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Dec 192010
 
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There is no doubt that corruption at all levels has become a disease spreading throughout our society.
- Sonia Gandhi, Leader of India’s Congress party, quoted in the New York Times piece Indian Party’s Leader Stands by Singh, December 20, 2010

Ha ha ha ha.

Folks, we haven’t stopped laughing.

Hey Sonia, if you’re so serious about the cancer of corruption eating into the body politic of India shouldn’t you ask your government to get to the root of the Bofors Guns Scandal.

Hmmm, cat got your tongue, Sonia?

Oh well, if we were Mrs. Terminator a.k.a. Maria Shriver you’d have opened up, right na?

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Human venality is something I always expect and forgive.

- Playwright Tennessee Williams on famed Hollywood director Elia Kazan’s decision to testify and disclose names of Communist party members in the movie/theater community before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Source – The New Yorker, December 13, 2010 P.90

Since most our readers are unschooled philistines who can’t think beyond Rajinikanth’s 60th birthday or Akshay Kumar’s forthcoming film Teese Maar Khan, some education is in order.

The Legend
Even among the great Hollywood directors, Elia Kazan stands tall.

Besides masterpieces like On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, et al to his credit, Kazan was also the first director to introduce such names as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Warren Beatty and Lee Remick to the screen.

As an obiter dictum, may we add that On the Waterfront featuring Marlon Brando is our all-time favorite film.

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Dec 122010
 
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In the East none but Europeans and native princes seem well fed.

- Irish writer Maud Power in Wayside Story (Maud’s 1905 travelogue based on her travels in India. Published by Downey and Co in 1907), P.56

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Nov 162010
 
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A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Source: Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving

Yes, yes, we know, we know all ye dickheads with your luscious lips wrapped around the dicks of Rajinikanth and the Bollywood Khans have no use for interesting quotes or fine short stories. What the hell, this is our bastion and we’ll scribble what we please and if it doesn’t please y’all you can shove it up your you-know-what.

Who amongst you lettered ones hasn’t enjoyed reading the fine tale Rip Van Winkle in your school days.

The story of the lazy man who dozed off for 20-years and woke up thinking he’d just slept overnight casts a spell over young minds and is one for the ages.

Rip, the man who “was ready to attend anybody’s business but his own” and with “an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor” was a popular fella in his village in the Kaatskill (as it was then spelled) mountains.

After all, here was a man who would “never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil.”

The man who “would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound” is our kind of man even if he be the kind to perennially rouse the wrath of his termagant spouse!

We’d be lying if we said we remembered the author of this fine story before today.

Tis’ only after we reread the story this evening, did we realize that the author of this fabled tale is an American writer Washington Irving (1783-1859).

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Nov 092010
 
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Sometimes I think my purpose on earth is to put my penis in the vaginas of as many women as I can.  The idea of having sex with the same person for the rest of my life feels like death to me.
- Jonathan Franzen’s character Richard Katz in the brilliant, must-read, captivating novel Freedom, P.142

What say you schmucks?

Bet y’all chutiyas feel the same too? ;)

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Oct 302010
 
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Words can be fatal in China. Zhang Zhixin, a young Chinese woman, was executed in 1975 for “opposing the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao, opposing Mao Zedong thought, opposing the revolutionary proletarian line and piling offense upon offense.” To ensure that Zhang could not cry out at her execution, her vocal cords were cut.

Jonathan Mirsky in a short essay on Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo in A Hero of our Time in The New York Review of Books P.7, November 11, 2010

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Societies have the criminals they deserve.

- French criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne
Source: New York Times Book Review, October 24, 2010 p.21

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A happy lover is almost as tedious as an unhappy one.
- Prosper Mérimée in The Etruscan Vase

Prosper Mérimée was a 19th century French writer known for his short stories and novellas.

The character of Saint-Clair, the tragic hero of The Etruscan Vase, is said to bear a strong resemblance to Mérimée’s.

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Sep 212010
 
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But “the market”—like “dialectical materialism”—is just an abstraction: at once ultra-rational (its argument trumps all) and the acme of unreason (it is not open to question). It has its true believers—mediocre thinkers by contrast with the founding fathers, but influential withal; its fellow travelers—who may privately doubt the claims of the dogma but see no alternative to preaching it; and its victims, many of whom in the US especially have dutifully swallowed their pill and proudly proclaim the virtues of a doctrine whose benefits they will never see.

- The late Tony Judt in Captive Minds

Source: New York Review of Books

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Dabangg Box Office – Fails to Sizzle at U.S. BO

Too much hype has been created around the 26/11 attacks because elite people were targetted. Attacks have happened in trains and small towns too, but no one talked about it so much…..Everybody knows that the Pakistani government was not behind it and it was a terrorist attack. Our security had failed.
- Bollywood star Salman Khan in an interview with Pakistan News Channel

Related Stories:
ISI Involved in Mumbai Terror Attack – Reports
Terrorists Strike Mumbai Again; 195 Killed; 327 Injured
Bhaiya, Aaramse Maar Meri Gaand

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