Last night, Gil called to talk. We've been talking a lot these days; him asking for "career counselling" (not that I see why he needs any from me of all people, given my lack of anything resembling a career at present, and the fact that he's had seven offers to date) - and myself needing someone to rant to while trapped within the molasses flow of traffic along the Federal Highway.

Snippets:

Me: "Fault is immaterial. No matter who's wrong, or right, whatever happened, happened. Nothing you do changes one bit of that."

Gil: "Okay. So let's say, hypothetically, you were driving your CR-V down the road one night. And, say, a motorcycle swerves in front of you, and you oversteer to avoid it, and you slam into a lamppost, and the car flips. Furthermore, there's no Indian guy to pull you out of the burning wreckage, and you end up a quadriplegic, with third-degree burns, and blind. And say the guy on the motorcycle is Ananda Krishnan's godson? Aren't you going to sue his ass for everything he's worth? What about fault then?"

Me: "Can I still talk?"

Gil: "Erm.. okay lah. Yes, yes you can still talk."

Me: "Am I impotent?"

Gil: "HAHAHAHAHAHAAH.. yeah, of course!"

Me: (after some thought) "Well, that's about finding fault in a legal sense, not a moral one. It's not so much out of vengeance, it's more for practical purposes. After all, I'll need the money to buy a motorized wheelchair and cybernetic limbs."

Gil: "So you're not going to hate him?"

Me: "Hatred is baggage. I'm trying to be Zen about everything."

Gil: "But let's be frank. We're never going to let go of our hate. Isn't it more Zen to admit that you can't let go of it? That it's a part of you you can't escape?"

Me: "So you're saying it's more Zen to admit you can't be Zen.. that's a pretty zhai paradox."

(few rants later)

Me: "Well.. yeah. Put it this way. If hatred is baggage, I'm a student flight from Melbourne in December."

Gil: "What?"

Me: "You know. Full of baggage, especially from those assholes graduating who are too cheap to courier and think they can lug their VCR, old textbooks, and entire wardrobe without exceeding the weight limit and end up begging the check-in person at the airport for a few extra kilos.

Put it another way. Imagine a convict who pulls out his wisdom tooth with his bare hands. Imagine that convict sharpening that tooth fragment on the wall of his cell everyday for 10 years until it's sharp enough to use as a weapon to kill the warden who fucks him in the ass every night with his truncheon. Now imagine how much hate that guy has. Well - I think I've got more."

Gil: ".... That's one of the reasons why I still talk to you. For these colourful metaphors."

Someone else I know recently got a stinging order never to post anything related to God on a debator's blog told me he found it ironic that a debator would want to censor freedom of speech.

I stared incredulously and told him that expecting a debator to have an ideological commitment to freedom of speech is like expecting a politician to serve the public trust. After all, a debate isn't about freedom of speech. Quite the opposite, as any good debator should know, it's about winning a contest of structured argumentation within fairly proscribed rules - such as the restrictions against hung cases, for one. (Hm.. do they penalise hung cases in JC debates?)

In any event, as I advised my friend, a debator's role in the debate is to win an argument by oratory and logic. It has nothing to do with his personal opinions or preferences, particularly on private property such as his blog. However, as a consoling sop, I admitted that the "shut up I don't want to hear about it" tactic rarely wins points from adjudicators in a debate. But a blog isn't (necessarily) a forum for debate.