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You know what?

Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work… Fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I’ll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest.

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.
Frank: You know Marcel Proust?
Dwayne: He’s the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he’s also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh… he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, ’cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn’t learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you’re 18… Ah, think of the suffering you’re gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don’t get better suffering than that.

Olive: Grandpa, am I pretty?
Grandpa: You are the most beautiful girl in the world.
Olive: You’re just saying that.
Grandpa: No! I’m madly in love with you and it’s not because of your brains or your personality.

Sarcasm is the refuge of losers.

Inside each and everyone of you, deep inside the core of your being is a winner waiting to be awakened and unleashed upon the world.

Losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.

- Little Miss Sunshine

• Expected the movie to be funny/sweet for some unknown reason.
• Kept waiting for some twist that could make it look like all good. But it keeps going, like real life, and all characters meet failures. That is at the end did I realize, this movie is really about majority normal life- where no miracles seem to happen, where no dreams get fulfilled, where failure is to be accepted.
• ‘Be there till the end’[& finally you loose though], did sound like a distant lesson to be taken away.
• Loved the vehicle and its tantrums! It felt like it too was a character of the movie (a failure too!)

Sometimes a Good Morning quote ignites a conversation. A recent one ignited two :

ONE::
Rk:

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war. Marcus T Cicero

Adiga:

should it be the otherway round? prefer righteous war to unfair peace? I heard it that way.

Rk:

Many replied like that … this is what Marcus said..may be righteous war was what Lord Krishna said.

Adiga:

No, I heard some foreign author said it.

Rk:

If internet is the right source, I find the quotes I sent only ..and not the other way round quote….

Adiga:

Ya,,,,,file a review to that site and question its correctness.

P.S. Marcus Cicero made a failed attempt to establish peace in Rome. So if he is frustrated because of this, then what internet told is wrong. If he still believed his fundamentals despite his failure then its right.

Rk:

It is there in ALL the sites…and if you need to prove them wrong, you should have source & proof to the correct quote … burden of proof lies on you

oh thanks for the info…

Adiga:

 Burden lies with Marcus himself because the world doesn’t know whether he is frustrated or not…Lets close the debate.

Rk:

Ok., lets close the debate
It is unfair to close debate..but it is peaceful

TWO (More food for thought) ::

Rk:
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war. Marcus T Cicero

SY:
I tend to disagree with Marcus’s statement!!

I would prefer to have a “just WAR”, instead of anything unfair.

Rk:
Well, I was just thinking under which category does “marriage” fall.

Joke apart, there are very few quotes I send which I personally do not agree with but just want to display the thought a great person might have had. I can say, this was NOT one of them.
For me, life & peace is more important than war - because war is inherently unfair in more ways than one.

May be ek discussion hojaye

SY:
My views
Regarding Good Morning quote:

Assume, I have unfairly gained advantage (escaped from being hit) just because some body chose to keep quiet rather than hit me. I would feel so uncomfortable, that I will not be able to continue my daily activities peacefully. I will lose my peace of mind for the unfair peace that I gained.

Assume, I have unfairly lost advantage just because I chose to keep quiet rather than hit some one else, OR some body forced me to keep quiet. I might repent later on and start developing hatred against that someone. Again I will lose my peace of mind for the unfair peace that I gained*.

*All words used should be taken at face value.

Rk:

First of all, being hit is no way equivalent to a war. War is when those who are not involved are also hit, killed. Possibly you are trivialising war.

In first scenario, it shows that you are a good human being. In which case there was no way you were to be get hit in the first place which will rebut the first sentence. Secondly, even for a moment we consider the first statement to be right, the result is “you lost your peace of mind”, which is FAR better than war or he killing you/hitting you One more thing, the peace gives you chance again and in case of war, it is over. Hitting will instantly result in you hitting you (because that is according to you  - rightful war). Something on the lines of eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

In the second scenario, if you are developing hatred that is only because you do not believe in the qoute. If you agree with the quote there is no confusion, it is unfair but it is peace. So you will not develop hatred. On the other hand, the effect is only “repent later”, but in war, there is no end until one of them is hurt. So since it is NOT only one hit you will return and he keeps quiet (bcoz he might also believe in war - righteous or not )  , and hence it is not known who is going to give a final blow. So it might happen that there is no “later” for even repenting.

Thats how I see it. I hope I am making at least some sense …

However, unfairness is not to be tolerated. (But since war is also unfair, war is not the solution, I think). Unfairness is not to be tolerated - which is why we had Freedom Struggle, which is why Nelson Mandela fought against racism, which is why feminists are fighting, which is why …etc.

If I made some sense, we can consider the debate closed. If I have not made any sense, probably you are right and hence the debate is closed - in this case, it is unfair to close the debate, but it is peaceful

People think publishing is a business, but it’s a casino.

[via India Uncut]

“A blog isn’t a publication. It’s a person.”

[via Emergic]

And my favorite :

Blogging too is an act of love - the heart posted awaiting comment.- Falstaff, here

Sheesh….once again my multiple plans to watch movie was flopped due to multiple reasons (lazyness being one!)…wanted to put a temporary end of watching on big screen with this movie, that is also not happening!

And then..it is banned in Tamil Nadu…

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it’s subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive. - Robert Heinlein

When you’re young you want to change the world. When you’re older you just want to understand it. - Unknown

Is it ? I tried understanding all while and have energy to continue that. Understanding the world -its people, thier behaviour, relations, its very existence, the science behind it, the logic behind it ..Most of the time the understanding fails and it poses more complex questions. There I can accept either of two solutions - one to believe that there is an answer to everything and “one” source knows it and to surrender to that source. Other being comfortable to realise that there need not be an answer, or that there can be an answer but at this certain point of time I do not have any way of knowing it. Understanding it. I can either continue trying to understand next oppurtunity I get or close it once for all by choosing the first path. I think I can be comfortable in the second choice.

But what I guess is important either way is to realise that “we do not yet know it completely”.

But while all this pondering has been happening and fights going on, I never thought of changing the world ..if any, that feeling(only mildly) is surfacing now. I realised early on that it is too vast and always tried to find a place for myself inside it. Yes there are irregularities, things that are not right, things that can go wrong. Yes, but I somehow remain blind to them (is it fear or is it a failure I do not know) and concentrate at what is right, at what is good, at what makes this such a lovely space inspite of those dark spots.

But I realise that if everyone resorted to safe corners, today it would not have been as good a place. Fighters (freedom or any other fighter for a social/general cause), believed they could bring about a change and worked towards it. Some succeeded and hence today it is much cleaner.

Yet, is not as clean as it is ought to be and that requires those who behave opposite to what the quote says.

First try to understand and then try to change.

I had come across the following sometime ago and thought of waiting for a better occasion to post it. But I realise, now, that any occassion is better than other.

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. ~ Gilda Radner

I have been sending Good Morning! mails everyday morning containing one quote. It all started when someone else used to send me mail with a quotation. I just used to forward the same to other pals of mine. But over the time, I started sending them myself.

Initially I toggled between images and text but certain servers block/remove images and then a decision was made to send only the text.
Apart from very simple decisions like “one quote”, “everyday that I come to office”, over the time certain other decisions had to be made. Like, no anonymous quotations. Send only to office address (many do not check non-office address regularly). Another simple rule I follow is to read, understand, (unless in rare cases, agree to it) and then send them. Many times, friends mailed me back asking for the meaning, understanding it beforehand made it lot easier. Over time I have refined the address list too, adding some and deleting some addresses. I fixed the format also - Comic Sans font 10 size.

I have been sending these mails for close to 2 years now. From the day of inception, I guess I have sent the mail each day I have come to office (except during the change and not on holidays/weekends even if I come to office). So it has sort of become my attendance to my pals! The day there is no mail, they can presume I have not come to office.

There have been many queries of sources of the quotes. I could not point to one particular source (and always told the golden egg story !!) - as I used to pick from someone’s signatures, or from some forward mails. Other times it used to be from the books I read. Initially it used to be from other GM mails (as I told above), but it used to get repeated or it made no sense to me or it was irregular. For a short period I had subscribed to a quotation mail group which was quite irregular and then it finally stopped. The occassional forwards contain quotes which I do not forward..but pick each one to be sent everyday!
Then I chanced upon a book and then some sites (via Google), but not one source has been consistently used for considerable time. Because those are always grouped in terms of their quoters(Einstein) or in terms of their nature(success,love etc).

My personal favorite quoters are Einstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The thing about these people that I like is that their quotes are consistently good.

Reading the quote has been very enriching experience for me. Quoting someone always enriches,leverages the talk, conversation or writing. Some quotes are very straight forward and needs no explanation or justification while others require a minute of thought.
But even the obvious ones help in resurrecting the thought and sometimes reminds of the forgotten obvious.

I was thinking of this routine for sometime. I get some thoughts, I make some explanations, analogies or something when I read a quote. Since my format of GM has been one quote, I had no place to put it and it fits perfectly to be a post here! It will not be regular but rarely I will just make a post! (Will be under category “Quote”). (On a lighter note, inspired by these quoters I also started quoting under myOwnQuote category so that when I become quotable people will have ready reference!)

My GM mail has achieved what my personal mailing could not achieve wrt few people - strike a conversation. Make them reply. (Indirectly too- unrelated to the quote- the gm mail has served the starting point of a conversation..it is like reminding people that I am still around seeking attention and trying to break silence)

I have derived great happiness over the GM sending exercise. It might be a very small effort but I get delighted when someone complains I did not send it on time. When someone says, that quote made his/her day. When someone says “Thanks, that was great!”

This has happened over and over again. And everytime I feel humbled because I realise I do not deserve the thanks and that I am just a link between them and the great thoughts already left for us.

An earlier post related to quotations