Fine...

It’s funny how people generally don’t say exactly what they mean, making it extremely difficult for the Zog to survive in the modern hostel ecosystem.
Take for instance the statement
“I am fine.”
When followed by the confirmatory smile, you assume it is safe to crack a joke or two and move on. Well darling, welcome to the strange and terrible land of conversational cryptography. I am fine doesn’t mean exactly that. It can mean anything but that.
The range of meanings it can assume include “I feel like shit and you’re responsible”,
“I need to drink my HOD’s blood”, “Why are you wearing the same shirt as I am bitch?” or worst yet, “My crush since first year won’t look at me though he has had a string of girl friends since.”
Once you figure out which of the above it is, you are on the high road to successful inter-personal relationships.
So how do you go about it? Was that question for me?...em…like I told you if I were any good I wouldn’t be writing this down. The thing is, there is no surefire technique. The Gods have conspired against me. The only available method, it seems, is that of trial and error.
Ohhh I’ve dreaded the term since my math teacher first introduced it in elementary school. It was like even Mathematics, the Science of preciseness, didn’t have the answers to some questions. You just couldn’t plug some problems into concrete formulae and wish them away. You had to assume…postulate…theorize…stuff that was best left to Pythagoras and his cronies, not small, insignificant, blundering…you.
Another thing I have an unreasonable fear of, for exactly the same reasons is scale-up. The laws that apply to a small system don’t apply to a larger one because of the chaos the system accumulates with size. You toil and toss and bleed to arrive at something to explain the crap you’ve been doing in lab 8 to 8, and then, somebody tells you it’s absolutely useless if you actually wanted to mass-produce something, they’re an exercise in futility that will make a brief appearance on your grade card, only.
Now imagine the horror of scaling up an imprecise technique like trial and error from the most precise art of mathematics to the most chaotic sphere of human conversation. It is the material nightmares are made of.
Lemme add, once you decide to try something out, the outcome makes all future attempts futile.
If for instance you react to “I am fine” with “Your HOD is a rat” and if you’re wrong you might get
1. Really screwed if her HOD has anything to do with your department
2. Lose a friend if she’s HOD’s puppy material
3. Lose a semester if HOD’s promoted anytime soon
If you react with “Sorry he’s still not interested in you”, and again blooper! Made a mistake
1. She’ll say, “Thank you for reminding me just when I got over him.”
2. Or “So pleased to have a boyfriend huh? So you keep pushin it down other ppls throats huh?” Ouch!
3. “Booohooo! You’re so nasty, I know I’m not pretty but I thought you were my friend”
So like moi said it’s not easy. So how do you decide? I do the “Eeny meeny miny mo…”
Which sorta explains why I’m so ant-social. If you can think of a better way please cue me in.

My brother's keeper....

Cain slew Abel, so my Bible says,
And my Bible says,"thou art thy brother's keeper?"
Naughty, naughty me....
How could the Bible, would the Bible see....
what that did mean...to me?
I keep my neighbour- tied in chains, on a leash, in a box,
"So long my pet so long as you don't mind that is, my God says I am your keeper.
And if you mind, well we'll see about that later...won't we?
I decide, if your land, is your own, or if it should rather belong, to the serf who toiled away, on MY soil, a hundred years ago....
I decide, if you ought to protect yourself, from me, and my myriad xenophobic fears of you, and your kin...you who are in my chains, on a leash, in my hand, in MY box....
I decide if an incompetent fool, who lolled along the corridoors of knowledge, a man who was bestowed with education, to deprive you, may play with your ailing heart on a surgeon's table....and if you die...well good riddance...less competition for ME. whoopee!
I decide your character...don't I? And if you dare to be an Abel to your fellow men...well goody-goody...i won't slay you...I'll slay your character instead...won't that do? For who? For ME of course, you fool!
I am Cain, I survive, through it all.
At the very first selection, my genes triumphed over yours.
And through the ages my seed has multiplied, a million-fold.
My tools were many-the monarchy, the church, the aristocracy, the communists,
My aim was one- to destroy you.
After all Abel, I CAIN, was asked to be your keeper.

On it's madness....

This is the age for cotton floss to substitute what was originally meant to be the brain....
And an excessive quantity of air seems to weigh more than the most solid sense....
What the devil advocates, the angels do....
God watches all from heaven.....and what is ageless ages too...
What can the sun say if the earth wishes to revolve around the moon?
When the gods cease to frown, in helpless apathy, what do mere mortals mean to me?

About the Zog.....

The Zog is an extremely rare species of animal, hedonistic to a degree that it cannot quite quantify itself and given to extreme mood swings which justify people who generally try to leave it alone. The thing is given to self-worship and arrogance and a most blatant disregard for the feelings of the other animals in the zoo that it occasionally deigns to caricature in a most garish and outrightly provocative way. It is definitely feline in it's affections, adoring those who love it, scratching out the eyes of those who hurt it. Otherwise quite an unremarkable creature, it leaves it's paw-prints on this page at irregular intervals.