Not here, not now...

Now grooving to: Armin van Buuren, Shivers <-- get stub (link will work for 21 days.)
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This thought struck, during one of my bi-weekly visits to BoingBoing. The dithering, while keying the domain into the location bar, was from imagining two contingencies - what if the website was a collection 1) of all wonderful things Bengali? or 2) of all accessories narcotic?

Turns out BongBong does exist... Just one problem though: I haven't been able to figure out what it's about.
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Check out Jibjab's latest offering: a(nother) GWBush parody. As if being spectators to daily episodes of The Emperor's New Clothes wasn't enough...
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(via ISP) Gabriel García Márquez on writing:

When you were young and had to earn your living at other jobs, you used to write at night and you smoked a lot.
Forty cigarettes a day.

And now?
Now I don't smoke and I only work during the day.

In the morning.
From nine o'clock to three in the afternoon in a quiet, well-heated room. Voices and the cold distract me.

[...]

I believe writers are always alone, like shipwrecked sailors in the middle of the ocean. It's the loneliest profession in the world. No one can help you write what you are writing.

Where do you think is the ideal place to write?
I've said this often before: a desert island in the morning and a big city at night. In the morning I need silence, and in the evening a few drinks and some good friends to chat to. I need to be in constant contact with people in the street and know what's going on in the world. This all fits in with what William Faulkner meant when he said'the perfect place for a writer was a brothel, because it's very quiet in the morning but there's partying every night.

Read the rest, here.
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[What follows can (also) be understood as partially emerging from interpretations of an essay by Walter Benjamin (The Work Of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction) which I read, and was wowed by, recently.]

I wish I had it in me to be creative enough to whip up a card, a poem, photo, an image - in short, something special and singular i.e. a singularity (Finally! To be able to understand and use that word!) - when overtaken by the urge to give and gift. (As a set of ideas, that problem is best tackled elsewhere) but a recent set of experiences (of gift-giving and the googling prior to it) made other worldly patterns much clearer.

Companies - no, all entities, even - try to project a certain image of themselves. This identificatory device exists in a curious relation to others in the vicinity etc. The positioning of brands, as anyone who's ever watched NDTV or CNBC knows, is crucial. Have a look at FabIndia: the care and choice of models made many unsaid things very evident to me, if only for a moment...