The long arm of the Law

It should be made compulsory by law that all fathers-or-lawyers-to-be be given a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Never has a book had as admirable a central character as Atticus Finch, be it in his gentle but firm style of parenting, or his silent determination as a defense attorney.

For whatever reason, lawyers have always been looked upon somewhat derisively, while the law itself, as George Bernard Shaw informed us,is but an ass, and the cornucopia of lawyer jokes doing the rounds is perhaps representative of this image.

Case in point:
Q)If you were stranded on an island with Adolf Hitler, a lawyer and the Devil himself, and you had a gun with two bullets, whom do you shoot ?
A)The lawyer twice.

I am beginning to like lawyers though. Despite my abhorrence of John Grisham's yearly forays into the bestseller lists, and his now innumerable imitators, I've always had something of a soft spot for Ally McBeal, and am now wholly in awe of James Spader's Emmy winning performance in The Practice.

Just shows how the long arm of the law has tightened its grip around the neck of pop culture.

frankly, my dear

If there's one thing that really puts me in a bad mood, it's a movie with a sad ending. Especially if it is three-and-a-half hours long, like Gone with the Wind was. Of course, not that i would mind ogling a bit more at old Vivien Leigh ,or Clark Gable for that matter ;) , but for god's sake, why can't everyone live happily ever after ?

I had read the book a few years before, and i knew what was coming, but that didn't make it easier to take. It's depressing to watch pretty four-year-old girls die in horse-riding accidents.
Sigh.I'm such a sucker for sentimentality.

And I can't understand Scarlett O'Hara.First she wants to marry Ashley, who is attracted to her but loves another, in order to make him jealous she marries Charles, who dies in the American Civil war, whilst Ashley battles on grimly; then she saves Ashley's wife from death in labour, and proceeds to slyly marry her sister's beau to pay off taxes on her family plantation, all this while Rhett wooes her with characteristic panache; when the second husband dies, she gets married to Rhett, produces the doomed afore-mentioned pretty girl, and oh if you forgot, she still 'loves' Ashley during this tumultuous period. And so, finally, when Ashley's wife dies and he is there for the taking, she decides to stay with Rhett (?!), who utterly put off by her Ashley-obsession, walks out on her with the immortal words, "Frankly my dear,I don't give a damn. "

Phew. Talk of confused women .
I can't help wondering if they are this way in real life too.

Ode to a squishy stomach

I hate looking up at billboards and seeing those muscular, brawny body-building types smile their fake plastic
smiles and cavort in their Jockeys or Calvin Kleins.

I don't have a six-pack. Or a four-pack. Or a one-pack. Or any abs to speak of. If you want to know the bare truth, I have a nice squishy stomach.

And what's more, I'm proud of it. Proud of having dropped 4 inches across my waist over the last year, down to a very respectable 30. Proud of not letting my self-esteem suffer at the hands of gym-obsessed image addicts with a penchant for giving individuals less statuesque than themselves inferiority complexes.

Maybe I'm just averse to sweating it out. Big lazy bum, I can almost hear you say, grimly nodding your all-knowing head. Maybe you should try sitting around with my books and my music, with a bit of football thrown in, just for fun. And who says fat people can't play a bit of the beautiful game ? Just look at good old-Che tattooed hand-of-god junkie Diego.

I'm sure a killer body feels good. And impressive to some too. I'm just happy with my squishy stomach thankyouverymuch.
Somebody pass me that chocolate cake.

beauty

" ...her beauty is superhuman ; for in her are realized all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty that poets assign to their ladies; that her hair is gold; her forehead the Elysian Fields; her eyebrows rainbows; her eyes suns; her cheeks roses; her lips corals; pearls her teeth; alabaster her neck; marble her bosom; ivory her hands; and her complexion snow; and those parts that modesty has veiled from human sight are such, I think and trust, that discretion can praise them, but make no comparison. "

- Don Quixote


Wow.
I wonder who old Miguel had in mind when he wrote this.

peace

I'm back home.

And it didn't take me too long to settle down into my daily rigmarole of food, sleep, more food, television, sleep. Oh, did I mention hot-water showers?

After living in that hell-hole for four months returning home is my yearly (over?)dose of hedonism, the elixir guaranteed to exterminate all the evils that germinated over the course of one semester in college.

Admittedly, home may not offer some of the finer joys of life, such as high-speed-internet or Miguel , but it does make up for some of its shortcomings with an abundance of pampering; my wish is very much my folks' command, atleast for the first one week or so, and bad exploitative melon that I am, I intend to cash in. *evil grin*

Of course, I probably will have to look for an internship somewhere, but for now I'm content with putting my feet up, reading a good book, and leading the good life.
:)

Currently reading -
Don Quixote , Miguel de Cervantes

I can't believe I missed this one growing up. Salman Rushdie called it 'the best novel ever written', and despite his propensity for the hyperbolic, that's a not bad recommendation to have.