Saturday, February 26, 2005

Unfetter'd

“Today I wear these chains, and am here! Tomorrow I shall be fetterless! —but where?

Closing lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Imp of the Perverse”. Just thought they’d look good on the blog, and I don’t have a separate “Quotes” section so...

6 comments:

  1. Hello Jai, nice blogging. And since this is a Godsend opportunity to quote something said by others (and not to have to think of something original, which is what we have learnt in school anyways) here goes...

    42!

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  2. Nice one, hitchhiker! Your 42 reference in conjunction with the mention of unoriginality in schools reminds me of one of my very favourite Calvin & Hobbes strips. I wonder if you've seen it - it's the one where Calvin is day-dreaming about dinosaurs whose shapes roughly resemble the numbers 2 and 3, and we learn at the end of the strip that his classteacher has asked him 2+3=? I think that comic said more about the arrested development fostered by formal education than a hundred essays ever could.

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  3. Impressive, Jai. Very impressive. Either you have a terrific memory, or H2G2 captivated you as much as it did me.

    Yes, I do remember that comic. My fave strip of classroom daydreaming was the one where Calvin imagines himself in a fierce battle with aliens and shoots at them with his "death-blaster" while shouting "krakov! krakov!" in conjuction with his shots, which turns out to be the RIGHT answer for the question posed by Ms. Wormwood - What is the capital of Poland. :))

    Well, I am interviewing a lot of people for some positions these days, supposedly well educated engineers from good colleges, and the lack of imagination and originality is depressing me more than Marvin. I have started writing something about it on my blog, but haven't finished it yet (brain the size of a palnet and I have to write blogs...).

    A quote (not exactly) from a Led Zep song would be a nice reply to your original quote by Poe:

    Over the hills and far away...

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  4. your 'through the looking glass' nugget got me all homesick for lewis carroll and his brand of madness. finally, i set everything else aside and snuggled into 'the collected works of'. i think it was the "beamish boy" that definitely decided me :)

    i've been dropping in every other day or so to see what you've been up to. and been going over old posts that i like the titles of. it's always good to find someone so keen on his books, movies and misc. reading matter. the delhi times type goof-up you quoted is so despairingly common these days that i mightn't even have noticed it, skimming as i do in self-defense.

    and it's gooder still to have one more person with whom to laugh at the smug crap that is journalism today

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  5. You are reading Poe? Well, that explains your "irrational homicidal fantasies" at the barber shop!

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  6. Uh-huh. Read this earlier post and all will be clear: http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2004/12/poe-in-barbershop.html

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