Rohit's Realm - May 2007
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May 14, 2007
As I am sure even the most inept of cretins could likely attest to based on a cursory glance of this website (or a moment's interaction—that's all they would be likely to get from me), I am not someone who could generally be considered kid-friendly.
I am neither nice nor cuddly, have little patience for incompetence or density, and in general, have absolutely no interest in interacting with individuals (children or otherwise) incapable of communicating at my desired level. Elitist, arrogant, caustic, I am; endearing, compassionate, approachable, I am decidedly not. Yet, despite my complete indisposition for the role, and even my well-publicized disdain, I continue to be the subject of inexplicable adulation by small children near and far. The latest episode (some might say attack) happened on the BART ride home last week, and needless to say, it was a battle for the history books: Cute, Innocent, and Precocious versus Bitter, Caustic, and Nihilistic. What follows is a play-by-play of my battle royale.
May 15, 2007
I realize that it is very uncharacteristic of me to post an entry twice in as many days (if I wrote about existential angst every day, I would have long ago killed myself), but a poignant article I read today demanded I once again wade into the dark abyss sometimes referred to as my mind and answer a rather unseemly question: when did I first become so cynical and nihilistic?
May 24, 2007
When I originally began this post, some 12 hours ago, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Omaha's Eppley Airfield (it isn't even big enough to be considered an airport, I suppose), I had intended to discuss all the memorable events in my three day venture to what has to be the most bucolic and mind-numbingly nondescript city
in vast, abysmal expanse known as Middle America.
However, upon further reflection, I realize that besides arriving on a plane in which I was literally one of four people under 200 lbs. (the other three were the female flight attendants—enough said), nothing about this trip was worth remember beyond a week (or even a day)—that is, until my flight from Denver to San Francisco, when I met what in another time and place might have very well been my soulmate.
May 24, 2007
Though I did almost meet my soulmate last night coming home from Omaha, I would argue that my greatest accomplishment of the trip had to be finding the time to finish up a book that had been on my reading list since March: L'Âge de Raison (The Age of Reason, in American), the first novel in Jean-Paul Sartre's famed trilogy Les Chemins de la Liberté (The Roads to Freedom). Though often extremely weighty (sometimes unbearably so), the book went by for me rather quickly (I finished half of it on the flight to Omaha, and the other half waiting at the airport to return), and moreover, left me disquieted in a way that only truly despondent novels (and authors) can.
May 29, 2007
Considering my predilection for reading (and writing) about such dour and oppressive subjects as Russian literature, William Faulkner, and existentialism, it may come as no uncertain surprise to many readers that I simultaneously possess a consummate, almost inexplicable affinity towards Magic Realism. And yet, since my earliest exposure to the genre with El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba in high school—incidentally in the original Spanish—and later, Cien Años de Soledad in college (this was in English translation), both by famed Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, I have been fascinated by the manner in which stories in this genre combine both the intensely real and the utterly fantastic to weave a truly hypnotic tale of human existence. As such, one can imagine the excitement with which I picked up Haruki Murakami's (one of the few contemporary authors I read—thanks nrt for the introduction) latest book, After Dark, after reading a review in the Economist, and only a few weeks after its U.S. release.
May 31, 2007
Though not too long ago I wrote a facetious entry about vigilante justice with respect to the Zodiac Killer, as it turns out, that entry was extremely prescient in ways that are anything but farcical: that's right, I have found my own personal Zodiac that I must dedicate my life to finding, and am willing to risk just about anything to achieve success. And while my much-touted romantic quest to ruin my life has yielded negligible results in the past two years, this particular quest promises to not only ruin my life, but possibly end it altogether.
May 02, 2007
As long time readers will, no doubt, recall, more than three years ago, I presented a now infamous (and copiously referenced) analysis of interpersonal relationships, asserting that all such relations can be defined solely on the basis of convenience, exploitation, and self-aggrandizement.
In essence, I was taking a sociological perspective on relationships, which I further expanded on with my manifesto on Facebook friends, or more generally, relationships on social networks, one year later. Today, I would like to take a different, more rigorous approach to the same problem, i.e., how do we taxonomically distribute the various interpersonal relationships in our lives? Considering this is an economic analysis, there can be only one criterion (as I am sure most of you can guess): value.
