Inscription 595

I am back from China. The trip was harrowing to put it succintly. Maybe a lot has changed in China for the 3 1/2 years I didn't go back; maybe as a homecoming kid I was plain being unobservant. In any case, in the two weeks the myriad incomprehensibilities and contraditions of the country have laid themselves bare.
More on this later.

A Crush On Someone Totally Incompatible

1. Your idea of Love means having an uncontrollable urge to give her noogies. However, her idea is at the polar opposite of yours.

2. She is from a wealthy family. You are a hard-nosed proletariat, and has little patience for bourgeois trivialities and obsessions. But then, she is just so cute

3. You suspect that maybe you are just too chicken to approach her, and is using incompatibility as an excuse to hide your lack of courage. But then, your prudence tells you that she may really be incompatible with you. The two schools of thought are in conflict. And then you ask God. God has not returned with the answer yet.

4. You and her have infrequent and tenuous encounters outside, comparable to the encounter of two ships passing each other on a miles-wide berth. However expansive the distance between you and her, every blare of the foghorn makes the weather a little better to sail in.

5. Encounters aside, her life actually does not touch yours in any way. So when you find out on facebook that she has a stalker, or anything attestible potentially threatening her personal safety in any way... you feel sharp, sanguine pangs of paranoia. Even though you've been stalking her yourself, and it is actually none of your business.

6. Declaring it, even inwardly, as falling in love will leave you no room for turning back.

A Virtue of Clear Thought

1. Keep to one stream of thought per thread.
{
Know the banks that define the stream;
Know where it doth start and end;
Know the thoughts that flow into it,
____ and the thoughts that flow out;
See that the stream do not burst its banks;
See that stagnant ponds form not where it meanders;
Fret not when the stream seems lacking in grandiosity,
____ but be proud that it stays clear throughout its course.
}

Politeness to Strangers

About showing politeness to random strangers on the street, I have so far attested 2 schools of thought in practice.

1. Politeness to strangers is a simple acknowledgement of the stranger's existence i.e. greeting and small talk if possible.

2. Politeness to strangers is to not look at them in the face.

One of my life's mission now is to find a happy medium between these two.

Perl

We'll write more about Perl after we decipher the following code:
perl -wlne'END{print$n}eof&&$n++;/<title>([^<]+)/i&&$n--' *

Intepretation
The code in question (from the collection "The road to Perligata") is a lament over the coming apocalypse, an expression of the author's Weltschmerz and the futility of all human endeavors. Let us take it step by step:

-wlne'
-The world is near its end.

END{print$n}
-At the end the sum of all our sins and virtues will be reckoned and the judgement revealed.

eof&&$n++;
-As the evil of mankind ends, perhaps the end itself is a positive thing.

/<title>([^<]+)/
-We are preoccupied with fame and titles

i
-And insensitive to the suffering of others.

&&$n--
-All this is for nought, and only hastens our demise.

' *
-For in the end, we are but stardust.

[source]