"You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" it squeaked.
"Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all want one."
"The Zaphod Beeblebrox?"
"No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six packs?"
"But sir, I heard you were dead."
"That's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet."

'Yet Unnamed Man': "Beeblebrox, over here!"
"No," called Zaphod. "Beeblebrox over here! Who are you?"
"A friend!" Shouted back the man. He ran toward Zaphod.
"Oh yeah?" said Zaphod. "Anyone's friend in particular, or just generally well-disposed to people?""
"If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me." - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,
"I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" - The Dish of the Day serving itself
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish
The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?" - The Ruler of the Universe
On being left in a parking lot for 500 million years: "The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into sort of a decline" - Marvin The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
Zem: "Er, five."
Marvin: "Wrong. You see?"
The mattress was much impressed by this and realised that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind. -- Life, the Universe and Everything
"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife." - Arthur, before nearly destroying the Universe.
"There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."
The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizable number of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this. The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem. This is: Change. Read it through again and you'll get it.
The sign said:
Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.
'It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.' - c. 31; Wonko the Sane telling Arthur and Fenchurch about the Asylum
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [...] says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that 'it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.'
'In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.' -
Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
It wasn't merely that their left hand didn't always know what their right hand was doing, so to speak; quite often their right hand had a pretty hazy notion as well.
The thing he realized about the windows was this: because they had been converted into openable windows after they had first been designed to be impregnable, they were, in fact, much less secure than if they had been designed as openable windows in the first place.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
"I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. As soon as I reach some kind of definite policy about what is my kind of music and my kind of restaurant and my kind of overdraft, people start blowing up my kind of planet and throwing me out of their kind of spaceships!" - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Shows, Fit the Fourth
Life, as many people have spotted, is, of course, terribly unfair. For instance, the first time the Heart of Gold ever crossed the galaxy the massive improbability field it generated caused two-hundred-and-thirty-nine thousand lightly-fried eggs to materialise in a large, wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had just died out from famine, except for one man who died of cholesterol-poisoning some weeks later. The Poghrils, always a pessimistic race, had a little riddle, the asking of which used to give them the only tiny twinges of pleasure they ever experienced. One Poghril would ask another Poghril, “Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?” To which the second Poghril would reply “I don’t know, why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?” To which the first Poghril would reply, “I don’t know either - wretched isn’t it?” (Fit the Ninth)
What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move with no hope of rescue:
Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far.
Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far (which, given your current circumstances, seems more likely):
Consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.

Self-Reliance-4

2008-07-09T05:59:00.000+10:00

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Self-Reliance-3

2008-07-09T05:57:00.000+10:00

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

Self-Reliance-2

2008-07-09T05:56:00.000+10:00

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Self-Reliance

2008-07-09T05:54:00.000+10:00

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune

2008-07-09T05:21:00.000+10:00

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

Face of Kingfisher

2008-06-01T06:31:00.001+10:00

Face in the mirror

2007-09-19T19:30:00.001+10:00

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
and the world makes you king for the day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say.

For it isn't your father or mother or wife
whose judgement upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass

You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
and think you're a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
if you can't look him straight in the eye

He's the fellow to please - never mind all the rest,
for he's with you clear to the end.
and you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
and get pats on the back as you pass.
but your final reward will be heartache and tears
if you've cheated the man in the glass.

Rilke'

2007-09-19T19:28:00.000+10:00

"What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are."

American Beauty

2007-09-19T19:26:00.000+10:00

Lester Burnham : [ narrating ] I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die.

First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time... For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And... Carolyn.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...

And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.

I am fearless

2007-09-19T19:25:00.000+10:00

There is a beautiful freedom in fearlessness. When you live each day with pain that is etched into every inch of your splintered life, there is no one and nothing that dares to touch you. You are almost... invincible, simply because you are hurting so deeply.

Yes, it means less love. In that may there be greater peace.

Godspeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD3qgx9vBCk

Friedrich von Schiller

2007-09-19T19:23:00.000+10:00

Love therefore—the most beautiful phenomenon in the soul-filled creation, the omnipotent magnet in the spiritual world, the source of devotion and of the most sublime virtue—Love is only the reflection of this single original power, an attraction of the excellent, grounded upon an instantaneous exchange of the personality, a confusion of the beings.

When I hate, so take I something from myself; when I love, so become I so much the richer, by what I love. Forgiveness is the recovery of an alienated property - hatred of man a prolonged suicide; egoism the highest poverty of a created being.

Joan Baez

2007-09-19T19:22:00.000+10:00

Don't tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams
I don't want to hear
Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other
From a lifetime of cares
Because if love means forever, expecting nothing returned
Then I hope I'll be given another whole lifetime to learn

Rilke'

2007-09-19T19:21:00.002+10:00

"...then take your fate upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking for that reward which might come from without."
-Letters to a Young Poet
"Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of grandeur not fit for us."
-Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
"Never think destiny's more than the substrate of childhood: how often you'd catch up with a lover, panting, panting, from the happy chase, into the open forever."
-The Duino Elegies: The Seventh Elegy
"..why, then, do we have to be human and, avoiding fate, long for fate?"
-The Duino Elegies: The Ninth Elegy

Gilda Radner

2007-09-19T19:21:00.001+10:00

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Life is about not knowing... having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious ambiguity."

Ogden Nash

2007-09-19T19:19:00.002+10:00

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologzie publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

Rilke'

2007-09-19T19:19:00.001+10:00

"I would like to find this strength to base my life entirely on this truth, on this infinite and simplicity and joy that is sometimes given to me."
-Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke
"For a strength,...for an inconquerable strength of heart, from which my true strength for God will only begin to develop, that strength must be firmly tied to what is human, otherwise it will break in those heights where no one can help it any longer, and wither away in the air."
-Rilke and Benvenuta: an Intimate Correspondence
"...for sometime now I have believed that it is our own force, all our own force that is still too great for us. It is true that we do not know it; but is it not just that which is most our own of which we know the least?"
-Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

James Dean..and all those who Departed young

2007-09-19T18:51:00.000+10:00

Childhood living
Is easy to do
The things that you wanted
Well I bought them for you

Graceless lady
You know who I am
You know I can't let you
Just slide through my hands

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer
A dull aching pain
And now you've decided
To show me the same

No sweeping exits
Or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter
Or treat you unkind

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I know I've dreamt you
A sin and a lie
And I have my freedom
But I don't have much time

Fate has been suffered
And tears must be cried
So let's do some living
After we die

Childhood living
Is easy to do
The things that you wanted
Well I bought them for you

Graceless lady
You know who I am
You know I can't let you
Just slide through my hands

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer
A dull aching pain
And now you've decided
To show me the same

No sweeping exits
Or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter
Or treat you unkind

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I know I've dreamt you
A sin and a lie
And I have my freedom
But I don't have much time

Fate has been suffered
And tears must be cried
So let's do some living
After we die

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3AHNLN8nEM