..and i read this last night, hilarious! “UnValentine”s day” : What we really need is a festival to celebrate love”s many torments..
“This week, millions of people across the country will celebrate the crippling delusion known as “love” by sending flowers, booking restaurants and placing stomach-churning small ads in newspapers. Valentine”s Day - the only national occasion dedicated to mental illness - is a stressful ordeal at the best of times.”
the comments ( as is generally the case on comment is free ) are just as amusing..
funny quirky things these bots. you may have seen some rather odd comments on this blog and wondered why i’ve been letting a few of these autogenerated comments through. ah well i don’t let most of the diamond and casino type nonsense through - but occasionally, there are some amusing, expressive ones - and i thought - why not?
that’s right children - you all heard me. do what you like, i know you all are anyway. i’m not sitting here to tell you how things ought to be . see thats the funny thing - no matter how much you say that - people insist on imagining that you are telling them to do something. don’t stick me on that platform/pedestal please…
remember i have spent more glorious hours asleep than you lot would approve of- so in most of your definitions’ im a complete slacker..!! ha ha
and loving it! 
p.s. from now on i shall restrict my idling discussions/comments and reserve them for those blessed individuals who can understand: the potheads.
p.p.s. at least we all know this is a topic close to people’s hearts. look at all the other wonderful edifying posts i make about things like WSFII and the world and does anyone comment on that? no.
p.p.p.s we also know strange things about indian capitalists. or some of them anyway. perhaps we ought to have a forum where we invite a selection and offer them a roundtable. the ones that target Guardian-reading lefties would probably accept.
horror of horrors - check out this entry in the guardian business insight blog: “working time to thrive“
discussion on how working days will lengthen, bosses’ assumptions re: contacting us during our ‘down time’ will spiral out of control even more than currently etc.
why should people expect us to respond to emails anywhere/everywhere just cos of blackberries? ( one of the things that comes up in this discussion) see that’s the annoying aspect of social jumping on the technology bandwagon- like with cellphones - suddenly everyone was like - why didn’t you answer your phone??? !! everyone expecting you to be constantly there to minister to their demands.
yeah thats pretty fucking difficult. and given the fact that society is so damn eager to brainwash us all its no bloody wonder.
first of all lets take a look at this situation we find ourselves in. boxed in by the nation-state. and to a lot of people that is the normal unit of organization - so they think a lot of people think -okay- whatever i want to do or not do - they sort of invest a certain amount of expectation in their nation-state - i.e. they get tied up with it. now you tend to see this sort of thing happening more in certain countries..you can sort of see why as well. ok the USA takes itself as a nation-state very seriously - and as a result its quite difficult for its citizens and denizens to not be influenced by that rhetoric of national greatness and in terms of success and progress measured nationally.
india is another one ( don’t worry - there are a lot others ..you aren’t alone ;-)) - an up- and- coming potentially incredibly powerful in conventional international relations paradigm. so its not surprising when you meet Indians ( esp. the nri types..) that often any talk of ideas or progress tends to be very much bound up with the nation - and a nationalistic mindset which may soon parallel that of the US.
and you may say - so whats wrong with that. nothing necessarily - except you can see that situation possibly resulting in just a boring and unpleasant re-run of mistakes already made - yeah a constant going back to square one.
we need a paradigm shift. being obsessed with aspirations of national greatness is not the point. the point isnt shall we opt out of UN and other structures ( which may not be working) aimed at some sort of dialogue and collaboration. the point is again - i repeat - always collaboration - not necessarily within the box - i.e. unit of nation-state..but at any level.. but certainly not competition - within or without the box.
there you go. sorry to have to repeat this all but if you look and listen carefully to most inane messages - they are constantly repeated. if i want people to start thinking about the boxes we inhabit and need to come out of, then i better start repeating too.
as a sidenote to the comment below - why is everyone so obsessed with competition and competitiveness? I mean really - we are so weighed down with the framework of go-go-go, get-it! and competition appears to be inherent in that. so many people seem to think that if we don’t encourage competitive behaviour, people would be ‘lazy’.
so as a result we have a lot of unhappy people - who are stressed about their grades, whether they can go faster at the gym than other people, whether they are happier than other people, whether they have better blogs..blah blah the list goes on.
you can opt in or opt out. or at least choose to reduce the no. of things you worry about in this way.
i say to the competitive types: leave me alone, i ain’t playing your game.
insolent: audacious, unrestrained by convention or propriety.
now im interested in writings/thought that display this quality. i must say i myself have been referred to in the past as insolent ; why i’ve been kicked off sites for allegedly ‘demonstrating insolence’ -now i considered this a compliment; and it suits my purpose - as i find it exposes fascist tendencies in people.
always good to watch out for the fascistas amongst us.
a quote from michel houellebecq:
“It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it’s that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable.â€Â
so there appears to have been a nursery rhyme competition - run by the kids channel Nickelodeon Junior- and guess who’s the star ( or villain!) of the winning entry -
don’t hold your breath: this is how the rhyme goes:
Baker Tony’s Pizza
Baker Tony baked a pizza
very round and thin
He said he added olives
but he never put them in
The stuff that he had grated
and sprinkled on to please
was only yellow sawdust
although he called it cheese
The rich tomato topping
was nothing more than dye
so Baker Tony’s pizza
made all the children cry
By Angela Martin
ooh id like to see him try and escape posterity with this one- aint gonna happen now..
—–
{ i did think the runner-up was quite catchy as well: check this one out:} /
Computer Virus - by Miriam Collins
“My computer caught a virus
So I tucked it up in bed
and I gave it lots of medicine
but now my PC’s dead!”
the Guardian is out in the berliner format now, like Le Monde. for those in the world who arent up in newspaper sizes ( my gawd..) take a look at this wonderful wikipedia article. * yes perhaps i should rename this blog to something like Useless Trivia *
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