Summaiya Jillani: Marilyn and myself. (From here.)
Winter
Both hands clenched
Runnng eyes and nose
And shivering skin:
As if in a painting,
The traveller stands on the river-bank
Despairing how to get across.
Excerpt of poem by anonymous in Vallabhadeva’s Subhasitavali, translated by J. Brough, Poems from the Sanskrit, Penguin Classics, L. 198.
I am Cyrus, king of the universe, the great king, the powerful king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world …
From the Cyrus Cylinder.
…The author-mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik has noted the many ways in which a woman wearing a nose-ring may be perceived. “The scientist said it has no scientific basis. A rationalist mocked her for mutilating her body in the name of beauty. Another rationalist pointed out that it was an ancient acupuncture technique. A feminist said she was sporting the symbol of patriarchy. A secularist said that made her a Hindu.” And so on. At the end comes the kicker: “Everybody saw the nose-ring. No one saw her.
Jai Arjun Singh, Naak-naak, who’s there?
‘Heaven, How Long’ is taken from the Hostel 12”, forthcoming debut release from both East India Youth and The Quietus Phonographic Corporation. The Hostel EP is released in March 2013.
[Nicholas Ray, the director of Rebel Without a Cause] was brilliant behind the camera; when away from it, he was about as fucked up as one could get: a misogynistic, bisexual womanizer; an alcoholic depressive; a drug addict; a compulsive gambler. The night he wed actress Gloria Grahame –– because he had impregnated her –– he gambled away thousands of dollars at the gaming tables in Las Vegas to deprive her of the money. Ray’s marriage to Grahame ended when he found her in bed with his 13-year-old son, whom she later married. In his Hollywood heyday, Ray occupied a poolside bungalow at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, where he enjoyed afternoon trysts with pliable young actresses, notably Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood, with whom he had an affair when directing the 16-year-old in Rebel Without a Cause.
Peter Winkler, “Nicholas Ray Couldn’t Go Home Again: On the DVD Release of His Final Film”, Los Angeles Review of Books.
The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.
Mark Twain, in a letter addressed to a salesman who sent him an ad for some bogus medicine [Source: Letters of Note]
Heisenberg has driven these young women to distraction.
There is a famous story of President Abraham Lincoln, taking a vote in a cabinet meeting on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. All his cabinet secretaries vote nay, whereupon Lincoln raises his right hand and declares: ‘The ayes have it.’
Peter Rodman, Presidential Command, 2009.
Tired Foxes: Once, we got drunk in a hotel hallway. I’d lost the key or you had,...
Once, we got drunk
in a hotel hallway.
I’d lost the key
or you had,
and we pressed our backs to the walls
like the seams in the wallpaper
might let us slip past and
sleep inside.
You walked on the carpet
and it let you.
There was a bottle of something,
not much,
between us.
“Imagine…
3 months ago - 
296
296 It’s a little surprising, I didn’t prepare a speech but I did iron a shirt.
Shimon Adaf, Israeli writer, upon winning the Sapir Prize. (From The World SF Blog.)
One of The Olive Fairy Book’s illustrations by Kate Baylay. (From çizgili masallar.)
Nude on the beach, 1989, by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkish film-maker and photographer.
One Liner Three
Since the snow came all the wife has done is look through the window.
If it gets any worse, I’ll have to let her in.
