Life Under the New Regime

Imagine the human lip as a two dimensional geometrical figure. View it in isolation - an abstract, mathematical shape. Now locate its center. Imagine the X and Y axes passing through the center in the usual, orthogonal, Cartesian way. Consider the part of the lip in the first quadrant (x>0 and y>0). Now imagine what happens to this part when it is hit hard by a squash racket in the dying arcs of a full-blooded swing.⁰

The first-quadrant-lip develops a stubborn tumescence in response to developments it must've not really liked. The swelling just tumbles out spontaneously, outflanking its counterpart in a remarkably uncool, hideous way. The whole appearance is not unlike that of a lip recently bee stung. Smiling and laughing become searingly painful; the promise of food, a panic inducing, all too matter-of-fact suffering.

Life under the new regime also involves dutiful, painstaking study of Infinite Jest (again) and a slavish devotion to all things David Foster Wallace (the short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion being duly acquired and lovingly gazed at everyday) - including shameless pastiches such as this.¹

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0. This may be analyzed in the following two main parts:

a) The primary impact of the synthetic, boron coated outer frame of the racket on the first-quadrant-lip which cuts the skin and leaves a deep reddish bruise on the upper lip.

b) The secondary (and the more devastating) encounter between the inside of what the first-quadrant-lip is the outside of and its dragging and grinding motion against the razor sharp, mucronate canine tooth - all while the racket frame on the outside is tearing through the sturdy, unyielding epithelial tissue in a way reminiscent of Shakti Kapoor&Gulshan Grover's tearing through the Clothes of the Hero's Sister in the quintessential mainstream '80s Hindi film.

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1.

Don't steal. But if you have to steal, steal from the best.

(Woody Allen)