Books and other things

As I re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I wonder how I managed to forget so many lovely parts of the book – parts that are so relatable. Lovely.
In other things, I wonder how all that steam I let off about reservations has left out one really important thing – the fact that [...]

Trials of a law teachers life*

With 2-1/2 hours of invigilation
Providing the inspiration,
Today’s a day for versification
That’ll boggle your imagination.
Watching an examination
Leads to infinite rumination
On inane things like pagination
And a problem on depreciation.
In the throes of desperation
To avoid (of mind) putrefaction
One searches for resusication
Something that merits exclamation!
In one room, perspiration
In the other, precipitation
The tortuousness of anticipation
The inevitability of pontification…
An attempt at [...]

Canned laughter and other such inanities

I’ve always wondered about canned laughter. A sitcom is either funny or it isn’t, right? When it is, I don’t need canned laughter to tell me when to laugh. In fact, it sometimes obscures the next gag, so it’s bad. When the darn thing is not funny, adding canned laughter to it just makes it [...]

My first batch…

… of cookies. It was years ago. They were pinwheels – you know, the concentric circles of chocolate and vanilla that crumble into yumminess in your mouth? With the help of a dog-eared cookbook, running out every few minutes to buy ingredients that we didn’t have, trying really hard to roll the dough out evenly [...]

Dolls

There’s one on the table in front of me here – buttabomma. It’s a clay doll, I think it’s peculiar to AP – it’s usually a girl in a langa voni, with her hands held up in a dance pose. The skirt, the torso and the head are three separate pieces, and they’re all balanced [...]

And even punctuation!!

The thought process set off by my last post led me to re-read Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The book now has its own website, did you know? And a game. Which is quite silly, but anyway.
Lynne Truss makes a point, though, that punctuation is, to a large extent, about personal style. Some people might think [...]

Language, language!

It’s been a week of alarmed buildings and journals under chairs.
On Friday I noticed a sign at a mall in the city: “Warning! This building is alarmed!” Well, if the building was in danger of picking up its skirts and running, or even beginning to wail loudly, I suppose people planning to enter it should [...]