Venial Sin

I met someone for coffee this evening, building on the whole "need to make more gay friends and/or expand my queer social circle" premise that seems to be taking over my life slowly but steadily.  It was…interesting.  So far, there's been a pretty strong common theme running through the people I've been making efforts to meet–without (much) exception, they've tended to be at least a few years younger than me, they're all apparently in relationships (most not even on their [...]

Why on earth do people INSIST on treating Paulo bloody Coelho as some sort of savant or auteur, when the truth is that the man's books peddle a slightly nauseating blend of mystic twaddle with philosophically retarded prose and sentences that in the effort to come across as sage, rely on sheer ineffability for any limited impact that they have? This isn't QUITE as bad as those people who tell me that Dan Brown is "serious literature", but it's a [...]

I just missed the chance to say goodbye to the two most important people in my life, one of whom may not be coming back, because the world is composed of assholes on a gargantuan scale, and I swear that if I don't see that person and something goes wrong for her and she dies, I will personally dedicate myself to making those sons-of-bitches who fucked it all up suffer for a very long time. The house is empty, and [...]

Perusing The Bad Writing Contest, circa 1998, this particular gem of a sentence reminded me of exactly what it was that I found so strangely thrilling, yet terrifying, about academia.  Courtesy of D.G. Leahy, from the book Foundation: Matter the Body Itself, comes what the late lamented Steve Irwin would probably describe with the oh-so-apt phrase, "crikey, what a beauty!":  "Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is [...]

I think that this site is perhaps one of the most ethically and fundamentally disturbing pieces of "research" and "work" that I have ever had the misfortune to come across.  I have an overwhelming desire to add myself to the debate, but it's painfully apparent from the "discussions" and "analyses" that doing so would be a waste of time on par with trying to convince cats that human beings exist for reasons other than their use as can-openers.  "Principled, compassionate [...]

Since I finally got my paycheque from my (now former) job, I went a little mental last week and raided one of the few tolerable bookstores in Karachi.  I picked up a number of books, including Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, Julian Barnes' Arthur & George, Cornelia Funke's Inkspell, and Jonathan Stroud's entire Bartimaeus Trilogy (The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, and Ptolemy's Gate).  I've already read Anansi Boys, and was plowing through Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, but [...]

Jean-Paul Gaultier or Alexander McQueen? The ex-boyfriend of the Guy, or an already-partnered 19-year-old MIT student in another city who’s taking a semester off to spend time with his boyfriend? An ad agency owned by a friend, or a massive Big Oil multinational corporation? There are just way too many questions.