meta-ing it up.

Little does this thoughtless know,
Of astral beings and ‘bysmal woe;
Verily it does meta- dim,
Every thing takes place but for him.

quote me if you can

remember, remember the 5th of november,
resounding forever for forsaken bliss;
take tit for tat, make fist and take gander,
nothing is free, quid pro quo, clarice.

a man should have two wives just to be efficient,
not rich but a man with money - that's quite different!
you just have to love your mother, dear hemming,
a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!

i will take it though i do not know of the way,
and in darkness bound they are now all gone astray;
yet surely we're too smart for own good to be true,
dear god, grant me that I love those who love you.

not rich - a poor man with money, but no peace,
nothing is free, quid pro quo, clarice;
i will take it though i know not the way of the living,
a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!

so do away with hope and discard originality, lay low from your nightmares and cower under covers,
on ne sait jamais! le langage est source de malentendus, and believe that all of us are equal but some are more equal than others.

you jelly?

some people like birds as pets. others like dogs or cats. some unique individuals will like the odd frog or snake or robot chicken. but for me, i don't think these are animals i would be comfortable taking care of. i mean, cats are awesome, for example. don't get me wrong. they're cute and cuddly (unless you're a sphynx cat. eww), but i'm a very low maintenance kind of person. i'd rather not have the responsibility or the obligation of taking care of these animals. not that they're hard to take care of, i guess. i'm sure a lot of people think it's a fairly easy task. but the poop! the voms! the hairballs and other unsightly bodily excetions! do not want.

so, a long time ago, i made up my mind that if i ever got a pet, it would be a jellyfish. on a side note, damn you will smith in 7 pounds for taking this away from me for a while. however, not any old jellyfish is sufficient, i would think. though most are mystical and hypnotising in the way they glide through the water (and that is sufficient to keep me intrigued), there's a kind-of wish list i have:

bloodbelly comb jellyfish

green fluorescent protein. we've talked about it here. super. epic. awesomeness. i guess i would ideally like a tank of multiple species of bioluminescent jellies.


uv jellies
i couldn't find an image of multiple species in a single tank (especially uv ones) but the concept is slightly different from bioluminescent jellies (which emit their own light). uv jellies still use GFP but require an external light source (UV light) to induce the green - purple spectrum of emissions. to compensate you for the lack of a visual cue, here have a video of fake pretty jellies. it's not safe to go alone.


(edit: i found a nice clip, albeit it being misnamed)


deadly jellyfish
ok, i realise the deadliest jellyfish are a group of box jellies (apparently chironex fleckeri, carukia barnesi and malo kingi, but i just cited wikipedia for this). my fascination lies with the portuguese man o' war. there's something about the... foatiness? that just gets me. enough talk, more videos!





how beautiful are those!

extra virgin o-love oil

i have lived a life ripe with western, eastern and middle-eastern literature, and for that i am blessed. however, though i have met the literature motif many times, i had not yet placed a name upon it till today - virgin love. it basically encompasses love between individuals (and this is emphasised to differentiate it from love with divinity) where there is no marriage or love-making. i will even extend it to include platonicism, as that is what my middle-eastern background (what little i have of it!) will dictate. and we do away with how practice seldom reflects theory, but forgive this little, hopeless-romantic his small corner of literary poland.

my friend introduced me to layla and majnun, specifically by the poet jalaluddin ar-rumi. i must confess that though i have heard of him before, i had never really appreciated his work. maybe it has something to do with how fermina of the red roses was such a fan of rumi, and how poetic it is that i should find inspiration in his work now that she has passed into the hands of another. and hopefully, i will be better able to appreciate the love for godliness, rather than that between humans, now that i have felt the bitter taste of rejection (also overlapping the mystical 'friend zone', though this serves more humorous value than anything).

i think i shall try reading more rumi in my free time, but for now, there are far more important things to do than dwell on virgin love in poetry. such as falling victim to it in real life. ah, life, how well you mimic art. ah, art, how well you mimic emotion. ah, emotion, how well you mimic yourself.

that is just a roundabout way of saying how ironic my situation is (as is everyone elses, but in different aspects). i wish, though, that for all this confusion, maybe it would be appropriate that my writing some day be synonymous with hopeless romanticism. or virgin love. or at least, unrequited love. something to the extent. as long as it deals with lots of irony and humorously so.

no drama

who knew that guys have just as much drama as girls? as i keep saying, though, if you want to see the worst in people, you will; if you want to see the best you will. it's all about the trinity of: 1) you, 2) 'the other guy' and 3) environment. this is a dogma i have so unashamedly pinched from microbiology (where the outcome of infections depend on 1) the infectious disease, 2) the host and 3) the environment).

in any case, all we need, male or female, to lead drama-free lives is to go out with that perception. no drama.

selling religion (and other stuff)

some days ago, my friend was telling me that religion is a business plan. it markets greed and pits power struggles against self-righteousness. but, like any business plan, you can't market a product without proper advertising. so you bundle up this (innate) human greed and sell it with promises - and what better promises to hand out than false ones. false here, because as my friend says religious leaders promise things which aren't tangible. for example, a religious figure may promise eternal bliss (in the afterlife) in exchange for all your worldly possessions. according to his argument, i, as a greedy human, fall for this because i want something more than i already have (eternal bliss). one cannot test the promise because it involves that leap of faith (of being dead and gone) so the promise is a false pretence, easily backed by a statement such as 'mr. x went to heaven because he gave me all his gold, mr. y went to hell because he was a miser', a statement nobody can empirically prove. add in some flamboyant marketing skills and possibly cult-mentality. spice up the mix with stuff a person can relate to (like spirit of the corn marketing to the farmers or blessing of the water to a tribe of fishermen), and god is a construct. religion is a facade and prophets are... well, prophets are the greediest of us all, and apparently the best marketing strategists.



i, for one, find dismal this whole portrayal. however, i do consider it to an extent. one must be slightly empirical, and with my denial of these statements (be they with bases or not), makes me a stronger 'believer'. because, obviously, that gives me a bigger palace of diamonds when i pass over to the other side.

p/s: i know i always bitsh about love here. i'm so sorry. it's just that, you live. you fall in love. and sometimes, you just don't climb out again. at least not for a long time. i know this, as an observer from the outside. but when you're up there centre-stage, there's not much you can do about it. except... break down and cry? no. pine and pray and hope for miracles? no. sigh and deject yourself, forsaking much of what you believe in? no. i don't really know... maybe, yes.

yours, mine, eh.

some undertakings are harder than others. but none are as hard as yours.

to this i am blind but plainly see, that the world does not revolve around me; neither does it around you, nor he, nor she, nor them. specs of dust carry the same weight that we do.

to that, i am deaf because i turn such ear, but that is not because i do not hear the rushing of wind as an eternity passes by every time i realise that to hear, one must live in absolute silence.

and to fare further away from the senses, one has to live free - free of emotion, free of fright, free of all inhibitions that make one reluctant and unable to act. and this is such a hard undertaking.

some undertakings are harder than others. but none are as hard as yours.

via experience

languages are one of those things that you can pick up easily but can only master through constant and prolonged use. just like how a native speaker of a language can differentiate between regional accents, so can he tell when a non-native (non-fluent) speaker is butchering the language. much like i do. much like illegal immigrants do. much like pretentious posers in cowboy boots and overly-warm sweatshirts. ahem, i digress.

languages are also one of those things that, with failure to continually exercise, it falls into decrepit decay and slowly ebbs away, leaving one with fumbled gestures and stuttered words. it's like a literary muscle which suffers from the withdrawal effects of a proverbial steroid, leaving us hapless in the absence of injections of farfetched words and uncommonly-used phrases.

so how, pray tell - how does one improve on a language by shortcuts and improvised lies? by turning on the subtitles to movies when one should be listening for nuances in speech? by not looking up alien words or culturally placing exotic phrases? by dismissing education for ignorance?

i don't pretend to know the answers, being a speaker of foreign languages. i don't pretend to know how one would attempt to answer these questions, being a writer of foreign tongues. all i do pretend to do, is write. and speak. but not so much that i'm a pretentious poser in cowboy boots and overly-warm sweatshirts.