#you may guess whom ist whom

[scochetheboat]

Elemental Tbh creatures to express the rangeTM

[shipcestuous]

Sin(s) by F. Sionil Jose (submission)

(Hello again! I’m glad that you–and hopefully some others–appreciated my post on the other blog about the Rosales saga. This time, I’ll talk about the other book I mentioned.)

Sin (first published in 1973, then reissued as Sins in 1996) is about the life of Don Carlos Cobello, a rich landowner and businessman of Spanish-Filipino (but more Spanish) descent. He’s already dying when the book starts; the events are his recollections. Before I proceed, let me warn you all that he’s a self-important jerk. He expresses regret several times in the narrative, but in the end he’s still -ist and -phobic. Anyway…

Growing up, Carlos was close to his sister Corito, who was four years older. When he felt afraid (ex. during thunderstorms) or alone, he’d jump into her bed and she’d hug him.

I felt so safe with her, reveling as I did in her warmth and that delicious fragrance she exuded.

It was during one such incident when Carlos was a teenager that they started having sex. I won’t mention how old he was (too young by American standards, but legal under Philippine law until recently) but based on the narrative, they were both into it. Carlos then discovers that he’s quite the massive horndog and spends World War II chasing skirt, from the new housemaid to some prostitutes at his father’s brothel.

After the war, Corito marries a man that Carlos believes (correctly) to be gay. While the husband’s passed out on their wedding night, the siblings have sex, which results in a baby girl named Angela. Unfortunately, she’s very frail, Corito almost dies giving birth to her, and even Carlos shows signs of disease a few years later. Remember the prostitutes I mentioned? One of them got syphilis from a customer and passed it to Carlos, who in turn passed it to Corito and Angela. So I guess the author gets partial credit for mentioning a real disease instead of letting the audience assume that incest=mutant babies 100% of the time…?

Fast forward to May 1963. Corito’s marriage to her husband has already been annulled, so she, her daughter, and Carlos basically act like a family now. Though he’s gotten annoyed at her jealousy and constant hunger for sex (not that he’s innocent in that department, lol), they try not to quarrel in front of Angela, whom they both dote on. While they’re having breakfast, they’re told that a young man, “about seventeen or eighteen years old,” wants to see Carlos. Remember the housemaid I mentioned in the last paragraph? She’s the mother of this young man, Delfin, who stays just long enough to confirm that yes, he is Carlos’ son. Then he leaves. Carlos, overwhelmed that he has a handsome, grown-up son, runs after him and demands to know about his life.

Delfin’s a bright kid (high school valedictorian, full scholarship at state university) who dreams of becoming a lawyer so he can defend the poor. Obviously, this puts him at odds with Carlos, but right now that isn’t the old guy’s concern. He offers to let Delfin stay with them. Angela pops up and asks,

“Why does he not want to stay with us? Then you don’t have to help me with my homework. I can ask him to do that.”

Delfin chooses not to stay with them, and also refuses much of his father’s efforts at charity (tailored suits, money, et cetera). He feels out of place with the family and their rich circles. But he does bond with Angela, helping her with homework as promised. Even Corito’s impressed by Delfin. She finds him attractive, much to Carlos’ dismay:

“Now, Corito, whatever is in your mind, just keep it there. He is my son, your nephew–don’t you forget that!”

“Your son, my nephew–and you, Carling–you are my brother!”

I mean…she’s not lying.

After graduating from university, Delfin goes to law school and starts working for an activist lawyer that Carlos passionately hates. He gets the latest news about Delfin from Angela, who brings food to his boardinghouse every week. She calls him “a very good teacher” and “fun to be with.” She clearly admires him and he’s friendly to her–she’s the only person he can confidently speak Spanish to, for one–but he doesn’t fully return her affections yet because she’s much younger and he has a girlfriend back home. Unfortunately for Delfin, his girl gives up waiting for him after eight years and marries the son of their provincial governor. Delfin wins a scholarship to Yale Law School but doesn’t take it, instead staying in the Philippines so he can defend ordinary people in court. One day, the law office he works for sues Carlos’ hacienda on behalf of 54 families (including some of Delfin’s relatives) that were going to be displaced by mechanization. The case goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. Thanks to Carlos’ efforts, the hacienda wins, much to Delfin’s sadness and disappointment. He distances himself much more from his father. Delfin even fails to show up at Angela’s graduation party, which reduces her to tears in the car on the way home.

“I love Delfin, Mama.”

“You are cousins, Angie dearest.”

“I couldn’t help myself, Mama. It just happened.”

“What does Delfin say?”

“He knows! He knows! He said I must stop my juvenile infatuation. I am too young–and like you said, he also repeated it, we are cousins. But I know he loves me, too. Once, he kissed me…but now I am not sure. He didn’t come and I wanted so much to introduce him to my friends. They know about my feelings.”

Carlos tries to comfort her (“It is me that Delfin did not want to see, not you”) but it doesn’t work. He and Corito plot to send her abroad so that she can study, find an eligible Spanish guy, and hopefully forget about Delfin. Again…it doesn’t work. While Carlos is recovering from a freak accident in his bathroom, he gets news that Angela’s disappeared. She shows up and tells him that she’s living with Delfin now:

“He loves me, Tito. The day before Mama and I left, I seduced him. I am pregnant and very happy.”

Of course, Carlos summons Delfin. They argue a little before the subject turns to Angela.

“Angela told you that she had seduced me. That is not true at all, sir. Since she was young, I had watched her, seen her grow, so sensitive, so frail. I thought I would protect her. With all that beauty, I did not want her to be like my mother–bearing an illegitimate child. But now…”

“Marry her. Neither Corito nor I will stand in the way. But in heaven’s name, don’t let her suffer. Let her live with some comfort, at least. I looked at her hands–they were bruised…”

“I told her not to wash my clothes…”

“But she did it just the same. Yes, a woman in love is capable of abnegation. But she is pregnant now and needs all the care in the world, sickly as she is.”

Alas, it is not to be. At the end of the book, Angela comes crying to Carlos, telling him that she’s caught Corito and Delfin “in a sexual embrace” and that Corito’s told her that she and Delfin are brother and sister, which means they can’t get married after all. We don’t know what happens to her and the baby after that.

I expected the sad ending. The novel’s supposed to illustrate that the country’s upper classes are horrible people who care only about wealth and power. As with most mainstream fiction, the incestuous tendencies are supposed to emphasize their evilness. And yet…wtf? That thing with Corito and Delfin shocked me. I agree with the other reviewer on Goodreads who was shocked because (s)he thought they genuinely adored Angela. The poor girl deserved a lot better.

So…to sum up! Carlos and Corito are not moral paragons at all, but at least it wasn’t familial abuse or neglect that drove them into each other’s arms. Angela and Delfin’s dynamic reminded me of Luis and Trining from My Brother, My Executioner, only Delfin didn’t succumb to the temptations of landlord life the way Luis did. It’s a general dynamic I find cute, age difference aside. But that ending. Jesus Christ. People elsewhere on the Internet have said that Sin is not the most popular of F. Sionil Jose’s novels, and I think I understand why.

Once again, thank you for anyone who’s made it this far!

(The quoted lines are from the book. All rights go to the author.)

——

Three for the price of one, wow. The author really embraced the incest with this one. 

Thank you so much for the detailed summary of these relationships. What a book! So much sadness but a lot of good stuff too. Poor Angela, though. 

[barnulv23]

Wenn die Turmuhr zweimal schlägt

Song :   --- OG

Er ist fromm und sehr sensibel An seiner Wand ein Bild des Herrn Er wischt die Flecken von der Bibel Das Abendmahl verteilt er gern Er liebt die Knaben aus dem Chor Sie halten ihre Seelen rein Doch Sorge macht ihm der Tenor So muss er ihm am nächsten sein Auf seinem Nachttisch still und stumm Ein Bild des Herrn Er dreht es langsam um Wenn die Turmuhr zweimal schlägt (Halleluja) Faltet er die Hände zum Gebet (Halleluja) Er ist ohne Weib geblieben (Halleluja) So muss er seinen Nächsten lieben (Halleluja) Der junge Mann darf bei ihm bleiben Die Sünde nistet überm Bein So hilft er gern sie auszutreiben Bei Musik und Kerzenschein Wenn die Turmuhr zweimal schlägt (Halleluja) Faltet er die Hände zum Gebet (Halleluja) Er ist ohne Weib geblieben (Halleluja) So muss er seinen Nächsten lieben (Halleluja) Wenn die Turmuhr zweimal schlägt (Halleluja) Nimmt er den Junge ins Gebet (Halleluja) Er is der wahre Christ (Halleluja) Und weiss was Nächstenliebe ist (Halleluja) Dreh dich langsam um Dreh dich um --- ENG

He’s pious and very sensitive A picture of the Lord on his wall He wipes the spots from the Bible He likes to administer communion He loves the boys from the choir They keep their souls pure But the tenor makes him worry So he has to keep him near On his night stand, a picture of the Lord Quietly and silently He turns it around slowly When the tower clock strikes two Hallelujah He folds his hands in prayer Hallelujah He’s remained without a wifе Hallelujah So he’s got to love his nеighbor Hallelujah The young man may stay with him The sins are nestled between his legs He gladly helps to drive them out By music and candlelight When the tower clock strikes two Hallelujah He folds his hands in prayer Hallelujah He’s remained without a wife Hallelujah So he’s got to love his neighbor Hallelujah When the tower clock strikes two Hallelujah He takes the boy in prayer Hallelujah He’s the true Christian Hallelujah And knows what brotherly love is Hallelujah Slowly turn around Turn around

Story :

At that time, no one imagined a bad churchman. But perverted by vampirism, Sebastian Von Bernstein was soon only a shadow of himself. Looking for preys at night, and during its masses. Defenseless young people. Bruised. Bereaved. Who were quick to lose their souls under the fangs of their beloved priest, whom they thought worthy of trust. He who gave masses so well. Who always found the right words to heal you. And when he had no one, he turned to James, his 22-year-old shape-shifter lover. He wasn't very bright, but he was very affectionate. And often, that's what Sebastian was missing. James was loyal as a dog, and often lived day by day, in his own time, and the hour unfolded. He never thought about the future nor the past. He loved the embraces of his master, who once his thirst for blood was satisfied, could satisfy his own trivial and carnal needs. This didn't displease the vampire. He was after all very fond of this kind of interaction...

Commentary :   Am back :D I know I have to paint Aragorn, but I wanted to go back on drawing with something a bit easier than a realistic portrait xD Still drawing more and more people I guess :O What do u think? :O

Character (c) : BarnUlv23 ​Art (c) : BarnUlv23 © copyright BarnUlv23. You may NOT use, post, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image without my explicit written consent.   

Tumblr : Youtube : ToyHouse : Alternate ToyHouse : Selling Account : ​Interested in a commission ?

[josefavomjaaga]

Here you go, petal!

The website is here: https://www.cairn.info/revue-napoleonica-la-revue-2016-2-page-21.htm. You can probably have it google-translated for more details. But here’s some interesting stuff.

Sources about Jerome’s higher school education are not quite clear, except for when it starts: January 1796. The author of the article proposes – with all due caution – the following timeline:

January 1796 to April 1797: Collège des Irlandais (MacDermott), then visit to Italy

December 1797 to April 1798: collège de Juilly;

May to November 1798: Savouré boarding school;

December 1798 to November 1799: another stay at the Collège des Irlandais, where Jérôme's schooling ends, basically with Napoleon’s coup d’état

That’s not exactly a regular education, I guess. Plenty of changes. As to the schools: General Augéreau takes Jerome to Paris at the beginning of 1796, we know that from Napoleon’s letters, so that much ist not in doubt. Napoleon’s affair with Josephine also already is in full swing at the time. Coincidentally, the Collège des Irlandais is the school Josephine’s son Eugène goes to, so it would not be unlikely for Napoleon to send his little brother there, too. - After that Jerome apparently enjoys seven months of dolce vita in Italy without continuing his education (?), while his brother resides in Mombello in the style of a proconsul. And on his return he’s put into a different school (in most books I’ve read, Juilly is described as being much more severe than MacDermott’s school) until the time when Napoleon prepares his Egyptian campaign. He’s then put into a much smaller, probably more lenient and family-like school (because it’s now either Josephine or Joseph Bonaparte who takes care of him, with Napoleon out of the picture?), before returning to MacDermott’s and finally dropping out of school altogether after Napoleon’s coup d’état, at the age of 15. (Which is the same age as Eugène, whose education had been similarily irregular and who later openly admitted that it had been neglected. I guess that was true for many people who had grown up during the Revolution).

After 18 Brumaire Jerome entered the newly founded Consular Guard (again becoming the colleague of one Eugène de Beauharnais with whom he may have had a rather rocky relationship). He apparently did not take part in the Marengo campaign, probably considered too young and inexperienced. But he encountered one of Davout’s younger brothers in the army and at some point challenged him to a duel (allegedly over a woman. At that time, Jerome had yet to reach his 16th birthday).

Constant Wairy claims that Napoleon’s decision to make Jerome a sailor was in the first place a disciplinary measure: Napoleon wanted to get Jerome away from sweet life in Paris, where the youngest brother of First Consul Bonaparte was treated like everybody’s darling and quickly turned into a spoilt brat, as proven by the duel (in which Jerome had gotten shot in the hip, if I remember correctly). While Constant’s memoirs are not necessarily a good source, this time his allegation is backed up by Napoleon’s letters from late November 1800, where he entreats admiral Ganteaume, Jerome’s superior, to be strict with his youngest brother and to teach him some discipline. But it seems that Napoleon a couple of weeks later, when his first fury had dissolved, decided that this would be a good profession for Jerome in any case, an occasion to prove himself, to grow into his own and to gain a position in life. According to Constant, Jerome had very different ideas about it that nobody wanted to hear.

So, on 28 or 29 November 1800, Jerome enters the navy at the rank of aspirant de 2e classe. The course of ranks in the French Navy was apparently:

aspirant de 2e classe

aspirant de 1re classe (these two grades were only candidates for an officer rank, basically officer-in-training)

enseigne de vaisseau (naval enseign)

lieutenant de vaisseau

capitaine de frégate

capitaine de vaisseau

chef de division

There were – theoretically – rather clear conditions for promotions and certain exams to be taken, and it’s pretty obvious they were disregarded for each and every of Jerome’s promotions. Though this was true not only for him but also for Eugène, for Joseph, even for Napoleon himself (who had been promoted general without ever having served as a colonel).

So, here is the timeline for Jerome’s navy career, as far as possible:

28/9 November 1800: entry as aspirant of second rank, at the age of 16 (pretty normal for that position)

Jerome serves on L’Indivisible (80 canons), under capitaine Gourrèges

24 June 1801: Jerome takes part in the capture of British ship Swiftburn and has the honour to accept the sword of the defeated British captain

31 October 1801 (?): aspirant of first rank, at the age of 17 – but this seems to be a rather muddy affair. What is clear: Jerome moves from L’Indivisible on to another ship, Le Foudroyant, serving at the Antilles

15 January 1802: enseigne de vaisseau, at the age of 17

10 February 1802 (?): Jerome has left Le Foudroyant and enjoys a long time of repose in Saint-Domingue, until

4 March 1802: Jerome is charged with bringing dispatches to the First Consul in Paris and embarks on Le Cisalpien for France

10 April 1802: Le Cisalpien reaches Brest after an extremely quick journey

11 May 1802: Jerome leaves Brest for Paris and a meeting with Napoleon (those dispatches cannot have been all that important…). Napoleon retroactively confirms his appointment as ensign

June 1802: Jerome transferred to L’Epervier, a brand new brig under the command of one of Jerome’s friends, lieutenant de vaisseau Halgan

20 July 1802: In Brest, Jerome embarks on L’Epervier

31 August 1802: L’Epervier finally sets off for Martinique

4 September 1802: L’Epervier anchors again, still in France, in Lorient, barely 150 kms from Brest, because Halgan and his subordinate officers have decided that something’s wrong with the ship’s rigging. Vice-admiral Decrès critisizes this furiously, but too late. While the rigging is changed, the ship’s officers amuse themselves in Nantes

18 September 1802: L’Epervier finally leaves for Martinique

28 October 1802: L’Epervier arrives in Fort-de-France. Lieutenant Halgan has fallen ill (or has decided to fall ill) and, utterly correct and according to the rules, hands over command to naval enseign Jerome, who thus has the honour to command the entry into the harbour and to report to the gouverneur

2 November 1802: Jerome demands a promotion from the capitaine générale of Martinique, which is granted provisionally

November 1802: Halgan is transferred to the corvette Le Berceau, and command of L’Epervier is entrusted to Jerome. That’s the first time he’s in command of a ship, he’s 18 years old

4 December 1802: L’Epervier is supposed to go to Santa Lucia and Tobago, but the new commander has caught a fever after a prolonged sightseeing tour and allows himself a full month to recover

12 January 1803: L’Epervier leaves for Guadeloupe

15 January 1803: Jerome officially promoted to lieutenant de vaisseau, at the age of 18

9 February 1803: L’Epervier back in Martinique

March 1803: Funny anecdote – L’Epervier should have gone back to France but somebody on board had the clumsiness to paint the inner walls of the ship with a paint on oil basis, and now it’s inhabitable until the paint has dried completely

April 1803: L’Epervier is supposed to go to Saint-Dominque (Haiti), but when Jerome shows the slightest bit of resistance (due to the recent death of Leclerc there), his superiors do not insist. Which probably makes Jerome the only lieutenant who can pick his missions according to his own gusto

15 April 1803: In a letter to his brother Lucien, Jerome writes that he wants to go to the United States, in order to see the country, before returning to France

May 1803: L’Epervier, supposed to go to France, encounters a British vessel on the way and attacks it when it does not answer a call, which might have had grave consequences for international relations (it’s not yet known that the peace of Amiens has just ended, but it is expected). Jerome takes this occasion to break off his journey and to return to Martinique. The capitaine générale Villaret-Joyeuse (adressing him as "mon cher Jerome" in the letter) hastily sends Jerome to France again, in order to get him out of harm’s way.

June 1803: Villaret-Joyeuse sends letter after letter to Jerome, ordering him to return to France before war with Britain openly breaks out

15 June 1803: Jerome defies his orders. He answers that one could possibly have a French ship sail under Danish flag, so he could embark to France and escape British notice

~ 1 July 1803: Jerome deserts from L’Epervier, accompanied by his second-in-command Meyronnet, in order to go on a private pleasure trip to the USA. - Later biographies (especially those written during the Second Empire) tried to gloss over this by ascribing it to some diplomatic mission to the US. In truth, Jerome simply left his post, following a plan he had developped for several weeks, as it seems, without orders and without even informing anyone. In official records, he is merely listed as absent, no reason given.

20 July 1803: Jerome reaches Norfolk, Virginia and starts his US sightseeing tour that will end with him getting married to Elizabeth Patterson in Baltimore

October/November 1803: French capitaine Willaumez is in Baltimore, trying to convince Jerome to return to his post. Jerome refuses, his romance with Betsy Patterson is in full swing, and lies to Willaumez about being on an official mission. At the same time, the French consul in the United States similarly tries to make Jerome return, with similar results

28 November 1803: Jerome’s friend Meyronnet reaches France on an American vessel, accompanied by a Monsieur Boyer, a relation of Lucien’s from his first marriage. He negotiates with authorities on behalf of Jerome. Napoleon lets himself be convinced that Jerome cannot return for safety reasons, now that war has long broken out at sea, too

3 December 1803: Napoleon orders that two frigates, on a mission to Guadeloupe, go to Baltimore in order to pick up Jerome, who will then continue his service on one of them

24 December 1803: Jerome marries Betsy Patterson and, as he cannot bring his wife with him on a ship of war, he refuses to embark on one

January to May 1804: More letters, more attempts by Napoleon to get his little brother to get back to his job, without success

April 1804: allegedly, Jerome and Betsy abandon a first attempt to go to France due to the presence of British ships

18 May 1804: In the constitution of year XII (beginning of the First Empire), Jerome (like Lucien) is not listed among the imperial princes (only Joseph and Louis Bonaparte)

October 1804: A squadron of three French frigates, commanded by capitaine Brouard, has safely reached the US coast in order to take in Jerome. Jerome refuses

18 October 1804: Jerome and Betsy are caught in a storm in Delaware Bay, which leads to some panic among French authorities

December 1804: Jerome’s friend Meyronnet is in France but ready to return to the US in order to convince Jerome to reenter service. He apparently has learned to use the situation to his advantage as he demands to command a frigate in exchange for negotiating with Jerome. His demands are, interestingly, supported by Louis Bonaparte, apparently behind Napoleon’s back, but refused anyway

March 1805: For what reason ever, Jerome finally decides to return to France. But in defiance of Napoleon’s explicit orders, he does not reenter service but embarks privately, accompanied by his wife, on merchant ship Erin, property of his father-in-law

8 April 1805: The Erin anchors in Belem in Portugal. Napoleon orders Jerome to come see him in Milan, refuses to recognize Elizabeth as his wife and forbids her to enter French or Dutch territory

May 1805: After meeting Napoleon in Milan as ordered, Jerome agrees to reenter his old profession and – possibly after some resistance – to pretend he never was married. As a reward, not only are there no consequences for Jerome’s disobedience, but Jerome is put in command of frigate La Pomone and two brigs. Napoleon does however inquire if the second-in-command is competent; obviously this man will be the one actually in charge

Regarding Elizabeth, she will end up receiving an annual pension of 60,000 francs, an enormous sum, for disappearing out of Jerome’s life. Summing up Jerome’s further promotions:

21 May 1805: Jerome is promoted to capitaine de frégate, at the age of 20

1 November 1805: Jerome promoted to capitaine de vaisseau, at the age of 20 (he seems to have promoted himself before acually receiving the promotion)

19 September 1806: Jerome promoted to contre-amiral (Jerome will, however, soon enter with his brother on the Prussian campaign)

11 August 1807: Jerome marries Katharina von Württemberg

Some more remarks by the author:

Regarding the way Jerome left L’Epervier: everybody not protected by the name Bonaparte would have been brought before a military trial, no doubt about that.

Napoleon’s behaviour towards the youngest Bonaparte brother is contradictory from the beginning. On one hand, he wants him to become a competent sailor and a disciplined, responsible naval officer. On the other, Jerome is never held responsible for any of his shenanigans, and regularly promoted in defiance of regulations and without having proven his competence in the least.

-

Ooofff. This has been long. I hope it’s at least somewhat interesting to you.

As to my personal opinion: I’m torn. I pity Jerome, who gets thrown into a profession he obviously has no penchant for. On the other hand – Jerome abuses his name and his position as Napoleon’s brother mercilessly. His behaviour is selfish, arrogant and irresponsible. When he has to choose between his wife and the advantages of being brother to the French emperor, he immediately drops Betsy. He really comes across like the kid of a modern-day VIP, busy partying, and that’s his only aim in the world.

Happy birthday Jerome Bonaparte! November 15, 1784

[kabira]

08 | distance

pairing — spider-man!vernon x ofc

featuring — joshua, yeji (itzy), felix (skz), yangyang (nct)

word count — 2.5k

genres — spider-man au, marvel au, fluff, action, angst, humor

warnings — minor violence

note — ok so this was kinda later than scheduled (three WEEKS) but the next update will hopefully be on time so i can keep up! by which i mean sunday 6 am (ist). also, for the love of god, tumblr make this show up in the tags. pretty, pretty please.

go to fic masterlist | main masterlist

“Okay, so here’s what I found out about your Rhino guy,” Yeji said, jumping over the side of the rooftop and landing on another, hitting the ground with a roll before coming up on her feet. They were currently involved in a high-speed chase, which meant she had to yell at the top of her voice for Vernon to hear her—not that it mattered a lot. Up here, no one could hear you scream. “He’s Russian. Name’s Alexei Sytsevich.”

“Russian, huh?” Vernon yelled back. He swung over a tall rooftop garden, taking care not to accidentally knock over something he wasn’t supposed to. “Anything that could tie him to Osborn?”

“Not really!” Yeji yelled. “His identity is public, so anyone could get to him, and he must have happened to have been around when he attacked you. But there’s nothing concrete we could go after.”

The two of them were chasing Batroc the Leaper across the top of the buildings, having caught up with him just moments after he robbed a store. A basic assignment, really, but it was still a challenge to apprehend him before he got too far from the crime scene. One of their more casual operations, much like a training session, except this was the real deal.

“Anything of interest?” Vernon asked. They were close to catching their quarry, very close. Batroc wasn’t really that notorious in the underworld, but he was still a menace and technically a criminal. A more notable point of interest were the mechanical leaping legs attached to both his feet which allowed him to jump several feet high in the air, making for a good old-fashioned superhuman chase scene.

“He was experimented on with this gamma radiation technique to give him superhuman strength and durability, but it ended in an accident,” Yeji answered. Her voice, apart from the strain due to the yelling, sounded strangely relaxed for someone who was chasing a guy across the tops of buildings. Even after having time to get used to it, Vernon was still surprised by her resilience. “The suit he was wearing that day—remember how it was made of some kind of self-regenerating polymer? It’s literally stuck to his skin. Can’t get it off him.”

“Must be constipated; it explains the anger issues.”

Just then, Yeji caught up to the Leaper. She sprung off a ledge and onto the top of a water tanker, from where she dived towards the unsuspecting criminal, flattening him to the ground. Vernon swung up to her, landing on the ground next to her. Batroc tried to wiggle away, but Vernon webbed his hands and feet to the rooftop, successfully trapping him. “So,” he said, turning his attention back to Yeji. “Any idea where they’re keeping him?”

“If you’re wondering if he’s being kept anywhere close to Osborn, don’t worry.” She placed her hands on her hips. It looked strangely satisfying, her claws aligned with the gray markings around the waist of her white suit. “Rhino’s placed in the Helicarrier for now, but in a special ward designed specifically for the big guys, though th They have specialists looking into his, er, sticky situation, but he’s on an entirely different level than Norman. And I mean that quite literally.”

He nodded. “Did the files mention which specialists are looking into it?”

“Eez it perhaps—” Batroc started.

Vernon webbed his mouth. “Zip it,” he said.

“No. The only files I could access didn’t have much on him,” Yeji said, sounding genuinely sorry. “There was other stuff, like his eye color and his blood type, but I don’t think you’d be very interested in all of that.”

“You think right.”

“There might be more details in the confidential reports coming in from the Helicarrier holder itself, but getting them would be a lot of trouble,” she said. “Although if you really want them—”

“No, it doesn’t matter,” Vernon said, shaking his head. “Thanks for digging up the rest, though. I owe you one.”

“Consider it early payback for when your Aunt May teaches me how to beat your ass at video games.” He couldn’t see her face, but he sensed that underneath the mask, she was smiling.

“Hey, that’s an Aunt May thing, not a me thing,” he said, then paused, hesitating. There was something else he had wanted to ask her, but he didn’t know if he really wanted to follow through with it. “Hey, Tiger…” he trailed off. “Actually, never mind.”

“No, go ahead,” she said. “Unless you’d rather not.”

He shook his head slightly. “It’s not like that,” he said. “This might sound kind of intrusive, but do you know the deal with Fe—Iceman?” he asked. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s great and everything, but with all the brooding and the secrecy, I’m just a little—” He scrunched up his nose. “That does sound intrusive.”

“It does,” she agreed, but it sounded amused. “Look, I’d tell you. I really would. But it’s something I feel he should tell you yourself, you know? If and when he’s comfortable talking to you about it.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No, I just kind of figured it out.” She sounded a little sheepish. “And maybe I got it out of one of the IT guys.”

He looked at her, amused. “They have IT guys at S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“Well, I guess they’re not IT guys in the strictest sense,” she mused. “There’s a hierarchy of ranks even within the record regulators, so it’s a little hard to explain. Not that it really matters, anyway.”

“It would be kind of cool if S.H.I.E.L.D. needed IT guys,” Vernon said, looking down at Batroc, except he wasn’t really looking at him, but through him. “Unrealistic, though.”

Yeji shook her head slightly, like she was unable to believe they were having this conversation. Or maybe he was just projecting his own amused disbelief onto her. But he noticed the tenseness of her shoulders and she let her arms fall to her sides, as if she was holding in a laugh. It was one of those conversations that took a turn that didn’t even have to be funny to make you laugh.

“Good talk,” she said, and this time he could actually hear the smile in her voice. “Now let’s get this guy back to the carrier.”

Luce knew something was up.

She had known this for a while now—about a year, in fact. She had only just started to suspect it when Vernon had changed, and Joshua had gotten secretive, and Harry had first started floating away. It had come one after the other, like the three of them were carrying out parts in a play and she was in the audience, watching but unable to take part. Change, and secrecy, and distance.

She liked distance. Luce had always been distant, someone who stood in the crowd and yet apart from it, unwelcome and unsettling for most around her. Eccentric, some called her, or strange, or downright creepy. It never really mattered to her, because for her, it had always been just the four of them—Vernon, Joshua, Harry and her—and even after everything that had happened, they still felt like four. Three people with a ghost in between, still shaking his head at their dumb jokes and still taking the best seat in the Parker living room when they had movie night.

Looking back, she realized that the cracks in their relationship had first appeared a year ago. Often, after Harry died, she thought about how they had collectively ignored those fractures in their friendship, that had come in the form of change and secrets and distance.

The first to change had been Vernon, of course—trading his glasses for unexplained bruises, his mysterious disappearances poorly covered up and rarely questioned. Then Joshua—the two of them with their heads together in the hallways, shooting each other knowing looks that shut everyone out. It felt like it was just the two of them sometimes, Luce and Harry often forgotten during their closed conversations. That was probably what had pushed them together, but now that Harry was gone, she was left alone. Still on the outside, trying to look in, but in vain.

She knew she couldn’t blame Vernon and Joshua for it, she had started to blend into the background a little more with every passing day. Catching one without the other was hard, so at some point she stopped trying, letting them find her whenever they felt like it. Sometimes she felt like a ghost, too, lurking in a ruined castle, only seen when a wanderer needed shelter.

Now, it was all happening again. The arrival of the new kids had seemed like a minor disturbance at first, like a tiny cloud on the wide horizon, but Vernon had warmed up to them surprisingly quickly after his initial coldness. It wasn’t that Luce didn’t like them—after all, she had been the one to initiate first contact—but she had still been taken aback by how quickly they had become a part of their little group of three (and a dead boy, but he didn’t take up seats anymore).

Except they didn’t feel like it. Not to her, and probably not to Joshua either, whom she had seen watch the new trio with lingering looks when he thought she wasn’t looking.

She was a little surprised by her own reserve, because the arrival of more people should have been a good sign. More people, even numbers, pairs, so she wouldn’t be a third wheel anymore. But it hadn’t worked out that way—she was still stuck outside, but this time Joshua was stuck with her.

It was hard not to be even a little mournful.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she called as Vernon walked past her in the school hallway after fifth period, looking distracted as he usually did these days. He turned, surprised, as if he hadn’t even noticed her there.

“Me?” he asked, looking confused, and she sighed internally. On the outside, she simply shook her head as if in amused exasperation, reaching into her bag and taking out a spiral notebook.

“Notes. From Physics.” She handed it to him, and he stared at the cover for a dazed little moment before looking back up at her. “You missed another class today.”

“Right,” he muttered, giving her a grateful smile. Fifteen seconds had passed already, about five seconds less than the longest conversation they had held in two weeks. He probably hadn’t even realized. “Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, meaning it. No point in moping after something that hadn’t been for months. She leaned against the locker door and folded her arms across her chest. The zips along the cuffs of her jacket pulled against the leather. “Going somewhere?”

“Not really.” He shrugged. The smile was still on his face, that stupidly delightful half-smile that still felt like it was behind a glass wall. “Are you?”

Am I ever? She shook her head. “Where did you go?” she asked instead of answering his question.

He frowned. “Where did I go…when?”

“During physics,” she clarified. “You’ve been disappearing a lot lately.”

“Oh, you know…” he started, trying hard to keep his voice casual. “Places.”

It was hard not to smile. “Like?”

“The principal’s office,” he said, sounding a little disappointed.

“The new guy?” Luce raised her eyebrows. “Did you do something to piss him off? Get a low grade?”

“Of course not,” Vernon said indignantly. “My scores are perfect.”

“I know. The rest of us on the curve are suffering because of it.”

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry in the least. Instead, there was a small smile on his face that looked suspiciously like a smirk.

Almost a minute now. Luce let the back of her head hit the locker door, finally letting herself believe that he wasn’t going anywhere, not this time around. The feeling that came with it was so warm and delicious that it spread inside her chest like hot water, reaching her toes and fingers and the tip of her nose. “You’re not sorry,” she said with a smile, though she didn’t really mind. “Are we still on for Friday?”

Now Vernon’s smirk dropped, replaced by a split-second look of horror. “Friday?” he echoed. “This is going to sound bad, but I don’t—”

“Movie night,” she supplied. “And don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to remember. The last time we talked about that was a while ago, anyway.”

Movie night, or game night, was their irregular childhood tradition that had become increasingly infrequent over the past few years, but particularly so in the last year. Even then, they’d never gone this long without getting together at least once. The last time they’d done something like that together, it had been almost two months ago, when they had still been four.

When Luce finally mentioned it, she felt strange thinking about the prospect of movie night with only three people. It felt odd. Unnatural. Three felt like the wrong number, like fates and the prongs of a pitchfork. Too little.

“Tell you what,” she said, pulling herself out of her thoughts with difficulty. She did that too much, lose herself in her memories or some random vein of thought and manage to completely detach herself from the world around her. It got harder and harder every time, and sometimes she wondered if one day she was just going to be trapped in her own mind.

“What?” Vernon asked. He had that distracted look on his face again, his posture jumpy like there was extra energy wrapped into his body.

“Why don’t you bring Yeji and the others along this time?” she suggested. Six wasn’t that great of a number either, but it was definitely better than three. And maybe this way she’d be able to get to know the others a little better, pull herself back to reality. “I’m sure they’d like to. And that way, it’ll be an even team.”

“Not if May decides to join in again.”

She smiled. “Then maybe I’ll bring Hairball.”

He groaned. “Oh, no, not Hairball,” he said, eyes refocusing on her face. There was such a vibrant intensity in his gaze that it made her want to stand up straighter. Then he smiled, and she actually had to stand up straight. “You sure, though?”

Of course he would ask her. Vernon Parker, despite all his bodily changes, was still the same guy from fourth grade who always let her have the rest of his lunch—if he managed to keep it from Flash. Luce was almost tempted to reconsider, but she saw the earnest look on his face, the slight arch of his eyebrows, and swallowed the words that welled up in her throat.

“Of course,” she said. “Three’s already a crowd, so we might as well have a whole party.”

“A party, huh?” He winced. “That reminds me. Food.”

“We’ll order from Larry’s.”

“I’ll have to decide if they deserve it yet,” he joked. At least, she thought he was joking. “See you on Friday.”

[dustedmagazine]

Why Brecht Now? Vol. II: Nina Simone sings “Pirate Jenny”

Lotte Lenya’s terrific performance of “Pirate Jenny” in G.W. Pabst’s 1931 film version of The Threepenny Opera might be the most enduring version of the song. Brecht abandoned the movie project halfway through the shoot, suspicious of Pabst’s aestheticism and tired of arguing over changes to the narrative scenario and the stage play’s script. One wonders what Brecht might have made of Nina Simone’s rendition of “Pirate Jenny,” which he co-wrote with Kurt Weill in the late 1920s. Simone makes the song her own, not just in the idiosyncrasies of her performance, but in her substantive alterations to the song’s setting, to its title character and to its politics. Simone’s version is found on her 1964 LP Nina Simone in Concert. Below I present the lyrics to her performance, then, in brackets, Brecht’s original German. Following that are my thoughts on the song.

You people can watch while I’m scrubbing these floors And I’m scrubbing the floors while you’re gawking Maybe once you tip me, and it makes you feel swell In this crummy southern town, in this crummy old hotel But you’ll never guess to who you’re talking No, you could never guess to who you’re talking Then one night, there’s a scream in the night And you wonder, who could that have been? And you see me kind of grinning while I’m scrubbing And you say, “What’s she got to grin?” I’ll tell you

There’s a ship The black freighter With a skull on its masthead, will be coming in

You gentlemen can say, “Hey gal, finish them floors! Get upstairs! What’s wrong with you? Earn your keep here!” And you toss me your tips and look out to the ships But I’m counting your heads as I’m making the beds Cuz there’s nobody gonna sleep here, tonight Nobody’s gonna sleep here, honey Nobody Nobody Then one night, there’s a scream in the night And you say, “Who’s that kicking up a row?” And you see me kind of staring out the window And you say, “What’s she got to stare at now?” I’ll tell you

There’s a ship The black freighter Turns around in the harbor, shooting guns from her bow

Now, you gentlemen can wipe off that smile off your face Cuz every building in town is a flat one This whole fricking place will be down to the ground Only this old, cheap hotel standing up, safe and sound And you yell, “Why do they spare that one?” Yes, that’s what you say: “Why do they spare that one?” All the night through, through the noise and to-do You wonder, who is that person that lives up there And you see me stepping out in the morning Looking nice, with a ribbon in my hair

And the ship The black freighter Runs a flag up its masthead and a cheer rings the air!

By noontime the dock is aswarming with men Coming out from the ghostly freighter They move in the shadows where no one can see And they’re chaining up people and they’re bringing ‘em to me Asking me, “Kill them now or later?” Asking me, “Kill them now or later?” Noon by the clock, and so still at the dock You can hear a foghorn miles away And in the quiet of death, I’ll say, “Right now. Right now!” And they pile up the bodies, and I’ll say, “That’ll learn ya!”

And the ship The black freighter Disappears out to sea, and on it is me Ha!

 [Meine Herren, heute sehen Sie mich Gläser abwaschen Und ich mache das Bett für jeden Und Sie geben mir einen Penny und ich bedanke mich schnell Und Sie sehen meine Lumpen und dies lumpige Hotel Und Sie wissen nicht, mit wem Sie reden Und Sie wissen nicht, mit wem Sie reden Aber eines Tags wird ein Geschrei sein ma Hafen Und man fragt: Was ist das für ein Geschrei? Und man wird mich lächeln sehn bei meinen Gläsern Und man fragt: Was lächelt die dabei?

Und ein Schiff mit acht Segeln Und mit fünfzig Kanonen Wird liegen am Kai

Man sagt, geh, wisch deine Gläser, mein Kind Und man reicht mir den Penny hin Und der Penny wird genommen Und das Bett wird gemacht Es wird keiner mehr drin schlafen in dieser Nacht Und die wissen immer noch nicht, wer ich bin Und die wissen immer noch nicht, wer ich bin Und in dieser Nacht wird ein Getös sein am Hafen Und man fragt: Was ist das für ein Getös? Und man wich mich stehen sehen hinterm Fenster Und man fragt: Was lächelt die so bös?

Und ein Schiff mit acht Segein Und mit fünfzig Kanonen Wird bescheissen die Stadt

Meine Herren, da wird wohl ihr Lachen aufhörn Den die Mauern warden fallen hin Und am dritten Tage ist die Stadt dem Erdboden gleich Nur ein lumpiges Hotel wird veschont von jedem Streich Und man fragt: Wer wont Besonderer darin? Und man fragt: Wer wont Besonderer darin? Und in dieser Nacht wird ein Geschrei um das Hotel sien Und man fragt: Warum wird  das Hotel verschont? Und man sieht mich treten aus der Tür gegen Morgen Und man sagt: Die hat darin gewohnt?

Und ein Schiff mit acht Segein Und mit fünfzig Kanonen Wird beflaggen den Mast

Und es werden kommen hundert gen Mittag an Land Und werden in den Schatten treten Und fangen einen jeglichen aus jeglicher Tür Und legen ihn in Ketten und bringen ihn mir Und mich fragen: Welchen sollen wir töten? Und mich fragen: Welchen sollen wir töten? Und am diesem Mittag wird es still sein am Hafen Wenn man fragt, wer wohl sterben muss Und da warden Sie mich sagen hören: Alle! Und wenn dann der Kopf fällt, sage ich: Hoppla!

Und ein Schiff mit acht Segein Und mit fünfzig Kanonen Wird enschwinden mit mir]

In Pabst’s film, Jenny sings soon after learning that her erstwhile lover and pimp Mackie Messer has married Polly Peachum — and immediately after accepting a bribe from Polly’s mother, Mrs. Peachum, to betray Mackie to the London cops. Jenny takes the money, tips off the cops and sings. It seems like a desperate, nihilistic moment: an abject woman, amid turbid emotional and ethical crises, articulates a violent fantasy of absolute power. Whose side is Jenny on? Her own, of course, but operating at such an alienated distance from the social is never a good thing in Brecht.  

Simone’s performance feeds off Jenny’s anger and abjection, but the social politics of Simone’s revision are more emphatic, even didactic. In that way, she participates in Brecht’s artistic ethos: Walter Benjamin once noted that Brecht kept a statuette of a donkey in his apartment, and around the donkey’s neck was a sign that read, “Even I must understand it.”  

The import of Simone’s relocation of the song — from The Threepenny Opera’s Victorian London, to “this crummy southern town, in this crummy old hotel” — wouldn’t have been obscure to anyone in the Carnegie Hall audiences in front of whom she recorded Nina Simone in Concert, in March and April of 1964. The American south was then embroiled in civil rights struggle and mounting violence: Medgar Evers had been executed in his Mississippi driveway in June of 1963, and just a few months later, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, AL. Collins, Robertson and Wesley were 14 years old; McNair was 11.  

Simone addressed that violence in another, more famous song on Nina Simone in Concert, “Mississippi Goddam”: “Alabama’s got me so upset / Tennessee made me lose my rest / And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam!” It’s rightly noted to be a watershed song, signaling Simone’s forceful transformation into protest singer, activist and cultural radical. Her version of “Pirate Jenny” may lack the referential specificity of that other, more storied song (and “Mississippi Goddam” gets pretty direct; at one point in the song, she intones, “Oh, but this whole country is full of lies / You’re all gonna die, and die like flies / I don’t trust you anymore” — in Carnegie Hall). But “Pirate Jenny” is a lively complement to the indignation of “Mississippi Goddam,” and tonally it’s even more bitter, even more violent.  

You can hear that implicit violence in the horrific cackle Simone produces at the 3:27 mark, immediately after the infantilizing image of the ribbon in Jenny’s hair. It’s a stirring contrast: the feminine innocent become vengeful fury. You can hear the bitterness in the final “Ha!” that bursts from her throat as she imagines herself disappearing over the horizon line with the ship. You can feel it in one of Simone’s other revisions to the song. In The Threepenny Opera, the song climaxes with Jenny’s shocking order that all the men in London (“Alle!”) should be killed for her pleasure. In Simone’s version, there’s never any doubt that all of her prisoners should be killed, it’s only a matter of how quickly. She hisses, rapaciously, “Right now / Right now!”  

In another notable change, Simone’s Jenny isn’t a prostitute, but a maid, cleaning up after “you people” in the aforementioned “crummy hotel.” Jenny is still marginalized, but there’s nothing subterranean or metaphorical about the economic environment she moves through. It’s all culturally sanctioned. Her oppression is a transparent element of her southern lifeworld, and she is thus sharply conscious of the manifest power of those transactions: “Maybe once you tip me, and it makes you feel swell.” It’s an important change to Brecht’s original lyrics, focusing on a set of economic relations that indicate Jenny’s racially charged plight. She’s a maid in a southern hotel, a laboring black woman, who’s made recognizable as such precisely because of the larger Jim Crow-period matrix of law and social practice that determined who did what work for whom.  

That economic register makes some of the song’s subsequent images even more resonant. The people on the receiving end of Jenny’s rage are “chained up” on the “dock.” The spectacle of terrified, chained bodies by the seaside evokes the slave auction block, even as the image wants to invert the slave economy’s racialized logic, of white oppressing black. And Simone repeatedly calls the ship in the harbor a “black freighter.” Black freight. It’s another marker for the slave trade, and perhaps Jenny is trying to run the film in reverse. Perhaps she wants to board the vessel, to sail all the slave ships back across the Atlantic, to neutralize the horror of the Middle Passage. That sounds like a utopian desire, a triumphal image that the song’s tone cannot sustain, or even create in the first place. Too much misery and violence has already happened. American history has already insisted that blackness and capital are inextricably bound. Utopian longing is beside the point. What’s needed is critique, sharpened by righteous rage.  

The historical period that we call “the Sixties” ground on for another ten years after Simone’s 1964 Carnegie Hall gigs. She became increasingly militant in her public rhetoric and performative style. She claimed once to have looked Martin Luther King in the face and said, “I am not non-violent.” Her voice throughout “Pirate Jenny” is a sort of corroborating evidence for that assertion.  

Simone’s assertiveness continues to reverberate today, as many of the most insistent leftist voices in American institutional politics come from women’s bodies, bodies that are black and ethnically Middle Eastern and Latinx. Why are the reactionaries so obsessed with AOC, with Rashida Tlaib, with Ilhan Omar? Because those women say stuff like “permanent war economy” in public? Because they eschew the rhetoric of moderation? Because they call themselves socialist and don’t seem in the least bit tentative about it? Maybe it’s because they refuse to wait. They want justice. Right now. They want an end to economic exploitation. Right now. They, and the constituencies they represent, have no time to waste on political nicety or policy based on half-measure. They insist that they will be heard. Right now.  

Jonathan Shaw

[funface2]

Sonakshi Sinha schooled by Amitabh Bachchan on KBC, trolled for not knowing about Ramayana. See funny… – Hindustan Times

Actor Sonakshi Sinha, who appeared on game show Kaun Banega Crorepati recently, found herself at the target of not just internet trolls and meme-generators but even the show host Amitabh Bachchan. She made two wrong guesses when Amitabh asked her a question on Ramayana, before making the final and correct guess on the show. After the internet was abuzz with memes cracking jokes at her GK, Sonakshi has responded with a tweet, asking for more memes to be made.

Sonakshi appeared on Friday’s episode of KBC 11 to support and help a contestant from Rajasthan . During the show, she was asked, “According to Ramayana, Hanuman fetched the Sanjeevani booti (herb) for whom?” She got confused between four options – Sugriva, Lakshmana, Sita and Rama. The actor took a lifeline to answer the particular question and for the same, she faced a backlash from the netizens on Twitter. Hashtags #YoSonakshiSoDumb was among the top India trends on Twitter on Saturday.

Even Amitabh could not restrain himself from schooling the young actor. “Aapke pitaji ka naam hai Shatrughan, aap jis ghar me rehti hain, uska naam hai Ramayana.Aapke jitne chacha hain, wo sab Ramayan se sambandhit hain, Aapko ye nahi pata ki Lakshman ke liye laaye they jadibooti? (Your father and uncles names are derived from Ramayan, you live in a house called Ramayana. How you not know for whom did Hanuman bring Jadibooti?)” To which Sonakshi replied, “Mujhe laga tha, lekin mai inke liye bahut nervous thi to chance nahi lena chahti thi (I thought it should be Lakshman but did not want to take any chance).” Sonakshi’s mother Poonam Sinha laughed through the entire discussion as she sat among the audience.

 Also read: Gang Leader box office day 7: Nani’s film mints Rs. 40 crore worldwide in first week

Shame on you #sonakshisinha

pic.twitter.com/BXTvvt6RZn

— Thakur Sunny Singh (@SunnySi69768462) September 21, 2019

One user shared a meme that had Sonakshi crying and saying, ‘Main astronaut banana chahti hu, scientist banana chahti hu, bus padhna nahi chahti.”  

#YoSonakshiSoDumb

#sonakshisinha’s DREAMS: pic.twitter.com/Fs8DsjBPt7

— Bahut Scope hai (@Bahut_Scope_Hai) September 21, 2019

#sonakshisinha #DumbSonakshi Dont criticise she was Scientist…in Mission Mangal. pic.twitter.com/5bCsZZHQNw

— ravi shrivastava (@RSHRIVASTAVA80) September 21, 2019

Another user shared an image from Prem Rog’s song Ye Galiyan Ya Chaubara Yaha Aana Na Dobara and wrote, “Amitabh Bachchan to #sonakshisinha after seeing her intelligence.#YoSonakshiSoDumb”

Amitabh Bachchan to #sonakshisinha after seeing her intelligence.#YoSonakshiSoDumb pic.twitter.com/6MW8wilt6G

— Rishabh Raj (@rishabhraj75) September 21, 2019

One of the users shared a hilarious still from Dabangg featuring Sonakshi and Salman Khan and wrote, “Thappad se dar nahi lagta sahab dar KBC ke questions se lagta hai.”

Another user shared a series of pictures on Twitter with one from the show and the other from the film Hera Pheri. “Just a scenario why Bollywood is considered crass and brainless….. Sonakshi Sinha requesting lifeline for this question is justifying that…” he wrote.

“Shatrughan Sinha (with brothers Ram, Lakshman, Bharat and sons Luv and Kush who all live in the home called Ramayana) after #sonakshisinha ‘s answer in #KBC11 #KBC,” chimed another user while sharing a GIF which said, “Are you serious right now?”

#sonakshisinha Her brothers Name are “LUV and KUSH”, Her Father’s name is “Shatrughan”,Her house name is “Ramayana”,and she still don’t know about the Holy Ramayan..#sonakshisinha#YoSonakshiSoDumb pic.twitter.com/v5xqTui1d1

— Surbhi (@Surbhi06969342) September 21, 2019

In another hilarious tweet, a user shared a picture of a man which will leave you in splits. “Alia Bhatt and Ananya Pandey to #sonakshisinha,” he tweeted.

Experts discussion#sonakshisinha pic.twitter.com/m4NORRujUm

— Rk (@rahulngupta48) September 21, 2019

One of the users took a jibe at the actor and called her a “hypocrat.” “This actress whose whole family is named after Ramayan don’t know an inch about anything about history of Ramayan and hypocrisy is that she proudly said dat she plyed role of scntist n “mission mangal” #shamesonakshi #sonakshisinha #KBC11 atleast that woman is mor educated N social than U,” the user wrote along with a picture of the host Amitabh Bachchan, Sonakshi and the contestant. 

Shatrughan Sinha to Alia bhatt after #KBC11 episode:-#YoSonakshiSoDumb pic.twitter.com/w9X9qoDWJg

—

Raees Happu- God of Thunder

(@HappuDroga4) September 21, 2019

“Shatrughan Sinha left BJP because PM Modi’s scheme Beti Bachao Beti Padhao didn’t work on his daughter #sonakshisinha,” interrupted another while mocking at the star.

Sonakshi tweeted Saturday afternoon, “Dear jaage hue trolls.I don’t even remember the Pythagoras theorem,Merchant of Venice,Periodic Table,Chronology of the Mughal Dynasty,aur kya kya yaad nahi woh bhi yaad nahi. Agar aapke paas koi kaam nahi aur Itna time hai toh please yeh sab pe bhi memes banao na. I love memes.” 

Dear jaage hue trolls.I don’t even remember the Pythagoras theorem,Merchant of Venice,Periodic Table,Chronology of the Mughal Dynasty,aur kya kya yaad nahi woh bhi yaad nahi. Agar aapke paas koi kaam nahi aur Itna time hai toh please yeh sab pe bhi memes banao na. I love memes

— Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) September 21, 2019

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First Published: Sep 21, 2019 13:13 IST

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Bài viết Sonakshi Sinha schooled by Amitabh Bachchan on KBC, trolled for not knowing about Ramayana. See funny… – Hindustan Times đã xuất hiện đầu tiên vào ngày Funface.

from Funface https://funface.net/funny-memes/sonakshi-sinha-schooled-by-amitabh-bachchan-on-kbc-trolled-for-not-knowing-about-ramayana-see-funny-hindustan-times/

[paticle]

OP Going Off I Guess

I’m a White, privileged English instructor in a high school...and a PhC looking to contest how the Academy and Education “teach” by contrasting it with the expertise and inclusiveness of fans’ language-related interactions.  May I put something OUT THERE? Please interact (especially if I need correcting)!

Eppur si muove.

In its divergence from our imaginary of literacy learning, fan languaging reveals a tremendous blindspot for English as a discipline. Research on—even mere consideration of—mainstream USAmerican learners’ extra-“English” languaging in relation to their literacy development is rare (Muchiri et al.; New London Group). Excepting 3 critical analyses within Horner and Kopelson (Cooper; Hall; Kraemer Sohan, who addresses “the myth of monolinguality”), I find it limited to testimonials of “personal” benefits of foreign language exposure (e.g., for convenient travel, Weatherford)[i] and broad correlations of foreign language classes to overall academic success (e.g., Thomas & Collier). Yet, Composition, Literacy Studies, SLA, Applied Linguistics, TESOL and Bi/Multiling/Cultural Education each have deep and wide catalogues of studies exploring the relationship of extra-“English” languaging to the literacy learning of nonmainstream “outsiders” to “English”—those speakers of other “native” languages and culturally/linguistically diverse monolingual learners [speakers of “nonstandard English”]. The yawning gap between our two bodies of research can not but suggest an ugly, uncontested given in urgent need of problematizing: that “normal” English speakers’ languaging outside of “English” is negligible and/or has no meaningful impact on their literacy because it is not English.

Trimbur finds that a closely related conceptualization of “the presumptively normative condition of English monolingualism...uncontaminated by other languages” figures into the work—and thereby the legacy—of the “iconic” Dartmouth Conference [Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English] in 1966. He highlights, in particular, Sociolinguist Joshua Fishman’s arguments to English teachers in attendance that their vision of “the native-born speaker” denied the lived languaging experience of the vast majority of the population. Fishman confronts them with

his observation that very few of the Americans present at Dartmouth are

either drawn from or in touch with that reservoir from which two thirds of the white American population is drawn and for whom ethnic, non-English associations are part of the real things and real situations that language is about, and to which real literature and great traditions and linguistic insight must also somehow be related. (51)

If the African American population of the United States is included, Fishman's indictment becomes even more sweeping. To say that he is accusing his American listeners at Dartmouth of not knowing their audience is putting it mildly, and much the same could be said, in a more qualified way, about their British colleagues. (Dartmouth 164)

Distinguishing the monolingual English speaker from [all] Others—the former, “naturally native;” the latter, unnatural converts—as Dartmouth’s teachers did,[1] is nothing less than expression of Anglo ethno/native supremacism in pseudoscientific language. Its ideology perdures in the continued exclusion of languages-other-than-Standardized-English from conceptualizations of literacy and literacy learning broadly. Both align discomfortingly well with the systemic nativism well-documented in histories of USAmerican educational, academic and, of course, political institutions (Russell Writing; Luke; Bloom et al.; Ianetta; Murphy; Ritter & Matsuda; Kloss) and the hegemony of colonialism in global systems of knowledge production (Tymoczko Cultural). Through it, we aid and abet the containment of learners, teachers, scholars, researchers and institutions within controlling nationalistic discourses of language planning and policy-making and majoritarian popular/ist language ideologies (Cassidy et al.; Wible; Gonzáles & Melis; D. Johnson; Kibler & Valdés; Martínez et al.; Menken & García; Matsuda Myth; Horner; Prendergast; Ricento; Trimbur Linguistic; You).

Our fields claim to have debunked and rejected previous idealization of The Native Speaker.[2] Yet, Dartmouth’s discursive framing I see intact currently in what I describe as our English Exceptionalism.[3] Our prejudicial stance for English speaking against the Other promulgates a corollary to Dartmouth’s principle: Natural English is superordinate, free of Other[s’] languages and cultures. Imagining The Natural English Speaker begets imagining Natural English. We in Composition and Literacy Studies reproduce idealization of unadulterated “English” monolinguality by our failure to acknowledge mainstream plurilingu/cultural languagers. This is not a mere lacuna; being native English pluriling/cultural by being erased is de facto abnormalized, reinforcing the overarching supremacist narrative: [Lingual, cultural, racial, ethnic, national] miscegenation threatens the “natural” integrity of “English”—which is to say, it endangers the supremacy of those who historically and today position themselves its Natural Speakers.[ii] The gap in our literature, what our expert languaging says by omission, is thus—as Pennycook encourages—explained. It is our application of the hegemonic power to exclude and thereby to control. Good [language] fences make good neighbors.

English Exceptionalist erasure of natural plurilingu/cultural English speaking is now, as in 1966, denial of the actual etiology of languaging and learning in the US and globally. Translinguality—life-long experience dwelling in borders of languages, dialects, registers, modalities and semiotic systems both hybrid and plural—is the norm. Kraemer Sohan’s myth of monolinguality is not explanatory; it is fictionalization. Translinguality in the US has, since Dartmouth, expanded in diversalité. The 2017 Census finds 21.8% of all residents (48% in the largest urban areas and approximately 25% of K-12 students) speak a [recognized] language other than English at home (Zeigler & Camarota).[4] Languagers’ pluriversal lived experience can be extrapolated even further based on their “geohistory” (Trimbur Dartmouth)—in 2015, the percentage of the population who are first or second generation immigrants was double that of 1966 (Pew)—suggesting that we English teachers today even more egregiously misread [erase/abnormalize] our learner audience.

[1] Trimbur explicates their view as: “there is a learning of language that takes place within the native speaker that is simply unavailable to the non-native speaker[...], in effect, a privileged position—a natural embodiment—through which the language flows” (Dartmouth 157-8).

[2] That my institution and others with high status still enforce a “native speaker” qualification for hiring its TESOL instructors is concrete evidence of our hypocrisy.

[3] Parallel to American Exceptionalism, which sees the US as singular in the history of nations, superior to preceding and concurrent other states, and thus deserving of privilege and prerogatives it accrues.

[4] English Exceptionalism in action: The official formulation not only disallows marked dialects and English[es] as possible alternates to Standardized English, it explicitly segregates anything not-“English” from public language (Rodriguez). One speaks these at home.

[i] An example of the “tourist” versus “sojourner” mindset that Byram’s Intercultural Communication Competences is designed to displace.

 [ii] Choi and Maliangkay theorize a similar exceptionalism in Cultural North responses to K-pop popularity:

The New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Times, the BBC, Canal+, and the Asahi Shimbun, to name but a few, have all fervently commented on the enigmatic discharge of cultural energy from a country unmarked on the map of global culture. Their search for convincing narratives illuminating the inscrutable incident is quite reminiscent of the hurried invention of tales to decipher the furious rise of Japan during the 1970s and 1980s. Our observation is that this K-pop phenomenon fortuitously undrapes the inner layer of ethno-cultural psychodynamics concerning cultural creativity. To put it bluntly, this global fascination with K-pop unveils a covert tenor of racism in the very hyperreaction to the success of K-pop. (13)

[catandsomething]

RL. Me being a pain in the ass with friends but I am like that.

Yesterday a good friend of mind noticed for the umpteenth  time that my brain is too rational, sometimes – the most part of the times tbh - I am too cold and I apply the IT rules to human beings. I am talking to my “real life environment” (Except when it comes to B on tumblr, in this case I might be really emotional). 

Like everyone on this planet I’ve been hurt and I developed some tools and some rules in order to survive and to live in my own way.

She’s partially right, my friend I mean. Partially. She says that I am too “stiff” when it comes to assess situations or to reach a goal. I should become more flexible. That’s partially right. Partially

She says also that I do not accept a different logic than mine. This is not completely true. I don’t accept when other ppl want to apply their logic to my life, to my personal dimension. Sometimes they give you unwanted advices because of their own good, not yours. They want to control others.

Their logic is theirs. They apply it to their life  and that’s fine. But like  a German quote I found reads (and that’s constantly visible on my smartphone) “Lass dir nichts erzählen, absolut niemand weiß, wie es ist, du sein” I think nobody knows exactly what’s going on in someone else’s head and what the person really needs. 

 Ok. I am the result of the fact that someone fell for me some years ago. I am like that. I didn’t force myself to become what he saw in me or he liked in me. I was already like that. He saw a part of me that I would have liked to develop and I did it. He liked some traits of my character, he was intrigued by them and I decided to develop them. That girl/person I decided to become was already in me, anyway.

Now I don’t wanna overwrite what I have become in order to turn into a  more flexible woman. I am headed to a certain place in my life…in the past I listened to others, but I made  mistakes. No need to compromise again in order to be accepted by friends or colleagues. They wanted me to follow their rules and to give up on what I was aiming for. They wanted to be my friends but they weren’t good for me so I said goodbye. They can live their own life and have their own experiences but if I need to engage or keep me busy with whatever I want and, above all, I think my goals are possible, why should I accept something different? I am not saying they’re aiming to  something less or not meaningful, just different than what I am meant to do, be, see, experience or different than whom I am meant to stay with.

Is it so difficult to accept that a man falls in love with a woman ‘cause he sees in her what she would like to become? Is she to be blamed ‘cause she shaped herself during the years accordingly to his glance if this is the VERY thing she has ever wanted for her entire life?

And above all it’s not so strange or odd that someone would like to kiss me!

Am I deluded only when it comes to the one who “wrote” my source code? But it’s normal that someone I do not like or despise may be interested  in me, instead, isn’t it? FFS!!!

Why do ppl hate us so much? that since the beginning of time. Why even one year  before I returned his feelings have we been attacked, both of us?...why a disgusting man called me the “Nazi’s whore”,  just because a  German guy started to  like me (he started to feel something more tbh).That’s why.     He’s the sweetest and most vulnerable guy on this world...but they had to insult him. Maybe because he’s not 100% “perfect”. But my eyes detect perfection anytime I see him.   Why was I called the Russian bitch? only because I said “no” to them, I guess. It’s a cliché.   (My forefathers were from Russia, a couple of centuries ago! I have an Italian identity card by the way and I don’t speak Russian, but it would have been great and useful to know that language!)  

And I am talking about ppl living in a very big city here!

I am too stiff. I am fine with that. There’s always a reason for what we become in life. I am like that. Someone wanted me to be and become what I already was. So, yes I am not flexible, I am gothic, I am “dunkel” I am severe and sometimes I am freezing. And so what?

It is what it is

Amen.

[aruneshgoyal]

The Contextual Major Plot Featuring India-Pakistan World Cup Tie as Also Wedding Anniversary of the Main Protagonists

Mahesh and Saraswati are well settled now in India (old Delhi) with kids, Shaloo - thirteen years of age, and Brij - nine years old. Mahesh is a devout Hindu, especially dedicated towards Goddess Durga and his wife, Saraswati is a pious Muslim lady before marriage by the name – Shakila.  

Now, husband and wife for the last fifteen years ever since 15th February, 2000, Mahesh and Saraswati are all set to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary along with another grand event, Indo-Pak World Cup cricket clash planned for the day, viz. the fifteenth of February, 2015.  

Cricket has always been their cup of dilemma and duel especially due to Shakila’s brother, Hussaini Bhai, being a member of the Pakistan cricket team for the last ten years as an all-rounder (medium pace bowler and a power hitter just akin to our Kapil Dev).  

This World Cup, in particular, is especially important for him as he is going to announce his retirement after the Indo-Pak match; moreover, Pakistan, sensing victory, out of the rather low morale of the Indian team due to repeated defeats on its tour of Australia, just on the eve of the mega event, are going all out this time to break the jinx of having never beaten India in a World Cup fixture as yet.  

 After marriage, being a dedicated wife as she was, Saraswati alias Shakila was always in a state of turmoil – whether to support her husband or her brother! The children too were at loggerheads on this issue. Hussaini Bhai also adopted certain Hindu customs after the marriage of his sister to Mahesh, which included the celebration of the much wonted and acclaimed ‘Raksha-Bandhan’ festival with the tying of the sacred thread on his wrist by his sister, elder to him by a good seven years.  

 Whenever Saraswati would handcuff him with a sparkling ‘Rakhi,’ he would seek her blessings you guess what, your guess is as good as mine – asking for his team’s victory over India in the upcoming matches. February 15 in 2015 was no different. He had already sought his sister’s affectionate blessings the previous year in the wake of his upcoming retirement from international cricket. Before leaving for Australia-New Zealand, the venue of this year’s edition of the World Cup, Hussaini Bhai had touched his sister’s feet yet again, promising to call her before the all-important Indo-Pak contest.  

True to his word, before leaving for the cricket arena on the actual day of the match, Hussaini Bhai had called his sister, Shakila alias Saraswati, and said – “dear sister Shakila! Please bless me so that not only do I perform well with both bat and ball but also our team does well and goes on to defeat India!” Shakila, in reply, said simply – “dear brother Hussaini! I am a wife more now than a sister. Still, I pray to God that you perform well in your last encounter before retirement. As for defeating India, I cannot say anything but only that it be an absorbing contest between the two teams for the spectators to feast upon and the better team which does better today win!”  

 Mahesh and the two children – Shaloo and Brij, were standing just nearby, overhearing the entire conversation between the brother and sister team of Shakila and Hussaini. Mahesh said jokingly – “don’t you dare to spoil your dear brother’s mood today! Just see the extent to which he has gone, how much he has been preparing, and looking forward to this – his last and final outing in cricket!” Brij added – “it’s going to be my Mamu Jaan’s day today and Pakistan will beat India hoarse, hollow, and outright!” Meanwhile, Shaloo, listening to all this talk, just couldn’t bear the thought of India losing this particular ‘prestigious’ match, and joining in the conversation, said mockingly – “even if Mamu Jaan takes the blessings of the entire household in India, nay Pakistan as well, God will see to it that my India doesn’t get defeated today!”  

“Okay, okay! Everybody, listen now! Enough discussion has already taken place on the issue. Let’s not waste any more time over the matter and straightaway get into the act, by having our breakfast quickly and then settling down lest we miss any of the live coverage by Star Sports. Remember, we have specially subscribed to the channel for this occasion and only about half an hour is left before the live action begins, beamed right from Australia to so many countries around the globe including our India” – intervened Saraswati alias Shakila, suddenly taking control of the situation.  

Everybody fell silent now and there was no further talk about the upcoming cricket action during breakfast time. Finally, as the clock struck exactly 09:00 hrs. IST, everyone settled down, taking their own vantage positions in front of the HD color ONIDA television set, once so much famed for its “owners’ pride, neighbor’s envy” ad.  

 Being a Sunday, Mahesh was off from his office work and the children too were free from their respective schools. Mahesh worked for a leading MNC in Gurgaon, travelling to and fro daily in his Honda car. While Shaloo was pursuing her studies in a central convent school and had come home specially to join her family for the match, Brij was studying in the nearby Jesus & Mary school. The school van would come daily to pick him up from home in the morning as also drop him back after school time in the afternoon.  

The match had a significant sidelight too – a touch of the Indian cinema. Mr. Amitabh Bacchhan, the veteran actor well known for his versatility, and the famed anchor of the popular soap opera and Sony’s TV show – “KBC (‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’),” was making his grand debut in the commentary box, for a change this time, during the course of the match. It may be pointed out in this context that Amitabh Ji’s voice is his greatest asset and everybody, whether from India or abroad, was keenly looking forward to listen to this golden voice on the occasion. Star Sports, who had roped Amit Ji in for the event, was particularly keen on cashing upon his worldwide popularity and up the ante as far as TV ratings were concerned.  

Before the match, there had been frequent calls from Shakila’s family and other near and dear ones from Pakistan all of whom were rooting for their home team and wanted Shakila alias Saraswati to fall in their footsteps and follow suit. Only Saraswati knew how tormenting all those moments had been. On one hand, she was supposed to and had to support India in the wake of her foremost relation as Mahesh’s wife and on the other, she couldn’t afford to displease her native relations too, not to speak of her role as a sister to Hussaini Bhai.  

 But, there was one very good point and factor working in her favor.

Mahesh knew his wife well, trusted her, and supported her through and through. Furthermore, he was not a jingoist or a cricket fanatic and was wise enough to understand not only the intricacies of the game but also the significant fact, missed by many but not him, that after all, it was only a game in which one of the two competing sides had to win and the other to lose.  

Sometimes, he just brooded over and told himself that people were, by and large, foolish enough to put at stake so much for their chosen team, even going to the extent of gambling and betting heavily on the outcome. All this, he so wisely surmised, added to the ever increasing pressure on the players from both the sides and everybody else genuinely concerned about the game, which in modern times, had already acquired and taken the form of an explosive volcano, ready to erupt anywhere anytime.  

He stood by his dear wife, Saraswati, often consoling and calming her down with soothing words, telling her to take all the discomfiture in her stride and that things would take their own course and everything would eventually work out well, God willing, or ‘Inshallah,’ as they say in Urdu.

Mahesh also had the good sense to realize that the game and so to say, everything in the modern world, from education down to health facilities, had become too commercialized, especially, of late, for comfort. The common man was hard put to even afford the “grand luxury” of going to a cricket stadium to watch and catch the action right in front of his eyes, not only due to the heavily priced match tickets but also taking into account the fact that as no outside food was allowed these days at the stadia, he would have to foot the bill for the highly over-priced eatables and drinks being offered and available at the match site and that too of much inferior quality in comparison to their rates.  

Anyway, as he sometimes would take up and broach these topics with his wife, she would tell him to be ‘practical’ and not think too much but enjoy and, rather, relish the fun of it all, as if “any fun could be greater than humanity,” thought Mahesh although he used to keep and remain silent, accepting Saraswati’s views, but only outwardly. His inner senses were just neither willing nor ready to accept this hard reality and these harsh facts of life and he always wished he could do something about it. But, “what could he do,” all alone. He needed outside support and backing to buck him up in his mission and in this instance, his own wife was telling him in plain words to be ‘smart’ and ‘practical’ and let things go their own whacky way, whether “right or wrong,” how it mattered!  

His conscience would prick him no end and he often thought and wished he could write a book and express his views and opinions openly without any fear or regret whatsoever. As of now, he had a family, may be small, but it was after all a family with a beautiful young wife and two decent kids to be taken care of and he just couldn’t afford to put their lives at stake, for the time being, at least. “All right, let me be rid of my family responsibilities and my office as well after retirement. Then, possibly, I can take a chance and would be able to write, fulfilling my cherished wish for so long!” he told himself consolingly and softly.  

Back to our match, the little Indo-Pak cricket encounter. Pakistan, winning the toss, had elected to bat first on what appeared to be a paradise of a pitch for batsmen, laden with runs. And, keeping in view Hussaini Bhai’s impending retirement immediately after this significant contest, he was asked to open the innings along with Mohammed Shehzaad, a young, elegant to watch, and gifted opener. May be, the move to send Hussaini Bhai upfront was meant to take India by surprise and upset their rhythm, especially during the first ten power-play overs when only three fielders are allowed outside the inner circle. Be that as it may, Hussaini Bhai was out first ball, yorked by Umesh Yadav, the fastest bowler of the lot on the Indian side, much to the disdain of Brij but amusement for Shaloo. Shakila too was a bit upset about this particular dismissal, knowing in her heart that her brother would be even more upset about it, especially in view of his last outing in cricket.  

The whole of Pakistan was stunned into silence and rubbed its eyes in disbelief. Meanwhile, Mahesh, calm and composed, as always, came forward to soothe Saraswati alias Shakila, telling her that Hussaini Bhai still had a chance to bowl well in the Indian innings, and that all was not lost as yet. Misbah-ul-Haq, the skipper of the Pakistan team, walked in next and boy, what an innings he played, simply breathtaking and out of this world! Along with Mohammed Shehzaad, the diminutive young opening batsman, he put up a bewildering partnership of one hundred eighty runs, in which his own personal contribution was a marvelous one hundred fifty runs, full of strokes all around the ground, comprising twelve fours and a towering eleven sixes, to boot.  

Although he got out soon after reaching this milestone, trying to hammer another six and caught brilliantly near the boundary by Suresh Raina, who took a low tumbling catch running a good twenty yards to his left, followed almost immediately by Shehzaad, who played a rather needless rash shot in trying to up the ante even more, Pakistan reached a respectable and healthy looking score of two hundred seventy runs eventually, losing five wickets in their allotted fifty overs.  

For India, Umesh Yadav took three wickets with Mohammed Shami and Ravichandran Ashwin being the other two successful bowlers, bagging one wicket a piece. Suresh Raina, a part time bowler used by India, strangely turned out to be their most economical one, conceding just thirty runs off his ten overs, giving him an economy rate of three per over, which was simply stunning under any circumstances.  

It was lunch time now and the whole family, Mahesh, Saraswati and the two kids – Brij and Shaloo, gathered around the dining table to enjoy the package of Daal Makhani, Rajma, cauliflower, Pulaav, Raita and Tandoori Naans, home delivered to them by the nearby “Wah Ji Wah” restaurant, especially for the occasion. Mahesh had also ordered a special candle-light dinner at the restaurant later in the day to celebrate his fifteenth wedding anniversary with Saraswati. Brij and Shaloo too were to accompany them and join in the celebration, especially as a special chocolate vegetarian cake had been ordered the previous day by Mahesh for today’s special evening. During the course of their lunch, Brij was a bit sulky while Shaloo was her usual chirpy self. Mahesh and Saraswati, on their part, tried their best to keep Brij’s spirits alive and not bring cricket into the picture or mix it up with their much needed meal, especially after three and a half hours of rigorous and continuous cricket watching on their TV monitor/screen.  

After a lunch break of exactly thirty minutes, the match began again at 13:00 hrs. IST. At this stage, India were the hot favorites and expected to win, keeping its record over Pakistan straight in World Cup encounters. This was keeping in view the fact that the pitch was still batsmen friendly and benign towards them. Moreover, India had a strong batting line up with stalwarts like Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Anjika Rahane, and the captain cool, Mahender Singh Dhoni himself, to boot, in its ranks.  

As also, the fact that it had been able to restrict Pakistan to a target well below three hundred was an additional advantage working in its favor. And, the men in blue didn’t disappoint their fans, beginning well with Rohit and Shikhar putting up a decent one hundred partnership upfront off just eleven overs. At this point, Hussaini Bhai was introduced into the attack by Pakistan skipper, Misbah. And, off his fourth ball, he had Shikhar Dhawan caught behind, off a thin edge, with a late out swinger. In his next over, he sent back Rohit Sharma too, catching him plumb in front of the wicket with a peach of a delivery, that came in just a bit, for an easy LBW decision by England’s Ian Gould, one of the two umpires doing duty in the match along with S.Venky, the one from Sri Lanka. He virtually sent the crowd, the Pakistan fans, in particular, into a tizzy, by claiming the prize wickets of Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina off his next two successive deliveries, achieving the rare feat of a hat trick in a World Cup final.  

There had been no addition to the Indian score of exactly one hundred and its batting backbone had been literally broken and virtually torn to pieces, with four wickets gone already. Rahane and Dhoni tried to rev up the innings a bit, adding a crucial and vital eighty runs, before Rahane too was snapped up by Hussaini in his last and final over, not only for the match but in his cricket career as well, caught at short leg, while fending at a well directed rising bouncer on his chest. Even though Hussaini had got out for a duck while batting, he had bowling figures of 10-3-45-5 for the match, a five wicket haul anybody would be proud of and he so very rightly got a standing ovation from the supporting crowd as he finished his quota. Whatever the result of the match, he was relieved now that he had after all done justice to his last game of cricket. In fact, he had made his retirement a memorable occasion, an occasion he could remember with pride and recite to his probable future grandchildren.  

It was anybody’s game now with exactly ninety one runs to get off the final ten overs for India while Pakistan was looking to finish off things quickly and wrap up the remaining five Indian wickets as well. But, its main concern was that its star performer of the day, Hussaini Bhai, at least with the ball, accounting for all the five wickets that had fallen so far, had already bowled out his full quota of ten overs at a stretch. India, on the other hand, was relying on Dhoni single-handedly now to apply the finishing touches and get the required runs at an asking rate of almost nine runs per over, which he was perfectly capable of doing. But, knowing that it was a crunch match, a big pressure game, nobody on either side, was yet ready to take any chances and predict the outcome. But, one thing was for sure. Whichever side doesn’t wilt under pressure and choke down, would be the winner.

Moreover, it was no longer a game to watch for the faint hearted ones. For Pakistan, Junaid Khan and Yusuf Parvez, the two of their fastest bowlers, had to bowl the final ten overs in tandem now while Ravindra Jadeja, a promising young all-rounder (left arm leg spin bowler who could bat as well) was giving Dhoni company at the other end. Both Jadeja and Dhoni were fast movers between wickets and played for the same franchise – Chennai Super Kings, in the IPL (Indian Premier League), a 20–20 or T-20 cricket tournament in which only twenty overs a side are bowled instead of the usual fifty as in one day cricket.  

 Pakistan did well in the first six overs, restricting India to just twenty five runs. Dhoni and Jadeja tried hard but found the duo of Junaid and Yusuf difficult to get away as they bowled a tidy line and length and at a good pace too, sometimes in the vicinity of one hundred fifty kilometers per hour. Be that as it may, they had no option left but to play in the T-20 mould now, if they were to get the remaining sixty six runs in the four overs left for the day. Nobody was giving them even a semblance of a chance or counting on them to even get anywhere close to the target, leave alone achieving it!  

But, M.S. Dhoni had other ideas. He started off with his famed helicopter shot for six over mid-wicket in Junaid’s next over, followed it up with a crunchy straight drive for four off a full length yorker, a shot which only he could play, and then cover drove him, playing inside out for a massive six over the extra cover fence. With sixteen runs off the first three balls of the over, the crowd was on its feet yet again. As he took a comfortable single off the next ball, it was Jadeja’ s turn now to take over and hit the remaining two balls for successive boundaries, one a square cut that sped towards the point fence in the twinkling of an eye, and the other, a delicate leg glance to the fine leg boundary.  

It had turned out to be a very good over for India, with as many as twenty five runs coming off it, in all. But, it still required forty one more in the next three overs, by no means, an easy task. Dhoni, once again, didn’t disappoint his fans, by hitting three massive hefty shots for the maximum, over long on, long off, and straight over the bowler Parvez’s head, off the first three deliveries in the next over, the forty eighth of the innings. Young Parvez completely lost his line, rhythm and length, and just didn’t know where to bowl to the Indian captain. To add to his woes, he bowled a wide no-ball next. Two runs were added to the score and a free hit was awarded to the batting side, viz. the Indians.  

Although Dhoni could manage only a couple of runs off the free hit, hitting the full toss bowled straight into the hands of the fielder at deep midwicket, viz. Shehzaad, he reverse swept the next two balls for successive fours as if he was facing a spinner instead of a fast bowler. Thirty runs had come in the over bowled.  

With just eleven to get in the remaining two final overs of the innings, the game had again turned around and come full circle in India’s favor. However, the ever cool Dhoni got out in Junaid’s final over, trying to repeat his favorite helicopter shot, which he had been able to play successfully off the first ball in the bowler’s previous over. It was neither needed nor called for at this stage of the game, when they could easily do it in singles and two’s.  

It was rather uncharacteristic and unlike Dhoni’s calm approach, disposition, and temperament. But, the damage had been done and Pakistan allowed more than a glimmer of hope. May be, the first two dot balls off which Dhoni had been unable to get any runs, had got to his head. Dhoni had got out to the third ball of the over and the batsmen had crossed while the catch was being taken. Jadeja was in the hot seat now. And, just like Dhoni, he played out the first two balls he faced as dots and couldn’t make any use of them. He stepped out to the final ball of the over, trying to play a hefty cover drive, only to see his middle stump cart wheeling and flying off the ground.  

India had lost another vital and crucial wicket again, this time of Ravindra Jadeja. Junaid’s final over had turned out to be double wicket maiden one and he was virtually on the moon, clapping and celebrating with his team mates with high fives all around. Everybody was on his toes now for the final over of the Indian innings to be bowled by Yusuf Parvez, the upcoming young fast bowler from Peshawar. At this juncture, India still needed eleven runs to win with just three wickets intact. Pakistan needed to bowl out the final over for less than ten runs to win.  

A distinct third possibility had also come into the picture. And, that was India getting no more  than ten runs off the six balls it was to face, resulting in a ‘tie,’ or a drawn battle, so to say. Ravichandran Ashwin and Mohammed Shami were the two Indian batsmen at the crease now to take them through with Shami at the non-striker’s end. Umesh Yadav and Mohit Sharma, in that order, were awaiting their turn to bat, if required, in the pavilion.  

The first ball – a bouncer over the middle stump! No runs! Ashwin looked at S.Venky, the umpire officiating at the bowler’s end, appealingly for a no ball for extra height above the batsman’s shoulders, but there had been no signal from the square leg umpire, Ian Gould, and Venky simply signaled one bouncer, for the over. The second – a slightly wide full toss had Ashwin groping for it and flew to third man for a single. Mohammed Shami on strike now! The equation – ten to get off four balls!!  

The third ball by Parvez was a full length yorker, dug out somehow by Shami, and they stole a cheeky single! The equation – nine to get off three!! The fourth, a short one, was pulled fiercely by Ashwin to the mid-wicket fence for a welcome boundary for his team! Ashwin had proved his batting credentials time and again for India and this was no different! The equation – five to get off two!!  

The next ball, the fifth, was a quick good length one, and they ran an even quicker single like two hares running for their very lives!  

The equation – four to get off just one ball!! Oh, my, my goodness me, it was all topsy-turvy and could swing either way, although Pakistan seemed to have a slight edge at this point of the game. But, nothing can be said in cricket till the final ball is bowled!  

The final ball of the over and the innings was a fierce yorker by Yusuf Parvez, the young lad from Peshawar, who was learning all the time and had bowled a great last over. Mohammed Shami knew nothing about it; Ashwin was already half way down the pitch, screaming out to Shami to run; meanwhile, the wicketkeeper, Yaseen Jaffer, had thrown the ball to the bowler’s end but there was no one backing up; Shami started to run; the ball was stopped near mid-off by Misbah-ul-Haq, the Pakistan skipper, who threw it wildly to the batsman’s end, trying to run out Ashwin; both the batsmen reached their respective ends safely and tried to run the second as well and managing it too; the throw was so wild that it caught all the Pakistan fielders napping and unawares, going to the fine third man boundary and crossing the fence for four overthrows; while India needed four runs off this particular ball, they had been allowed six, much to the chagrin of the Pakistan team, and Parvez, in particular, who had done nothing wrong in this over.  

In the end, it had been a comedy of errors, of a sort. But, eventually, it was India who had kept their nerves and done the needful, beating Pakistan by three wickets, with its final score reading two hundred seventy three for seven. Of course, it was helped by the Pakistan fielding in the final over; but all said and done it had ultimately and finally prevailed over Pakistan in what had been a hard fought, pulsating and nail biting game of cricket.  

Meanwhile, the much talked about and the much hyped over Amitabh’s stint at the commentary box had come a cropper. It simply had to. After all, everybody can’t do everything. Acting is one thing. But performing in reality is a different ball game altogether. If Amitabh Ji had to act out the role of a commentator in a film, it would have been a virtual cakewalk for him. But, describing live action and moreover a game like cricket with all its buzzwords and peculiar jargon is only a job for professional commentators. Some of the ex-players too have made a good job of it. On his part, Amit Ji were graceful enough to quit right in the beginning itself and fellow commentators on Star Sports (Hindi commentary team) eased him out quickly lest it became an embarrassment both for Mr. Bacchhan and Star Sports. Anyway, most of the audience didn’t complain and accepted the walkout gracefully. May be, they already had a lurking idea that it would be a tough endeavor for Amit Ji to carry out.  

Moreover, you can’t become a cricket commentator straightaway. You need time and graduate gradually from local matches to regional ones onto national level and finally arrive at the international level. You see, it’s a step by step gradual process. The only exception to this general rule could be ex-players who have played cricket at some level or the other. But, even here, everybody doesn’t succeed and turn out to be a good commentator. Rohan Gavaskar, the illustrious Sunil Gavaskar’s son, is a very good case in point with no ill-will towards anybody, especially the latter, who by all means, is an excellent TV cricket commentator himself.  

Before moving on to the two flashbacks from the lives of Mahesh and Saraswati alias Shakila, just a little word about their fifteenth wedding anniversary together, the T-20 format of cricket, and the IPL.

The couple solemnly celebrated their much wonted anniversary in the evening along with their two loving kids, Brij and Shaloo. First, they feasted upon the aforementioned specially ordered chocolate cake and followed it up by whetting their appetite to the maximum on the candle lit dinner, which had several courses, of course, all of them purely vegetarian and only soft drinks and fresh fruit juices.  

Coming to the T-20 format now; while, the reduced number of overs makes the game finish within three hours and the spectators get to watch all their favorite players in one go as also the outcome, we shall also have to say that the T-20 format of cricket suits the batsmen more than the bowlers, who are just left hapless and literally at the mercy of the former. Another valid point is that from a pure connoisseur’s point of view, T-20 is a very poor format and it has adversely affected (of course, along with one day cricket to a lesser extent, though) Test cricket too, which sometime back was his sublime delight.  

Before I round off this first part of the story and the narration, a word about T-20 tourneys like IPL. On the negative side, they have commercialized the game no end. But, the positive point is that many youngsters get to play with their seniors, not to speak of some of their role models as well, as also earn some decent money in the process.  

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Women Quotes

Official Website: Women Quotes

  • A godly man is never threatened by the gifts of a godly woman. – Rick Warren • A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. Thats basic spelling that every woman ought to know. – Mistinguett • A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot. – Gina Lollobrigida • A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon. – Arnold Haultain • A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. – D. H. Lawrence • A woman in love is a very poor judge of character. – J. G. Holland • A woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. – William Shakespeare • A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows. – Nicolas Chamfort • A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man. – Henri Frederic Amiel • A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty. – William Shakespeare • A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult. – Melinda Gates • A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. – Jane Austen • A woman’s counsel brought us first to woe, And made her man his paradise forego, Where at heart’s ease he liv’d; and might have been As free from sorrow as he was from sin. – John Dryden • A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty. – Rudyard Kipling • A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts. – George Eliot • A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman’s eyes; for God himself sits behind them. – J. G. Holland • All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women. – Voltaire • America is a land where men govern, but women rule. – John Mason Brown • An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms. – Salvador Dali • An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a false woman is one who is already in love with another person; a fickle woman is she who neither knows whom she loves nor whether she loves or not; and the indifferent woman, one who does not love at all. – Jean de la Bruyere • Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget. – Robert Jordan • As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart. – Washington Irving

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Prodcut', keywords: 'Women', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_women').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_women img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be not ashamed women, … You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul. – Walt Whitman • Being a woman is hard work. – Maya Angelou • But what is woman? Only one of nature’s agreeable blunders. – Abraham Cowley • But woman’s grief is like a summer storm, Short as it violent is. – Joanna Baillie

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• Christ has lifted woman to a new place in the world. And just in proportion as Christianity has sway, will she rise to a higher dignity in human life. What she has now, and what she shall have, of privilege and true honor, she owes to that gospel which took those qualities peculiarly and which had been counted weak and unworthy, and gave them a Divine glory in Christ. – Herrick Johnson • Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak. – William Shakespeare • Don’t wait for the good woman. She doesn’t exist. – Charles Bukowski • Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman. – Coco Chanel • Even the most powerful woman needs a place to unwind. – Barbara Taylor Bradford • Every woman deserves a man to ruin her lipstick, not her mascara – Charlotte Tilbury • Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything. – Paris Hilton • Every woman wants a man who’ll fall in love with her soul as well as her body. – Rainbow Rowell • Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche, more profound than anything Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking. – Polly Toynbee • Feminism’s agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to ‘choose’ between public justice and private happiness. – Susan Faludi • For the nature of a women is closely allied to art. [Ger., Denn das Naturell der Frauen Ist so nah mit Kunst verwandt.] – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women. – Elizabeth Blackwell • God in his harmony has equal ends For cedar that resists and reed that bends; For good it is a woman sometimes rules, Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools, And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud, With gentle voice and smiles she leads the crowd, The somber human troop. – Victor Hugo • Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything. – Anita Brookner • Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress. – Helen Clark • Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge. – Honore de Balzac • Here’s all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. – George Carlin • Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life. – Friedrich Schiller • I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberatorsthey fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What’s to be ashamed of? – Barbra Streisand • I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I’m a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other. – Paulo Coelho • I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend. – Helen Reddy • I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand. – Susan B. Anthony • I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce. – Margaret Mead • I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. – Mary Wollstonecraft • I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child. – Joseph Campbell • I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man. – George Meredith • I guess at the end of the day, all women like to be appreciated and treated with respect and kindness. – Sofia Vergara • I hate women because they always know where things are. – Voltaire • I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. – Arthur Conan Doyle • I like being a woman, even in a man’s world. After all, men can’t wear dresses, but we can wear the pants. – Whitney Houston • I like men who have a future and women who have a past. – Oscar Wilde • I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same. – Iris Murdoch • I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I’ve always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband. – Little Richard • I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. – Audre Lorde • I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose That blossoms in the garden of the King. – Elsa Barker • If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers. – W. Somerset Maugham • If a woman hasn’t got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she’s a dry stick as a rule. – D. H. Lawrence • If a woman shows too often the Medusa’s head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself. – Kris Kristofferson • If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman. – Henry Ward Beecher • If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business. – Gail Dines • If women ran the world, we wouldn’t have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days. – Robin Williams • I’m just a person trapped inside a woman’s body. – Elayne Boosler • I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men. – George Eliot • In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs. – Francois Truffaut • In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk. – Elizabeth Bowen • Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate? – Germaine Greer • It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal. – George Eliot • It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty. – Victor Hugo • It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating. – Katharine Hepburn • It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union…. Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less – Susan B. Anthony • It’s called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again. – Orson Scott Card • It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. – Tallulah Bankhead • Let a woman have her place, because as you provide foundation for her, she provides a foundation for you. And through that vulnerability comes strength. – Shemar Moore • Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent… the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. – Susan B. Anthony • Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. – Khaled Hosseini • Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul, Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee, Bright’ning each other! thou art all divine! – Joseph Addison • Man is the only animal that strikes his women-folk. – Jeannie Gunn • Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection. – Alphonse de Lamartine • Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves. – Samuel Johnson • Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed. – Albert Einstein • Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another. – H. L. Mencken • Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother. – Susan B. Anthony • Most women have no characters at all. – Alexander Pope • Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him. – Marlene Dietrich • Never expect women to be sincere, so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please. – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach • Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living. – Mary McLeod Bethune • No man who respects his mother or loves his sister, can speak disparagingly of any woman; however low she may seem to have sunk, she is still a woman. I want every man to remember this. Every woman is, or, at some time, has been a sister or daughter. – Victoria Woodhull • No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech. – Kin Hubbard • No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it. – Barbara Mertz • O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile: So have all sages said, all poets sung. – Jean Ingelow • O woman, born first to believe us; Yea, also born first to forget; Born first to betray and deceive us, Yet first to repent and regret. – Joaquin Miller • Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, a herb most bruised is woman. – Euripides • Oh woman! lovely woman! nature made thee To temper man; we had been brutes without you; Angels are painted fair to look like you; There’s in you all that we believe of heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love. – Thomas Otway • Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. – Daniel Handler • Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume. – Heinrich Heine • Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible. – Leo Tolstoy • Sensibility is the power of woman. – Johann Kaspar Lavater • She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression. – C. S. Lewis • So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women. – Harriet Beecher Stowe • Social science affirms that a woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton • Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can’t be fooled by the same man in the same way more than half of the time. – Helen Rowland • Sure God created man before woman, but then again you always make a rough draft before creating the final masterpiece. – Robert Bloch • Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. – Mary Wollstonecraft • That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them. – Dorothy Parker • The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.- Susan B. Anthony • The economic dependence of women is perhaps the greatest injustice that has been done to us, and has worked the greatest injury to the race. – Nellie L. McClung • The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge. – Gelett Burgess • The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’ – Sigmund Freud • The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it! – Nathaniel Hawthorne • The life of woman is full of woe, Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy, no, not one! – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • The majority of women have no principles of their own; they are guided by the heart, and depend for their own conduct, upon that of the men they love. – Jean de la Bruyere • The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. – Oscar Wilde • The role of women in the development of society is of utmost importance. In fact, it is the only thing that determines whether a society is strong and harmonious, or otherwise. Women are the backbone of society. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar • The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology. – Sigmund Freud • The taste forever refines in the study of women. – Nathaniel Parker Willis • The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. – Roseanne Barr • The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood. – Mary McLeod Bethune • The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. – Virginia Woolf • The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed. – Edna O’Brien • The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men;… and why, on the contrary, they are inferior to men as regards justice, and less honourable and conscientious. – Arthur Schopenhauer • The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity. – Margaret D. Nadauld • The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau • The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other women’s. – Diane de Poitiers • There are few women whose charm survives their beauty. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld • There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured. – Oscar Wilde • There are only two types of women – goddesses and doormats. – Pablo Picasso • There aren’t any hard women, only soft men. – Raquel Welch • There is a place you can touch a woman that will drive her crazy. Her heart. – Melanie Griffith • There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. – Madeleine Albright • There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise. – Martin Luther • Thou art a woman, And that is saying the best and worst of thee. – Philip James Bailey • To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly. – Denis Diderot • Until women assume their rightful place on earth there will never be an end to wars, cruelty and oppression. – Frederick Lenz • We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. – Susan B. Anthony • We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton • We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free. – Kavita Ramdas • We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home. – Rosalyn Sussman Yalow • We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. – Margaret Atwood • What mighty ills have not been done by woman! Who was’t betray’d the Capitol? A woman; Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman; Who was the cause of a long ten years’ war, And laid at last old Troy is ashes? Woman; Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman! – Thomas Otway • What mighty woes To thy imperial race from woman rose. – Homer • What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. – Mark Twain • When a woman behaves like a man why doesn’t she behave like a nice man? – Edith Evans • When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. – W. Somerset Maugham • When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, “Do what you like now.” – Leo Tolstoy • When you look fear in the face, you are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ – Eleanor Roosevelt • When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are. – Laurie Anderson • Where there is a woman there is magic. – Ntozake Shange • Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women? – Virginia Woolf • Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. – Honore de Balzac • Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse. – Leo Tolstoy • Woman is superlative; the best leader in life, the best guide in happy days, the best consoler in sorrow. – Johann Gottfried Seume • Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity. – Mahatma Gandhi • Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights. – John Todd • Woman’s degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton • Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity. – Henry Ward Beecher • Women are always beautiful. – Ville Valo • Women are more powerful than they think. A mother’s warmth is the essence of motivation. If we could liquefy the encouragement, care and compassion we deliver to our children it would surely fill an expanse greater than the Pacific. – Louise Burfitt-Dons • Women are most adorable when they are afraid; that’s why they frighten so easily. – Ludwig Borne • Women are most fascinating between the ages of 35 and 40 after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves. Since few women ever pass 40, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely. – Christian Dior • Women are nothing but machines for producing children. – Napoleon Bonaparte • Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long. The number of women prepared to stand up for what they really think, feel, experience, with a man they are in love with is still very small. – Doris Lessing • Women don’t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think – in a deeper voice. – Bill Cosby • Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights. – Thomas Chandler Haliburton • Women govern us; let us render them perfect: the more they are enlightened, so much the more shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men. – Richard Brinsley Sheridan • Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile, They will, they will not; fools that on them trust; For in their speech is death, hell in their smile. [It., Femmina e cosa garrula e fallace: Vuole e disvuole, e folle uom chi sen fida, Si tra se volge.] – Torquato Tasso • Women may fall when there’s no strength in men. – William Shakespeare • Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor. – Coco Chanel • Women need to become literary “criminals,” break the literary laws and reinvent their own, because the established laws prevent women from presenting the reality of their lives. – Kathy Acker • Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day. – Arsene Houssaye • Women only nag when they feel unappreciated. – Louis de Bernieres • Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do. – Dorothy Day • You can’t beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don’t even try to. – William Faulkner • You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation. – Brigham Young • You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. – Erica Jong • You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly. – George Bernard Shaw • You’re only a man! You’ve not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory! – Georgette Heyer

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[equitiesstocks]

Women Quotes

Official Website: Women Quotes

  • A godly man is never threatened by the gifts of a godly woman. – Rick Warren • A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. Thats basic spelling that every woman ought to know. – Mistinguett • A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot. – Gina Lollobrigida • A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon. – Arnold Haultain • A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. – D. H. Lawrence • A woman in love is a very poor judge of character. – J. G. Holland • A woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. – William Shakespeare • A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows. – Nicolas Chamfort • A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man. – Henri Frederic Amiel • A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty. – William Shakespeare • A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult. – Melinda Gates • A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. – Jane Austen • A woman’s counsel brought us first to woe, And made her man his paradise forego, Where at heart’s ease he liv’d; and might have been As free from sorrow as he was from sin. – John Dryden • A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty. – Rudyard Kipling • A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts. – George Eliot • A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman’s eyes; for God himself sits behind them. – J. G. Holland • All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women. – Voltaire • America is a land where men govern, but women rule. – John Mason Brown • An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms. – Salvador Dali • An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a false woman is one who is already in love with another person; a fickle woman is she who neither knows whom she loves nor whether she loves or not; and the indifferent woman, one who does not love at all. – Jean de la Bruyere • Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget. – Robert Jordan • As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart. – Washington Irving

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Prodcut', keywords: 'Women', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_women').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_women img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be not ashamed women, … You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul. – Walt Whitman • Being a woman is hard work. – Maya Angelou • But what is woman? Only one of nature’s agreeable blunders. – Abraham Cowley • But woman’s grief is like a summer storm, Short as it violent is. – Joanna Baillie

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• Christ has lifted woman to a new place in the world. And just in proportion as Christianity has sway, will she rise to a higher dignity in human life. What she has now, and what she shall have, of privilege and true honor, she owes to that gospel which took those qualities peculiarly and which had been counted weak and unworthy, and gave them a Divine glory in Christ. – Herrick Johnson • Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak. – William Shakespeare • Don’t wait for the good woman. She doesn’t exist. – Charles Bukowski • Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman. – Coco Chanel • Even the most powerful woman needs a place to unwind. – Barbara Taylor Bradford • Every woman deserves a man to ruin her lipstick, not her mascara – Charlotte Tilbury • Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything. – Paris Hilton • Every woman wants a man who’ll fall in love with her soul as well as her body. – Rainbow Rowell • Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche, more profound than anything Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking. – Polly Toynbee • Feminism’s agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to ‘choose’ between public justice and private happiness. – Susan Faludi • For the nature of a women is closely allied to art. [Ger., Denn das Naturell der Frauen Ist so nah mit Kunst verwandt.] – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women. – Elizabeth Blackwell • God in his harmony has equal ends For cedar that resists and reed that bends; For good it is a woman sometimes rules, Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools, And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud, With gentle voice and smiles she leads the crowd, The somber human troop. – Victor Hugo • Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything. – Anita Brookner • Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress. – Helen Clark • Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge. – Honore de Balzac • Here’s all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. – George Carlin • Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life. – Friedrich Schiller • I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberatorsthey fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What’s to be ashamed of? – Barbra Streisand • I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I’m a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other. – Paulo Coelho • I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend. – Helen Reddy • I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand. – Susan B. Anthony • I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce. – Margaret Mead • I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. – Mary Wollstonecraft • I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child. – Joseph Campbell • I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man. – George Meredith • I guess at the end of the day, all women like to be appreciated and treated with respect and kindness. – Sofia Vergara • I hate women because they always know where things are. – Voltaire • I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. – Arthur Conan Doyle • I like being a woman, even in a man’s world. After all, men can’t wear dresses, but we can wear the pants. – Whitney Houston • I like men who have a future and women who have a past. – Oscar Wilde • I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same. – Iris Murdoch • I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I’ve always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband. – Little Richard • I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. – Audre Lorde • I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose That blossoms in the garden of the King. – Elsa Barker • If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers. – W. Somerset Maugham • If a woman hasn’t got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she’s a dry stick as a rule. – D. H. Lawrence • If a woman shows too often the Medusa’s head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself. – Kris Kristofferson • If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman. – Henry Ward Beecher • If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business. – Gail Dines • If women ran the world, we wouldn’t have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days. – Robin Williams • I’m just a person trapped inside a woman’s body. – Elayne Boosler • I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men. – George Eliot • In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs. – Francois Truffaut • In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk. – Elizabeth Bowen • Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate? – Germaine Greer • It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal. – George Eliot • It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty. – Victor Hugo • It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating. – Katharine Hepburn • It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union…. Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less – Susan B. Anthony • It’s called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again. – Orson Scott Card • It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. – Tallulah Bankhead • Let a woman have her place, because as you provide foundation for her, she provides a foundation for you. And through that vulnerability comes strength. – Shemar Moore • Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent… the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. – Susan B. Anthony • Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. – Khaled Hosseini • Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul, Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee, Bright’ning each other! thou art all divine! – Joseph Addison • Man is the only animal that strikes his women-folk. – Jeannie Gunn • Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection. – Alphonse de Lamartine • Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves. – Samuel Johnson • Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed. – Albert Einstein • Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another. – H. L. Mencken • Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother. – Susan B. Anthony • Most women have no characters at all. – Alexander Pope • Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him. – Marlene Dietrich • Never expect women to be sincere, so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please. – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach • Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living. – Mary McLeod Bethune • No man who respects his mother or loves his sister, can speak disparagingly of any woman; however low she may seem to have sunk, she is still a woman. I want every man to remember this. Every woman is, or, at some time, has been a sister or daughter. – Victoria Woodhull • No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech. – Kin Hubbard • No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it. – Barbara Mertz • O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile: So have all sages said, all poets sung. – Jean Ingelow • O woman, born first to believe us; Yea, also born first to forget; Born first to betray and deceive us, Yet first to repent and regret. – Joaquin Miller • Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, a herb most bruised is woman. – Euripides • Oh woman! lovely woman! nature made thee To temper man; we had been brutes without you; Angels are painted fair to look like you; There’s in you all that we believe of heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love. – Thomas Otway • Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. – Daniel Handler • Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume. – Heinrich Heine • Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible. – Leo Tolstoy • Sensibility is the power of woman. – Johann Kaspar Lavater • She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression. – C. S. Lewis • So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women. – Harriet Beecher Stowe • Social science affirms that a woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton • Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can’t be fooled by the same man in the same way more than half of the time. – Helen Rowland • Sure God created man before woman, but then again you always make a rough draft before creating the final masterpiece. – Robert Bloch • Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. – Mary Wollstonecraft • That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them. – Dorothy Parker • The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.- Susan B. Anthony • The economic dependence of women is perhaps the greatest injustice that has been done to us, and has worked the greatest injury to the race. – Nellie L. McClung • The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge. – Gelett Burgess • The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’ – Sigmund Freud • The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it! – Nathaniel Hawthorne • The life of woman is full of woe, Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy, no, not one! – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • The majority of women have no principles of their own; they are guided by the heart, and depend for their own conduct, upon that of the men they love. – Jean de la Bruyere • The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. – Oscar Wilde • The role of women in the development of society is of utmost importance. In fact, it is the only thing that determines whether a society is strong and harmonious, or otherwise. Women are the backbone of society. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar • The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology. – Sigmund Freud • The taste forever refines in the study of women. – Nathaniel Parker Willis • The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. – Roseanne Barr • The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood. – Mary McLeod Bethune • The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. – Virginia Woolf • The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed. – Edna O’Brien • The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men;… and why, on the contrary, they are inferior to men as regards justice, and less honourable and conscientious. – Arthur Schopenhauer • The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity. – Margaret D. Nadauld • The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau • The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other women’s. – Diane de Poitiers • There are few women whose charm survives their beauty. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld • There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured. – Oscar Wilde • There are only two types of women – goddesses and doormats. – Pablo Picasso • There aren’t any hard women, only soft men. – Raquel Welch • There is a place you can touch a woman that will drive her crazy. Her heart. – Melanie Griffith • There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. – Madeleine Albright • There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise. – Martin Luther • Thou art a woman, And that is saying the best and worst of thee. – Philip James Bailey • To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly. – Denis Diderot • Until women assume their rightful place on earth there will never be an end to wars, cruelty and oppression. – Frederick Lenz • We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. – Susan B. Anthony • We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton • We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free. – Kavita Ramdas • We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home. – Rosalyn Sussman Yalow • We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. – Margaret Atwood • What mighty ills have not been done by woman! Who was’t betray’d the Capitol? A woman; Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman; Who was the cause of a long ten years’ war, And laid at last old Troy is ashes? Woman; Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman! – Thomas Otway • What mighty woes To thy imperial race from woman rose. – Homer • What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. – Mark Twain • When a woman behaves like a man why doesn’t she behave like a nice man? – Edith Evans • When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. – W. Somerset Maugham • When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, “Do what you like now.” – Leo Tolstoy • When you look fear in the face, you are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ – Eleanor Roosevelt • When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are. – Laurie Anderson • Where there is a woman there is magic. – Ntozake Shange • Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women? – Virginia Woolf • Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. – Honore de Balzac • Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse. – Leo Tolstoy • Woman is superlative; the best leader in life, the best guide in happy days, the best consoler in sorrow. – Johann Gottfried Seume • Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity. – Mahatma Gandhi • Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights. – John Todd • Woman’s degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton • Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity. – Henry Ward Beecher • Women are always beautiful. – Ville Valo • Women are more powerful than they think. A mother’s warmth is the essence of motivation. If we could liquefy the encouragement, care and compassion we deliver to our children it would surely fill an expanse greater than the Pacific. – Louise Burfitt-Dons • Women are most adorable when they are afraid; that’s why they frighten so easily. – Ludwig Borne • Women are most fascinating between the ages of 35 and 40 after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves. Since few women ever pass 40, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely. – Christian Dior • Women are nothing but machines for producing children. – Napoleon Bonaparte • Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long. The number of women prepared to stand up for what they really think, feel, experience, with a man they are in love with is still very small. – Doris Lessing • Women don’t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think – in a deeper voice. – Bill Cosby • Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights. – Thomas Chandler Haliburton • Women govern us; let us render them perfect: the more they are enlightened, so much the more shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men. – Richard Brinsley Sheridan • Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile, They will, they will not; fools that on them trust; For in their speech is death, hell in their smile. [It., Femmina e cosa garrula e fallace: Vuole e disvuole, e folle uom chi sen fida, Si tra se volge.] – Torquato Tasso • Women may fall when there’s no strength in men. – William Shakespeare • Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor. – Coco Chanel • Women need to become literary “criminals,” break the literary laws and reinvent their own, because the established laws prevent women from presenting the reality of their lives. – Kathy Acker • Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day. – Arsene Houssaye • Women only nag when they feel unappreciated. – Louis de Bernieres • Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do. – Dorothy Day • You can’t beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don’t even try to. – William Faulkner • You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation. – Brigham Young • You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. – Erica Jong • You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly. – George Bernard Shaw • You’re only a man! You’ve not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory! – Georgette Heyer

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

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[orenbeval-blog]

Rosie Watson’s Diary Fri.22/02/2030 (part 2)

Ooooookay. Let’s concentrate. This is DEADLY serious matter.

Kiara, skype-Yifan (for 30 minutes, waiting for Henry to arrive) and I were thinking very hard about WHAT and HOW to ask Janine.

As I said… DEADLY serious.

So far we have come up with four questions :

- Since when are you a beekeeper ?

- Why have you decided to become a beekeeper ?

- What do you need to become a beekeeper ?

- Could you describe a typical day of yours ? (well, it has to look like an essay)

“Well, maybe we could tell this a start ?“

Kiara looked unconvinced. And anyway, Henry did just arrive so Yifan had to leave. So it was just the both of us left.

“What about asking Harry or Irene Adler ?“

“Well Yifan told us we should be careful about what we ask from whom…“

“Ah yes, that’s right.“

“However, we might ask them and see what we get for an answer and… that may help us to find new questions…“

“Ooooooookay. Let’s do it.“

I took my phone and sent a text message :

18:35 – Hello !

18:37 – Oh, Junior. Again.

18:38 – Who is Janine Hawkins ? How come Sherlock proposed to her ?

18:39 – Christ. Not that crap again…

18:40 – So you know her ?

18:40 - Should I ?

18:41 - Whatever. So you know Harry ?

18:41 – Here we are… never trust the Deaf woman…

18:41 – Wow ! That’s not nice to say ! (Kiara wrote this before I could actually take my phone back...)

18:42 –  Junior, I am not nice. Thought you would have noticed by now.

18:43 – Anyway, how did you meet her ?

18:44 – Who ?

18:44 - HARRY !

18:44 - Relax, Junior, no need for shouting, I’m not the Deaf one... Through the Hooper girl, who else ? TCould have deduced this by yourself, really.

18:44 – Er… what ?! O_o !

18:46 – Well, as it appears, and as you already know, aroud your birth both of your Dads had a rough time. It seems that I was on team Sherlock while Harry happened to be on team John. It seems that we both got somehow the same idea around the same time and both considered the Hooper girl to be „neutral ground“. And she just… connected the wires and it worked.

18:49 – How exactly ?

18:51 – Actually, it was nice that the Landlagy got involved too at some point… sometimes it seems to be quite useful to have an actual voice being able to shout some sense into someone, especially if that very someone is not interested in listening.

18:52- What are you talking about ?

18:53 – Well, I also think you were a pretty strong argument… and the Hooper girl, quite surprisingly, used that argument very well. I guess her Officer girlfriend helped a bit.

18:55 – What…

18:56 – What I am trying to tell you ist hat your two stupid Dads are lucky to be surrounded by such an amazing bunch of good willing and patient women. That’s when you feel who knows how to lead a battle and who doesn’t.

Keira was as perplex as I was.

18:56 - ...

19:00 – Some people are born in this world in a position from which they have to fight to achieve something. ANYTHING. No choice : fight or die. The one who survive and achieve something are fighters. They are born fighters. On the other hand, some people are born into a position in which they don’t have to fight (I mean FIGHT) for anything. Those are broken by the very first obstacle. With all respect I have for both of your Dads… they were no fighters. Never had to fight (I mean FIGHT) to achieve something. So… their first real fight was about each other. Both of them, in their late thirties, suddenly discovered that as soon one does not belong to the established norm anymore, one has to fight REALLY hard to actually get the chance to reach happiness. Well… they obviously were both overwhelmed. So… we stepped in.

19:08 – Because you knew how to fight ?

19:10 – Junior… most women are born fighters.

Kiara looked at that text with amazement. She very quickly wrote several words down on a paper. I was far more sceptical.

19:11 – Er… okay…? I don’t know… isn’t this a bit… extreme ?

19:12 – Have you read those books you got from the Landlady ?

19:14 – Harry actually thinks I might be too young fort hem.

19:15 – Well… try to read them, otherwise it seems pretty hard to tell. At your age… I was reading Tobi Vail‘s and Kathleen Hanna’s Jigsaw zine and other stuff… and was completely able to understand all of it. So, if I was able to understand Bikini Kill’s and Bratmobile’s shouting, you should be able to understand Judith Butler’s writing.

19:16 – Actually, Kate’s opinion on the matter is that I was more 15 than 13 at that time… I don’t know anymore. Maybe.

This didn’t make the slightest sense to me, as usual. A conversation with Irene Adler was always soooo exhausting... Always talking about some sociologistic shit I never really cared about. But Kiara seemed.

19:17 – Whatever.

19:17 - You told me Sherlock was a gay man… how come he proposed to Janine ?

19:18 – Wrong person, Junior. Those were times where your Sherlock Dad and I weren’t very close.

19:18 – But you knew/know her ?

19:20 – She was in the newspapers, all over the place. Had a bit of a hat fetish if you ask me.

19:21 – That’s soooooo easy !!!!!!!!!!! Cheater !!!!

Of course, there was no response after that. But Kiara took good notice of „Tobi Vail“, “Kathleen Hanna” and „Bikini Kill“. She promised she would look those up.

We were talking about writing to Harry when suddenly someone knocked at my door : Sherlock.

Of course he had noticed that Kiara was here and wasn’t surprised to find her in my room. Somehow, he looked shy.      

“Evening Watson, evening Kiara. John is on his way, he had an emergency to take care of that’s why he is coming home late. I put some rice in boiling water and bought some of those tofu sausages you seem to particularly enjoy… they are curently frying in a pan. I guess diner will be ready in about ten minutes. Would you mind seting the table while I just get down to buy some cake for dessert ?”

[rkatz-rkatz]

An Email I Probably Won’t Send My Professor

Dear Professor,

As you are no doubt aware, I did not attend the last month of your class. I probably owe you an explanation of my behaviour. In fact, such an explanation is long overdue, and I apologize for having let so much time pass. Please understand that I have no skill or experience talking about strong negative emotion. In fact, during the course of debating whether or not to send this email I tried to think of a single instance in which I dealt with my feelings by talking about them, and I could not think of any. Even that time my senior year of undergrad, when my father had a cancer scare - did I tell any of my friends about that? I don’t remember. I don’t think I did. What I do remember is being awake in the middle of the night, sobbing with both hands over my mouth so nobody could hear me. I didn’t want them to walk in. I didn’t want them to see me. I deal with my feelings alone.

Nonetheless, I owe you an explanation. It’s the right thing to do, I think, even though it’s not easy. I am well versed in all sorts of cowardice but not, I hope, when it comes down to a choice between what is easy and what is right.

I have an anxiety disorder.

There. That’s the reason. Now you know. There’s still a lot I don’t understand about my anxiety, but I do know that one thing likely to trigger it is to be under observation in situations that I feel I cannot control or manipulate. Under observation - for example in a class of only five people, all of whom know about me but do not know me; in a situation that I cannot control or manipulate - for example, being by far the worst Japanese conversationalist in the room, the automatic loser in any verbal sparring match. I should have seen this coming. It took me five years in the US to learn how to bullshit my way through small talk without risking a panic attack, and that was in English.

Well, hindsight is 20/20, as I’m sure you’ll agree. We were talking about the present. At present, my anxiety disorder peoples my day-to-day life with Goliaths, and my slingshot arm is so tired. I am so tired of fighting all the time. Attending your class meant days of dread leading up to it, and days of regret after. It meant sleeping badly the night before. It meant locking myself in the bathroom and listening to music to calm myself down before and after every session. It meant having to play psychological tricks on myself: get there half an hour early so you can’t chicken out at the last minute. Alternatively, get there just as the bell rings so that no one tries to talk to you, and be the first to leave. My hands would shake for those ninety minutes. I would sweat with nerves.

I know. It doesn’t sound any less pathetic to me. So maybe it comes as no surprise that I gave up. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I gave in? There’s something very empowering, I’ve found, about letting go. At the end of the day, it was a strategic decision. I did it out of self-preservation.

You see, my anxiety has been getting worse for the past three years. In those three years I’ve done things by the book: pushing through my anxiety, forcing myself into situations that make me uncomfortable. Exposure therapy, it’s called. The thing is that according to the book, exposure therapy works because, supposedly, you discover that things never turn out as bad in real life as your anxiety thinks they will. That’s not true for me. They’re always worse. I guess despite everything I still have a pretty inflated opinion of myself and my ability to handle things. So even though I’ve been pushing and pushing and pushing myself this whole time, the Goliaths are growing and there’s more of them, and now I’m afraid that what I’m pushing myself towards is a precipine.

Anxiety is a 2-for-1 deal and I’ve got the accompanying depression, but I’ve been pretty lucky in that so far, overall, it manifests mostly as dissociation and memory loss. Not self-loathing. I still quite like myself. There have been more grey years than otherwise, true, but at least none of them have been black. But I like myself a little less every year, so how long will that hold true? Forget Goliath, that one’s Godzilla.

So I changed tactics. It seemed like the logical thing to do. Maybe this, too, counts as a kind of exposure therapy. After all, there’s nothing I hate more than showing myself to be in less than perfect control, and it’s pretty clear now that I’ve gone off the rails. Hopefully it works this time. I’m cautiously optimistic. It feels like it’s working. I probably like myself more right now than I have for the past three years.

That’s the pro, so here, have a con: I’m on a scholarship. This scholarship could be taken away. I re-read the contract I signed at the beginning of the school year, and for not attending classes in the courses I’m registered in, I could be fined. I could be kicked off the program. Think that’s the scary part? No, the scary part is that I made the decision to skip class more than a month ago, and I only remembered about the contract yesterday.

What the fuck! My grasp of reality is so tenuous. Do other people struggle this hard to anchor themselves to the real world?

At this point I may just be making excuses, but please, Professor, hear me out. I am almost twenty-four years old. I move a lot, so I make a lot of new connections, and then I move again, and I have to let those connections slip through my fingers. Over and over. Rinse and repeat. Nearly twenty-four years, and every single meaningful relationship in my life is long-distance. You understand, don’t you, how that might take a psychological toll? Other people aren’t always very real to me. They’re short-term, and then they’re phone numbers. Obviously I don’t really believe that, but what else can I do, other than compartmentalize? How else will I be able to tell myself, every time, to open my arms, let them go, say goodbye, smile while you say it, don’t cry, turn around, start walking, don’t look back, don’t look back, you know from experience that if you look back you’ll forget to move forward. It’s not fair! Other people get to keep people they care about in their lives - why don’t I?

Warum, warum - warum ist die Banane krumm? As my Oma used to say when I asked stupid questions as a child. I’m being juvenile, I apologize. But the fact of the matter is, sometimes it feels like there’s very little to tether me to my immediate surroundings. What goes on inside my head invariably feels more real than what goes on outside it. I’ve considered the problem of my anxiety from every angle and come to what I still consider the best solution - for myself only, disregarding all other variables, and that’s the problem isn’t it, because the other variables do not disregard me. I’ve composed this email to you so many times mentally that I need to actively remind myself that nothing has actually changed, that I still need to take responsibility in the real world.

The other problem with dissociation as a coping mechanism is that, as I mentioned earlier, it’s also one of the symptoms of my depression. So who’s steering this boat: me or my broken brain? There’s a part of me that’s been watching me ignore my classes, read, write, exercise, draw, practice guitar - doing the things, in other words, that make me into a version of myself that I actually like - and wringing her hands, yelling WHAT ARE YOU DOING???

Which one’s the real me? I’d like to think it’s the one who’s reading and writing. She feels familiar, like the version of me that I was in the years that weren’t quite so grey. She also feels stronger. A version of me, finally, that looms large enough in my mind to take on all the Goliaths. Compared to her, the me that dithers and wrings her hands is small and, well … anxious.

On the other hand, giant me has her head in the clouds. Giant me might get me kicked out of my program, and while that’s not the end of the world, she’ll have to figure out how to survive without her academic resources. I’d have to reinvent myself. Again. And I’m so tired of new starts.

I guess what I’m asking for, Professor, is a little understanding and patience while I figure myself out. Actually - to be honest, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t really need your understanding OR your patience. Who I become is my decision, and technically none of your business.

False start. What I’m asking for instead is your forgiveness. I was rude. I shouldn’t have skipped your class without a word in the first place, and the whole month I’ve been debating whether or not to say anything, and how to say it, and how much to say, I’ve been resenting you for putting me in a position where I feel that I have to confess anything at all, when in reality all the decisions that brought me here were my own. That, too, I apologize for.

I don’t care about the grade. I’d prefer to stay on the scholarship, though I understand that you might disagree. I learned a lot in your class this semester, despite the anxiety. Thank you for everything.