Indoctrination -–A Handy Reference

1. You were born in sin.

2. You must live in perpetual guilt.

3. Love your parents. Feel dizzy with gratitude that they brought you into the world.

4. Your life is not yours for the taking. If it sucks, tough luck. Suck it up.

5. There is a higher power who watches over you. He is called God. His name is ___ *insert Yahweh/Vishnu/Allah/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Eris as applicable*

6. You cannot see him because he lives in Heaven. You don’t need to see him to know he lives there; you just need to think he does.

7. Be meek. The more bovine you are the more your chances of getting a ticket to Heaven.

8. Heaven is up above and Hell is down below

9. People who live up North are better

10. Listen to parents and teachers

11. Don’t talk back

12. Respect mankind (womankind optional)

13. Women must bear children.

14. Women must also devote their life to raising children

15. Don’t touch yourself there. It’s a disgusting part of your body.

16. Pleasure is sin

17. Sex? I don’t know what you are talking about

18. Men can pee standing up. So they are better

19. Men do not have wombs. So they don’t have to worry about getting knocked up. So they can walk alone in the night. So they are better

20. Women are meant to have wombs so they can reproduce. That’s the primary responsibility of a woman

21. Family is everything

22. Marry.

23. The cool ones marry only for love.

24. Stay married. Love is not a requisite

25. Make children as soon as you get married or when the marriage is about to fall apart, so you will stay married for their sake

26. A woman feels fulfilled when she is pregnant. And no, it’s not a gastric feeling of fullness.

27. If you don’t have children, your life is empty

28. Fuck for pleasure? You might as well fuck for money.

29. Whores are bad.

30. Men are tempted easily. Women’s bodies ought to be fully covered so as not to arouse unholy passions

31. All fleshly passions are unholy

32. Love your country

33. Kill for your country

34. Patriotism is a virtue. It’s like religion. Do not question.

35. Kill the enemy. Only the bravest of the brave can do that

36. Homosexuals are deviant

37. So are transvestites

38. Depending on your nationality and religious beliefs, animal excreta becomes sacred. So does an erect penis.

39. No, dildos can’t be worshipped.

40. Indulge a woman but not to the point where she gets the better of a man

41. If she does, blame it on PMS and suggest she is confused and that her thinking is muddled

42. Screw around, have fun. Just make sure you choose the right religion which either condones screwing around or which purges all sins through confession

43. People who use big words are more intelligent. They are better.

44. 36-24-36

45. Size zero

46. Size does matter

47. Give it to the sluts asking for it. They should know better than to provoke.

48. A husband is the most prized possession of a wife

49. A son is the most prized possession of a man

50. Be grateful for your life.

and so on and so forth…

IgnoRantus

Just as I reach the crescendo of fretting about gender play at work and the related dynamics I hear about the New Zealand bird called Kea. Keas are clever birds that bend rules and create their own to adapt to the constantly changing world. The strategy seems fair, but unless it is tried and tested in a particular work environment one can never tell. It’s tough being a woman at work. And an ambitious one at that. An ambitious woman is almost an oxymoron. How dare she be ambitious? Does she not care for her husband and children? Does she not know what is good for her? These are not openly proclaimed, but implied in every deed and word.

The very fact of being female closes political doors, I am completely at a loss as to decipher the hieroglyphics on the walls or to decode secret languages. I am rudely shoved into unfamiliar terrain, nobody sympathises because this is what is in store for ambitious women. A young male is equally a novice in office politics but is clued on earlier into the dynamics of male interrelationship because that is what, unfortunately for me, a present day workplace largely is.

I am picking up, though. And fast. In time I fear I will be so much an expert at playing slick smooth political games that I might end up hating myself. A large part of career progression is about histrionics. Men do that, women hesitate to do that - I think. Arse licking is something that men do discreetly, going out for a drink with the boss and doing small and big favours for him and generally getting to know him socially and collectively leching at other women, which form the cornerstone of male camaraderie and bonding. Women are denied that window of opportunity to interact thus. Those who do go out for a drink with the boys run the risk of being seen as easy and willing to sleep to the top. And though one may care two hoots about what others think, such an image is a sure fire way to career suicide. If one is serious about reaching the policy making levels, ie.

I do not know if I am ever going to reach the policy making levels. I am not happy with the trillion restrictions I place on myself, but when I try to think outside of those restrictions my mind screams at me to get a life. The very notion of being a servile, sycophantic hyena who gnaws on discarded bones to start with and just waits for an opportunity to ease into the charmed inner circle of the jungle king is anathema to my soul. Career is slavery. You are a slave to all the bosses, but you swallow your ego for the paycheque and for the sake of future opportunities, and take it out on your subordinates when it gets too much. And therefore the restrictions that cut blood flow to my normal real person life for the sake of a career seem meaningless and soul selling. I do not know if men feel this way at all. Or are men so conditioned as to ignore such things at work? Just as women are conditioned to compromise and adjust? And maybe such conditioning is good?

We don't need no Freedom of Expression

O Great Spotted Arses of Elected Representatives, Fart on us kindly, give us only what our tiny brains can process, for our heads are full of shit and we don’t think, receptacles for your bowel movements that we are. We are unable to distinguish between good and bad, unable to choose, so dole out all thoughts and feelings neatly packaged, and labelled in big bold letters. Then, without much ado, we may pry open a label named indignation and may bristle with it, without stooping to tax our precious few brain cells with the trivial matter of understanding the reason for it or analysing or accepting a view different from what you have benevolently labelled right, O Great Arse. Smack Smack.

Some Are Too Intelligent! Really Envious

Sample 1
Frothing at the mouth like convulsing rabid dogs and neighing horses it was a race and thoughts unreined galloped and sped towards his open arms robes fluttering caught in a sudden tempest a sand storm clogged his mouth and her eyes the sand always a fine sheen of it over every surface yet in the desert troubled thoughts were tendrils of passion that sought his inert form he moved and each movement was a groan from the bowels of the desert the life that he shed like moulting skin far behind lifeless soulless sleepwalking her fervid thoughts that reached out to him in thick coils ignored one step and the next and the next yet he knew not the destination

Sample 2
Meditations - bigoted curs foaming in travail;
Vestment moulded by an impetuous khamsin;
Amative endeavours by ringlets of passion
to ingress an exanimate umbra, futile.

Sample 3
Spilttle glinted on her pearl-like teeth flanked by labial folds of cerise. She thought of his dark, sinuous movements above her prone self. Though the traction traced searing trails on her quivering tissues, the atramentous silhouette that rhythmically shifted above her would remain obdurate. Like a sumpter of moira, with no terminus.

Common comment on all of the above: Exquisite craftsmanship. Humbled by your command over the language/vocabulary. Adopt me, I am your fan, Wowowow.

GAHH!!!

:(

What's in a Name?

Online nicks say so much about a person. We start at the base of the pyramid. That is where the home_alone_with_cam's congregate. Run an eye up to see the cool_dudes and glam_chicks. Then we have the elegant versions, the queens and kings and knights, where the names are distinctly feminine or masculine, but not screaming blatant desperation. And what about the abstruse and the vague, whose only aim seem to be obfuscating the relatively simple concept of claiming an identity? Mysterious, magical, recondite, doubtful personae. Then there are the pretenders. Quite a daring bunch -- for unlike a child named Subbalakshmi who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but who can conveniently blame her parents for inflicting the torture of having to lug around such an unlikely name on her unworthy shoulders, the pretenders have the self-imposed duty to live up to the name that they have chosen for themselves. Though the desire to be someone else is shamelessly evident in such an endeavour, admiration is due to those who are able to do justice to their nicks.

Those on top of the pyramid are those who choose to be known as who they really are. They are no night riders or street hawks or Paris Hiltons. They claim responsibility for their actions, opinions, creations. Brave enough to discard their masks and reveal themselves as they are, in this parallel universe of masquerades.

PS: Sola Vivit In Illo
because I believe that to be true, (hopeless case seems like)
and also because
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur

Young Thung Who Cares - I do, I think

“Ready to take serious action against wrinkles?”

I nod my head vigorously and look up from Vikram Seth’s ‘Collected Poems’, and Claudia Schiffer goes on to explain how L’oreal’s collagen bio-spheres (?) plump up skin from underneath to bring about ‘visible reduction in wrinkles’. It’s not that I am wrinkly and crinkly and am in dire need of a face lift. No. Yet, I am riveted by the wrinkle-reducing ads and I find myself wondering if they work or not and what would be the right age to have a laser face thingy that supposedly blasts off the surface layer of skin and brings out pink baby skin from underneath. Am I that shallow? Well, seems like it. Am I ashamed of being shallow? Well, not really.

But it sets me thinking: what marks the mental transition from young to not-so-young-anymore? I used to feel that I was an old hag when I was 25. I have grown half a decade older. I guess the moment I turned 30 I told myself that I am not young-young anymore. I have begun to really grow old. Does that bother me? A tad, I suppose, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it.

I once knew this person who went on and on and on and ………… on about his turning 40. He had churned out a heap of poems and blog posts about this very significant event and I remember being mildly irritated by it. Though, I hasten to add, I understood, as I do now, exactly where he was coming from. It’s his utmost concern about his bald spot and his fading youth that really opened my eyes to the fact that men are equally vain about their youth and good looks as most women are, if not more.

What is it about old age that we foolish mortals dread so? Perhaps, we are afraid of becoming less attractive. And why does it matter if we do become less attractive? Why attract? Instinctually speaking – to consummate that attraction. To procreate. Bleeeugggghh. So man lives just to create and tend to the progeny? Then what of the noble ‘purpose in life’ that us stupid lot so earnestly seek? Your purpose in life is to raise your child(ren)? Sounds very much like my mom.

Are we worried about losing our health? Being dependent on someone? But that is too far off, and what does that have to do with wrinkles anyway? Or does the (beginning of) loss of youth trigger some neurological, biological reaction in us? Are we wired to respond to it and recognize this so we can take preventive actions in time to safeguard our health, if we so desire?

Or is it just that we are so conditioned by the modern world that we live in, that there is this very real pressure to look good and be young with flawless skin and svelte body. If we did not have the media constantly bombarding us with lascivious tidbits of firm female bottoms in thongs and muscular male torsos, would we worry so much about one wrinkle that has not even made its appearance? Now, I am not berating the media for this unbearable torture. Give us more, I say, and for obvious reasons.

At the end of it all, the only person who would be concerned about my growing old is me. Those who love me would love me still; the indifferent and the haters would go on being indifferent and hateful.

And that goes for all of you as well. It doesn’t really matter if you grow old. If you want to have the wrinkles nuked, go ahead. If you want to proudly display them, do. A wrinkle or two on one’s face or the lack of it, ultimately makes no bloody difference. So, might as well NOT have any wrinkles, what? Heh!

Workspace

I don’t have a cabin. Not yet. But I have a great view from where I sit in the office. I can see the sea, machaa! Can it get any better?

I sit facing a huge glass window and the view is fabulous. When I look out through the window, beyond the greenery, beyond buildings that get progressively tinier, the sea is a blue ribbon in the horizon. Sometimes, on clear days, I can even see ships sailing by. In the night, the view is better, especially so out in the balcony. Catamarans light up the dark black sea in pinpricks of light. And when night falls, you are sandwiched by the starry sky above and the dark sea below. It feels as though you are enfolded by two layers of black starry night.