Conversations, Quotations and Images

“It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.” ~Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Once upon a time, there was a racist tree. Seriously, you are going to hate this tree. High on a hill overlooking the town, the racist tree grew where the grass was half clover. Children would visit during the sunlit hours and ask for apples, and the racist tree would shake its branches and drop the delicious red fruit that gleamed without being polished. The children ate many of the racist tree’s apples and played games beneath the shade of its racist branches. One day the children brought Sam, a boy who had just moved to town to, to play around the racist tree.

“Let Sam have an apple,” asked a little girl.

“I don’t think so. He’s black,” said the tree. This shocked the children and they spoke to the tree angrily, but it would not shake its branches to give Sam an apple, and it called him a nigger.

“I can’t believe the racist tree is such a racist,” said one child. The children momentarily reflected that perhaps this kind of behavior was how the racist tree got its name.

It was decided that if the tree was going to deny apples to Sam then nobody would take its apples. The children stopped visiting the racist tree.

The racist tree grew quite lonely. After many solitary weeks it saw a child flying a kite across the clover field.

“Can I offer you some apples?” asked the tree eagerly.

“Fuck off, you goddamn Nazi,” said the child.

The racist tree was upset, because while it was very racist, it did not personally subscribe to Hitler’s fascist ideology. The racist tree decided that it would have to give apples to black children. not because it was tolerant, but because otherwise it would face ostracism from white children.

And so, social progress was made.

• Alexander Blechman

it’d be the most unfair contest in all of sports. Rules would change by the minute, teammates would turn to rivals (rivals into teamates), and the thing would never end — every finish line crossed would quickly reveal the blurry visage of another checkered line that feels impossibly far away. It seems to me that the best of us are more like surfers than racers, and to them life is more like the ocean: predictably uncertain, unspeakably fun if you know how to handle it, unbearably relentless and frightening if you don’t. So many serious affairs in life are governed by timing and chance, and I tend to be happiest when I’m figuratively paddling hard out into the sunset and riding the in the one that feels right. There’s really not much more anyone can do.

(Source: the30x30.com)

Some 20+ years ago, I was looking through some networking code written by my mentor. The code solved a very complex problem, but it was extremely simple to read. I told him how simple it was, but not in a flattering way. He asked me to solve the problem on my own, without using his code as a guide. I came back to him two days later, with my tail firmly between my legs. I had solved the problem, but it was a complete mess. His words will always be with me. He said, “Listen, asshat. Any monkey can write code. Writing code that another monkey can understand, is tough.”

(Source: reddit.com)

overheard : “yaar Allah karay meray abay key jaga kutta aa jaye” 

This hs to be one of the coolest albums that I found this year (along with quest of fire) . There are very few artists specially modern one’s that you can just put on and not care about skipping. 

Tune yards is this perfect combination of vocal jazz, folk African beats and the modern music. Every single song is unique and carries it’s own charisma. If I have to single out one song it has to be. You Yes You. No matter where you are what you’re up to it’s going to make you want to dance. 

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

- Richard Dawkins

There are no bad women, bad men in the world. There are bad people. Has nothing to do with gender.and bad people must be punished equally regardless of their gender. Similarly people should be helped equally regardless of their gender. There should be advantages or disadvantages in anything base on gender.

I used to work in the showroom at Chuck E. Cheese’s when I was in high school. My primary job was to throw birthday parties. And throw birthday parties I fucking DID. I made damn sure that every kid there had the greatest birthday party of all time.

I worked the 4th of July one year and we had just one party that day. I got to work it. The RSVP number was fairly small, like 5 or so, but it was even worse. It was just father and son. Mom and mom’s family were proud residents of the state pen in Oklahoma or something. Dad got custody and moved with son to Tennessee and had his party there. He invited a few friends but none came, so it was just father and son at the birthday table.

They weren’t very well off and they bought the barebones party option. I asked around to all of my co-workers and threw in about $40 of my own money to make sure they had the best birthday bash ever. It was an hour from close and nobody was there so all of the employees started partying with them. We made them 10 pizzas and the kid got to pick whatever toppings he wanted. We then gave him about 500 tokens. We played and partied for 2 hours and then put on the show after closing. After the show, my boss brought out an Xbox and the kid got to play Xbox on the giant TVs in the showroom.

It was close to midnight when they left. My boss brought fireworks and beer and all of us employees were gonna raise hell in the parking lot, but we decided to invite the kid too. He got to shoot off bottle rockets and roman candles and whatnot and his dad got a beer out of it. Later, dad brings the employees aside and starts crying about how awesome the party was.

I worked at Chuck E. Cheese’s for 2 years and hated most of it, but that night was one of the best of my entire life.

(Source: reddit.com)

“Death is death, a life is a life. logic is for machines. dont want to rationalize everything.” - A

I would speak to you of cool breezes.

You may or may not wish to listen to me, since I am 43 years old and have never. Sex, kiss, date, cuddle, whatever a human might want from another human, slap a ‘never’ on it and that is me. Taking my advice might not be a great idea. But I have learned some things.

Sometimes on a warm day, a cool breeze will come along. It just happens. Or it doesn’t happen. There is no schedule for it, no specific reason, nothing I can do to cause it. It feels awfully nice when it does happen. I don’t deserve it, or not deserve it. I can’t earn it.

All I can do is be out there doing whatever I am doing, and enjoy it when it comes along. That is not to suggest you should be passive, not at all. Exactly the opposite. But you should allow life to happen.

You want to stop feeling. You can do that. I did. It can be done. But there is no way—none, zero, no way at all ever—to stop feeling the bad parts without also stopping feeling the good. You do not get to choose that, it cannot be done. If you numb the bad, you numb the glorious.

Have you ever met a girl you thought was pretty nice, but you just didn’t feel that way about her? I don’t think you can just decide to love her, whoever she was. You could decide to think of her as charitably as you can but you can’t feel what you don’t feel. And neither can they. Love is a cool breeze. You can’t decide whether to feel it, all you can do is decide what to do about it if you do feel it.

You know you will probably never find someone for you. Tempting, isn’t it? To have that final answer, to stop enduring the misery of hope. You are sure. It is nice to be sure. It is nice to have that out of the way and not have to wonder and hope, dream and want, need and yearn. Yearn! What a word. But there it is. Yearning. Sounds like a goddamn sonnet but that is the word for it.

You don’t know a goddamn thing. I am sorry, but the bad news is you probably will find someone. You can try being as repulsive as possible and some girl might like you anyhow, people are crazy like that. Stop trying to be sure, and learn to endure uncertainty. Being sure is like riding a flat rollercoaster. Whee.

The bad news is you have hope. Hope’s the rope that keeps you tied in knots—the torture never stops. Even when you find her, and she likes you and she can’t help it and she gets all silly and wants to have your babies and everything, you will still have to hope. It never ever ends. You will hope every day she still loves you. You will hope she isn’t bored with you. You will hope the tests come back negative. You will hope she forgives you. It never, ever ends. Well, until you are dead, and there is time enough for that later I assure you.

There is no solution to hope and uncertainty. All you can do is be who you are and hope like hell. You are not a strategy, you are not an attempt. You are you, and now let’s see what happens.

I still hope. And I will never stop. Failure has no meaning, as I am not attempting to succeed. I am that I am. Who I am does not depend on circumstance or events. I hope, I want, I dream. No matter what, I damn well hope. If I fall from the 87th floor of a building I will hope on the way down. I am hurt, I am disappointed, I am ashamed and miserable and alone. But I will never give up hope. That pain is mine, and I welcome it. I yearn.

I wish you many cool breezes.

(Source: reddit.com)