The Grammar of Lassitude

This past week has been so difficult to parse, and not just for me: the usually immaculate Charles Ryder suddenly finds himself sweating under his delightfully starched collar too. Why? Not my dirt to dish! What can I say? The state of things has been rather pluperfect...

I have always prided myself on knowing how to use the future perfect and the future perfect continuous tenses, but, God knows, I hate a tense that talks about the past in the future. It is nought but a tense of regrets! And that brings us to Punjaban and Neo's tepid (for lack of a better word) 'romance'. Oh even Donna Reed and James Stewart had more fun with theirs, I don't even know to which era this THING belongs to. For the past few days, Punjaban and Neo have been doing a strange mating ritual over a pack of UNO cards and this game normally ends with an awkward hug or a shy kiss. It's quite stultifyingly future perfect: 'He will have kissed her before the clock strikes twelve and the game of UNO is over.' Sadly, I will have tired of this by the time I end this sentence. Don't get me wrong, Punjaban is a lovely girl, but does she really have to debase Hamlet and me before Neo? You're not into either of us and we certainly aren't into you. He gets it, woman! Some dignity would be much appreciated! Masakalli, Hamlet and I are all of the opinion that this romance needs to be speeded up and now! I will have punched a hole in a wall by the time Punjaban makes the millionth ponderance about how her cappuccino measures up to his steamer of a complexion. I really should stop, God knows, this act of 'My Fair Desi' always puts me in the imperative mood!

Recently, I had a crazy idea! It is an important adverb clause in time, really, since I am normally trapped in the ironically perfect present, sandwiched between the not-so-simple past and the 'hurtling-towards-me-in-all-its-simplicity' future. But here, I had a self-centred tense all to myself as I wondered about a certain beguiling biologist and the feelings she might have for me...
Oh it is but a crazy idea! Cunegonde is a thing of the past, ours was a fairly superficial attraction and the only genuine part of it was the rejection, but this! This comes with a modal verb of probability! Maybe I am being too hard on myself by saying that she 'might' have feelings for me, I feel the magical reverbrations of a 'may' in the surreptitious touches, the inflection in the voice when she speaks to/of me, the hugs...All of which tell me that she is in the indicative mood! Ah, but it is a crazy idea! Yet the moon seems to be hanging lower in the climes these days, or am I just making an intransitive fool of myself?

I really don't want to talk about the flood; God knows, everybody else is! It's so frustrating and it brings with it so many forbidden possibilities! Possibilities that steep me in guilt everytime I think on those lines. But then, as Hamlet said yesterday, "Why so subjunctive?"

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!