Trevor Noah - Born a crime excerpt

From Trevor Noah's book: 

 A secondhand car was also the reason my mom got married. If it hadn't been for the Volkswagen that didn't work, we never would have looked for the mechanic who became the husband who became the stepfather who became the man who tortured us for years and put a bullet in the back of my mother's head--­I'll take the new car with the warranty every time. As much as I loved church, the idea of a nine-­hour slog, from mixed church to white church to black church then doubling back to white church again, was just too much to contemplate. It was bad enough in a car, but taking public transport would be twice as long and twice as hard. When the Volkswagen refused to start, inside my head I was praying, Please say we'll just stay home. Please say we'll just stay home. Then I glanced over to see the determined look on my mother's face, her jaw set, and I knew I had a long day ahead of me. "Come," she said. "We're going to catch minibuses." My mother is as stubborn as she is religious. Once her mind's made up, that's it. Indeed, obstacles that would normally lead a person to change their plans, like a car breaking down, only made her more determined to forge ahead. "It's the Devil," she said about the stalled car. "The Devil doesn't want us to go to church. That's why we've got to catch minibuses." Whenever I found myself up against my mother's faith-­based obstinacy, I would try, as respectfully as possible, to counter with an opposing point of view. "Or," I said, "the Lord knows that today we shouldn't go to church, which is why he made sure the car wouldn't start, so that we stay at home as a family and take a day of rest, because even the Lord rested." "Ah, that's the Devil talking, Trevor." "No, because Jesus is in control, and if Jesus is in control and we pray to Jesus, he would let the car start, but he hasn't, therefore--­" "No, Trevor! Sometimes Jesus puts obstacles in your way to see if you overcome them. Like Job. This could be a test." "Ah! Yes, Mom. But the test could be to see if we're willing to accept what has happened and stay at home and praise Jesus for his wisdom." "No. That's the Devil talking. Now go change your clothes." "But Mom!" "Trevor! Sun'qhela!" Sun'qhela is a phrase with many shades of meaning. It says "don't undermine me," "don't underestimate me," and "just try me."

Source: https://cpl.catalogue.library.ns.ca/Record/1305431/Excerpt

Some weekend reads

Elton John on a film about him:
Some studios wanted to tone down the sex and drugs so the film would get a PG-13 rating. But I just haven’t led a PG-13 rated life. I didn’t want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the 70s and 80s, so there didn’t seem to be much point in making a movie that implied that after every gig, I’d quietly gone back to my hotel room with only a glass of warm milk and the Gideon’s Bible for company.

I hadn’t even wanted to be a rock star in the first place, I just wanted to be a successful songwriter – but it just got bigger and bigger over the next few years. I kept a diary the whole time, and it’s inadvertently hilarious. I wrote everything down in this matter-of-fact way, which ends up making it seem even more preposterous: “Woke up, watched Grandstand. Wrote Candle in the Wind. Went to London, bought Rolls-Royce. Ringo Starr came for dinner.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/may/26/elton-john-in-my-own-words-exclusive-my-life-and-making-rocketman

On space travel:
Almost every President since Nixon proposed going back to the moon.” (President Obama focussed instead on studying an asteroid near Earth and working toward the distant goal of sending astronauts to Mars.) “But the money was never allotted. Congress decided we couldn’t have guns and the moon at the same time.” The Department of Defense’s budget is now nearly seven hundred billion dollars, whereas nasa’s funding is $21.5 billion, or around half of one per cent of the national budget. The U.S. is still believed to spend more on space programs than the rest of the world combined.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/the-race-to-develop-the-moon

On croissant: 
The plural of anecdote is not data, and the 19th arrondissement is a long way from the posh 16th, but in my old Paris neighbourhood several years ago it was the ordinaire and not the seductively glittering beurre that was carried off in bagsful by eager customers every morning, snaffled in the street and gobbled at the counters of the neighbourhood bars. Apparently they’re better for dunking in your coffee. There seemed to be fewer ordinaires about last time I was in town, though its cunning rebranding as a croissant naturel in one bakery suggests that vegan celebrity for the margarine croissant may be lurking just around the corner, even in France. And there you have it: the croissant, perennial breakfast of controversialists. Bon appetit, you wild rebel, you.

Source: https://www.1843magazine.com/food/world-in-a-dish/the-croissant-breakfast-of-rebels

On being an astronaut: 
The key is to move slowly, nimbly, “as a cat, very smooth,” said Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky. Push off too hard and “you immediately hit your head on the wall.” At first there’s a lot of that. “During the first two weeks we have bruises,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/50-astronauts-life-in-space/?utm_term=.0671b633708e

Incredible how a commercial carrier is still missing: 
The mystery surrounding MH370 has been a focus of continued investigation and a source of sometimes feverish public speculation. The loss devastated families on four continents. The idea that a sophisticated machine, with its modern instruments and redundant communications, could simply vanish seems beyond the realm of possibility. It is hard to permanently delete an email, and living off the grid is nearly unachievable even when the attempt is deliberate. A Boeing 777 is meant to be electronically accessible at all times. The disappearance of the airplane has provoked a host of theories. Many are preposterous. All are given life by the fact that, in this age, commercial airplanes don’t just vanish.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/


One of my fav pieces from David Sedaris: 
Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing. And it wasn't just my teacher; the entire population seemed to be in on it. Following brutal encounters with my local butcher and the concierge of my building, I'd head off to class, where the teacher would hold my corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, "Here's proof that David is an ignorant and uninspired ensigiejsokhjx."
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a1419/talk-pretty-0399/

Some incredible things on language:

HZ: The G-spot is named in tribute to the German gynaecologist Ernst Gräfenberg, who did a lot of research on the role of the urethra in orgasm. Also in 1929, he invented an early form of IUD, made from silk and silver. Luxe!

HZ: But words like laser, scuba, taser - and the care in ‘care package’, those are all acronyms.

HZ: The classic four-letter swears are NOT acronyms.

so very literal: ‘log in’, after the log on a knotted rope that would be thrown overboard from a ship to measure its speed - calculated by the length of rope unspooled over a particular time - and that would be logged in the log book.

HZ: 700 years ago, ‘nice’ meant ‘stupid’ or ignorant. There’s nothing stupid about being nice, people!

https://www.theallusionist.org/transcripts/hundredth