Lobbyists and their Johns

If ever a quote qualified for quote of the day or quote of the month, this is it.

Alex Koppelman writes about an exchange between a report and New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson (according to New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer blog.

"Just so we don't have to go through this whole resignation thing again," one ballsy reporter asked, "have you ever patronized a prostitute?" Paterson thought for a minute. "Only the lobbyists," he said.

Music from Georgia

Interesting video of a song from the 1970s from the nation of Georgia

Found it via a Metafilter post that links to:

Streaming audio of traditional music from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. This is some of the strangest, most haunting and blissed-out singing you can hear on this planet.

More at the Mefi post

Choices vs. Destiny

Paul Auster, in an online Q&A chat at the WaPo in 2003:

I don't believe in the idea of fate. I don't believe that our destinies are mapped out in advance. We create our lives every day, and they're constantly shifting, and each one of us, I think, has the potential to live many, many different lives. And circumstances, coincidence, accidents and choice and desire and will all play their part in the paths we take. But I don't believe that these paths are preordained. Life would be terrible if we thought that were true.

Indeed! It is the choices we make that ordain what paths our lives take. To deem something as fate or destiny takes away the power of choice and free will.

Pop the question

Idea: She would pop the balloon as he popped the question.

Bad idea: A $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon.

Note to all the guys thinking of popping the question .... helium is lighter than air. Helium rises.

Carnal Book Love

In an interesting post about the love for books and more particularly, the love of reading books, Amit Varma writes (read the entire post - I am merely excerpting couple lines here and the essence of his posit may not come out correctly taken out of context like this):

The greatest happiness, even greater than sex, is reading a good book.
...
...one does not need to expend energy seducing a book, for it is always compliant and often, if the writer is skillful enough, enthusiastic.
...
Now I am carnal, happily writing notes in the margins of books, leaving them facedown, reading them while eating and allowing my gravy-stained fingers to turn the pages, as if to leave a mark that says You are part of me now, and here, I am part of you as well.

Beautiful! Well said.

On to writing next: I just began reading the book, The Art of Hunger, which compiles essays, prefaces, and interviews by Paul Auster, who is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. In the past year, I read two of his books -- Travels in the Scriptorium and a graphic novel, City of Glass which is based on Auster's book of the same name & part of the The New York Trilogy -- and was taken in by his writing style and imagination. Auster is a prolific writer - one of those few who writes a lot but not at the risk of a weaker quality - and there is so much more of his writing that I want to carnally devour. :)

More from his book, The Art of Hunger, as I consume it in the next couple weeks.. but here is a quote from the book that I loved.

"Writing is no longer an act of free will for me, it's a matter of survival."

Coming to think about it, I could perhaps say the same about reading. I do not think I could live my life without reading ever again. Due to things going on in my life, it has been difficult to focus and read much in the last 6+ weeks, let alone write or blog, but I am glad to find myself craving today for some real good writing. Carnal love, as Amit suggests in recommending a book of essays by Anne Fadiman, can very enjoyable...and it is a carnal love for reading that consumes me today. :)
“Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader” is a beautiful book: if you love books, or are “bibliolatrous” like the Fadimans (what a charming word!), you will love every essay in it. I hope that love is carnal.

P.S. And here's something similar about writing that talks about the shapeliness, the sensuality, and the implied sexiness of putting a sentence together.

What he appreciated was the shapeliness of thought, the shapeliness of structure. He implied that there was a sensuality to the structure of the sentences and the structure of the thought. If all the sensuality is contained in the shapeliness of the grammar or the structure of the sentence then that structure has to be exactly right. The sentence has to be just right and the thought has to be just right because if it isn’t, well, it’s not as shapely.

The above excerpt is from the very end of an interview with the author Lydia Davis. I had never heard about Davis till today but read that she used to be Paul Auster's wife in the 70s and is also a writer. Being a fan of Auster's writing, I figured I'd google and check out what kind of writing Davis is known for and that lled me to the above and another interview and also couple reviews of her work.

Death be not proud!

In loving memory....

Dr. D. N. Naik (June 1941 - February 2008)

... of a loving husband and an amazing dad. If I were even 10% as good a man as he was, I would be considered a really good man.

Terribly missing my dad and grappling with endless grief, shock, emptiness, and various other associated feelings. So, it is time for a time-out from blogging for a few months. I'll be back though - likely in June.

Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life;

......

So runs my dream, but what am I?

An infant crying in the night

An infant crying for the light

And with no language but a cry.

- from In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The title is of course, from John Donne's famous poem with the same title.

A longer break

I am back from my hiatus but I am not going to be back in action. I am not sure if I will be blogging for the next few months. Rukawat ke liye khed hai. Other priorities in life have to take precedence. I'll try to be back to regular blogging by May/June...though I may blog intermittently between now and April.