Mourning his loss: Seamus Heaney

Irish poet Seamus Heaney has passed away today at the age of 74. The Nobel laureate is considered one of the greatest Irish poets, and his work is felt by many to capture the essence of Ireland and the Irish condition.

http://yasniger.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/mourning-his-loss-as-a-man-and-a-king/

Mighty, mighty me

Mighty, mighty me
Frightening and menacing
Falling on my butt
Oops!!!

INVICTUS: William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley

 Invictus

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

 

The Coffinmaker: a short film by Dan McComb

http://yasniger.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/the-coffinmaker-a-short-film-by-dan-mccomb/
http://pastordawn.com/2013/08/21/the-coffinmaker-a-short-film-by-dan-mccomb/#comment-3007

I have known only one coffin maker. To my knowledge he built only one coffin. It was carefully crafted with all the love he could pour into the task. It was a small coffin, just large enough to hold his nine-year-old granddaughter. I remember watching the wood-shavings fall gently to the shop floor; more poignantly than tears. When his task was complete, children gently, quietly, reverently placed small stuffed animals inside to keep their playmate company on a journey they did not understand. One little boy picked up a few of the wood-shavings, looked toward the grandfather, raised the shavings to his lips and kissed them. When everyone left, I mimicked the child’s actions and then placed several wood-shavings into my pocket. As the coffin maker helped his son lower the precious cargo into the ground, I fingered the wood-shavings; a gesture of gratitude for the strength they provided. “If we make it too convenient,  we’re depriving ourselves of an opportunity to get stronger so that we can carry on….Work is love made visible…”
 

“Every year, Americans bury enough metal in the ground to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge, says Vashon Island coffin maker Marcus Daly. His simple, handcrafted wooden coffins are an economical and environmentally friendly burial alternative. But Daly believes a coffin’s most important feature is that it can be carried. Here’s why.”

SEX HAS A NEW APP!?

No-Frill Thrills: The Rise of Minimalist Sex Apps..... by Kevin Roose

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/rise-of-minimalist-sex-apps.html

In January of last year, Roman Sidorenko and Alexander Kukhtenko had an idea to break their sexual dry spells the way they solved many of their other problems: with an app.

"We wanted an easy way to find sex, basically," says Sidorenko. But the two friends (who describe themselves as "pomosexuals") were too impatient to use the available dating apps on the market, all of which required them to spend hours flirting with potential flings via chat or text message before getting a date and, possibly, sealing the deal. They knew there were horny people around them looking for sex — and nothing more — but had no way of figuring out where, and who, they were.

"We thought it would be cool to use an approach like Uber," Sidorenko says. "Where you basically create the request, and you get a car pretty soon. We thought it would be cool to have something like that to find a sex buddy."

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BREASTS OF DOOM

This is probably the saddest story ever, with a somewhat touching folded ending. It tells of a nameless newly married village girl, coerced into coming to the city with her husband to do menial work during the dry season. In a quick successive sequence of unending cruel happenings, she literally lives the life of her country.

This is a sad story, with a somewhat touching folded ending. It tells of a nameless newly married village girl, coerced into coming to the city with her husband to do menial work during the dry season. In a quick successive sequence of unending cruel happenings, she is starved by her husband and tricked into being raped by a night watchman. Her husband finds out and beats her, before he mysteriously disappears amidst a bloody civil unrest. Then the watchman is accidentally killed.

She is lost in the huge city, begs for alms to feed, sleeps everywhere in the open and became friends with a madman. She discovers she is pregnant and couldn’t return to her village, without her lost husband and visibly pregnant for someone else. Still, she hopes she could return someday. She learns her father disowned her and her mother killed herself rather than live with the shame she had caused.

She painfully lost a helpful couple in an accident and had to live in a whore house because no one else would rent her a room. She got robbed of everything she owns and raped yet again, late into her pregnancy. Right then, she gave birth to a son on her own and had no choice but return to the selfless care of the madman.

The madman got beaten to death and she is also beaten up by the same vigilante group. She almost lost her son in a fire that burnt down everything she owns, again. She got badly burnt in the fire and was horribly disfigured. Her son’s first friend was a donkey and it mysteriously vanishes like it appeared.

Amidst such suffering and cruel mockery, she sold wood and her sole objective was caring for her son. He excelled in schooling and moved to a bigger school, staying far away from her love for too long. She went after him and discovered he had fitted into his new prestigious surrounding so well that she embarrasses him.

The tale gradually unfolds with chapter opening quotes and apt poetry. It reveals to be more than just the story of a suffering deformed maiden that suffers a lot of ill-fortune, or about how her gifted son grows into being ashamed of her, despite all her travails for him. The tale actually draws parallels with an ailed federation.

It handles a flawed state of nationhood. It highlights the nation’s relationship with its people, and their disdain for what made them anything special. It hints of their never ending and never ever accomplished ulterior desire to be something else, other than what they really are; mainly a country still forging statehood for itself.

OBJ BLOWS OWN TRUMPET: Like him or hate him.... He is so right