The Right Of Way

The car honks. My right of way it says.

The bus honks. My right of way it says.

Then the car pulls ahead and brakes abruptly in front of the bus. It was my right of way it says.

It brakes abruptly in front of a bus full of people, wanting to make its point.

The bus brakes in turn and we -young, old, whatever- are all abruptly flung forward.

What the…?

I don’t know or care whose right of way it was but you don’t brake abruptly in front of a bus.

I don’t care how right or big or clever you are, if you brake abruptly in front of a bus then you are wrong and small and stupid.

Here’s an idea, if you want to show us how important it is that you have your right of way then why not try braking abruptly in front of a train? 

The Iraqi Communist Party

So I’m eating a falafel at the stand of the Iraqi Communist Party and I’m wondering how I came to be eating a falafel at the stand of the Iraqi Communist Party.

Well, the real reason is because I’m hungry.

The Portuguese Communist Party stand is selling some smelly fish and the Irish Communist Party stand only has beer.

I didn’t realise Iraq even had a Communist Party.

But a falafel is a falafel. It tastes okay, there are no tomatoes but I do note a Marxist-versus-theocratic-conflict spice.

The motto of the event, organized by the French left-wing paper L’Humanité, is Humans first.

Attendance is good due to the ongoing debt crisis and rising unemployment and growing inequality. Speaking of which, when is the new iPhone coming out?

Revolutionary Time

After the French Revolution, a decimal time system was put in place.
The day was divided into 10 hours, of 100 minutes each, of 100 seconds each.
So 1:23 wasn't 83 minutes long but 123 minutes.
The week was divided into ten days -but still only 1 day off- and the months were renamed.
The aim was to remove any royal and religious influence from the calendar.
The experiment didn't last long.
The decimal experiment that is, I think it's still too early to say on the Revolution experiment. (That's a Zhou Enlai gag...)

Give Me A Sign

So I'm between jobs -again- and I'm taking my head for a walk.
I'm looking for thoughts, for ideas, for inspirations.
Then I see some graffiti.
Fuck everything and become a pirate
I stop and re-read it.
Fuck everything and become a pirate
And there it is.
Steve Jobs once said, "Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?"
The signs are there if you look for them.
How you act on them is something else...

Sightseeing Monks Or Freedom From Desire Isn't Part Of The Tour

I saw some sightseeing monks the other day.
They were Buddhist monks with shaved heads and saffron robes. They were near the Eiffel Tower. They had cameras around their necks. 
Now call me unenlightened and banish me from Nirvana, but isn't one of the basic tenets of Buddhism that much of the suffering in life comes from desire? Once necessities are covered -shelter, food, soft toilet paper- then isn't it the relentless chasing after superfluous crap that makes us miserable especially when we can't afford it?
I could be wrong, of course. Maybe the goal of freedom from desire doesn't include the desire to take your Nikon D3200 with telephoto zoom on a jumbo and fly across the globe to take photos of the Eiffel Tower.
Actually, I hope I'm wrong, because otherwise I feel some bad karma coming my way...

Blind

‘Hey, Max, you look pensive, what’s up?’
‘Well, Max, I helped a blind lady in the street the other day.’
‘Wow, what do you want, a medal? And so?’
‘So, I was crap. I walked her the way I walked, you know, against red lights, jumping puddles, slaloming other pedestrians... I was pulling her all over the place.’
‘I hope she hit you with her stick.’
‘I realised that I walked like everything else was an obstacle to me.‘
‘I sense some profound nonsense coming up...’
‘I realised that, although she was blind, I was the one who couldn’t see.’
‘Oh, Jeezus...’
‘Because she just walked like everything else simply was.’
‘I hope you realise that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if she had a dog...’

A Funny Thought Provoking Quote

I wanted to post a quote by a writer who was thought provoking and funny.
But Voltaire said, 'A witty saying proves nothing.'
So I decided not to.
Oh.

Mundane Comment About My Day

A shitty thing happened to me.
Then I remembered the following quote by Epictetus: Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinions of the things that happen.
Then I thought, the thing happened, it wasn't shitty, it's just my view that it was shitty.
Then I thought, nah, it was a shitty thing.

The General Demolition Of My Opinions

I was watching the French presidential elections and it got me thinking why was there something instead of nothing in the universe. I mean, we wouldn't have to sit through all the sound and fury of life if there was nothing. Things would be so much simpler as there would be, um, no things. No matter, no energy, no space, no time. Imagine, with so little to do in a quantum void we could all have a lie in on a Saturday morning. I admit that absolute nothing as a state is hard to conceive. It puts things in perspective, although you can't actually put things in perspective in a nothing as there aren't any planes of reference... ho, ho. The thing with something is that you can compare it to something, but you can't compare nothing to nothing. Nothing is hard to grab. And, furthermore, nothing is unstable. If we go back to the beginning, the Big Bang theory states that something came out of nothing because this latter was unstable. So we exist in a something because it is more stable, which, looking around, certainly doesn't seem the case. Some will say, 'what about God in all this?' For me, an equally pressing question is if the universe -our something- is so vast and ever expanding then how come the constant lack of leg room? As far as a something goes, it's not a great something. However, if I had to vote between nothing and something, I guess I would vote something. Which brings me neatly back to the French presidential elections. 

Dead Dog

I saw a dead dog the other day.

It had been hit by a car.

Its owner was screaming.

The dog was lying in a pool of blood.

Paris swirled on around it.

Its owner screamed.

Waiting For A Bus

I'm waiting for a bus and I'm thinking about nothing.

You can't actually think about nothing so what I'm thinking about is nothing in particular.

Thinking about nothing in particular means that I'm thinking about several things.

So I'm waiting for a bus and I'm thinking about several things.

But I'm not really thinking about several things, several things are going through my head but I'm not reflecting on them.

So I'm waiting for a bus and I'm not thinking about several things.

Not thinking about several things means that I'm not thinking.

And if I'm not thinking then I must be dead.

So why am I waiting for a bus if I'm dead?

The Five Martyrs of the Lycée Buffon

I had a meeting the other day in the Place des Cinq Martyrs du Lycée Buffon.
It refers to five schoolboys from the local Lycée Buffon who starting in 1940, aged between 15 and 18, committed acts of resistance against the occupying Nazi forces. These developped from minor acts of sabotage to actual armed attacks. In 1943, they were captured, executed by firing squad, and their bodies thrown in a communal pit.
The meeting went well.

What Other People Think

They say you shouldn't worry what other people think.
I think this is wrong.
Because you don't know what other people think, so what you're actually doing is thinking what other people think.
To say you shouldn't worry about what other people think is actually to say you shouldn't worry about your own thinking.
And this is something you should worry about.
Although I think you probably think differently.

Freedom Of Thought

"Hey Max."

"Hey Max."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to understand."

"Undestand what?"

"Me. People. Everything."

"How's that going?"

"Not very well."

"So why bother?"

"Good question."

"So what are you doing now?"

"I'm trying to understand why I shouldn't."

Who Watches The Watchmen?

There was a road race on.
People stopped walking in the street and watched other people run by in the street.
They watched people running by.
Because watching people running by is fascinating.
I didn't get it.
I shook my head.
I stopped and watched the people watching the people running by.
Because watching people watching people running by is that much more interesting.

Am I A Lion Or Am I A Tellin' The Truth?

Wittgenstein made the comment that "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

His point was that language was rendered intelligible by the by social situation in which it evolved. Its meaning was formed by the culture and society in which it was used.

It's an interesting observation. Just because you understand a language does not mean you understand what is being said.

Living here is proving that.

But, then again, I also felt that way back in the UK.

Maybe I'm a lion.

Does Truth Exist?

It’s a Sunday morning and we are sitting in the café for the philosophical discussion.
Does truth exist?
Here, we have conversations that we cannot have elsewhere.
Truth gives meaning, if it doesn’t exist, how can we know anything?
Here, we can ask questions about life we can’t ask anywhere else.
In the absence of any universal truth, can’t we rely on personal truth?
Here, we seek understanding about ourselves and the world around us.
But if truth is relative, different for each, then surely that means it doesn’t exist?
Here, we talk about things that people avoid talking about by whatever means.
Truth gives meaning, and isn’t the truth that there is no meaning?
For me, the truth exists here.

I Beg Your Pardon

'Look, another beggar.'
'That's not a beggar.'
'Sorry?'
'Well, he's not begging, so technically he's not a beggar.'
'What is he then?'
'Well, maybe he's broken away. Maybe he wants nothing from us. Maybe he prefers to live outside the social comedy that the rest of us follow. Maybe he has decided that the system we live in, far from being free, is actually a cage. Maybe he has decided to find happiness via creative contemplation instead of believing he needs to find it via material goods.'
'Look, he has a little cup...'
'You're right, the bloody freeloader. And he smells.'

For Everything to Stay The Same Everything Must Change

Change is the only constant.
If you want everything to stay the same, you have to change with it.
So if you want to change, maybe you shouldn't.

How To Make Your Blog More Popular

Apparently, one way of making a blog more popular is to give the reader something, to make him/her feel like he is learning something by reading it.
One way of doing that is to write 'How to...' posts in which useful information is imparted.
This is my first one. Hope you found it useful.