As of a week ago or so, the word “bullshit” has been reverberating through my mind (see, e.g., Addendum II of June 21, 2019, to “Bullshit,” March 31, 2003). To be a bit more precise, it is the “no-bullshit” adjective that has occupied much of my attention lately. It seems to be emblematic of my thinking, and thus it pops up in my writings surprisingly often. A quick search through my Residua is all it takes to pin it down. Amazingly enough, the adjective also appears in as many as ten titles of my writings, some of which are central to my life. Here they go in chronological order of their appearance:

No-Bullshit Fable (December 3, 1994)
Towards a No-Bullshit Preface (November 16, 1997)
No-Bullshit Mondrians (August 19, 1998)
No-Bullshit Yoga (April 19, 2012)
A No-Bullshit Book (December 16, 2012)
No-Bullshit Tit-for-Tat (August 25, 2014)
No-Bullshit Mondrians at Ikea (August 27, 2014)
No-Bullshit Enlightenment (January 18, 2016)
The No-Bullshit Picelj (March 6, 2016)
No-Bullshit Love (March 28, 2016)

In the end, I searched the World Wide Web for the blessed adjective. Most important, it means “for real,” “brutally honest,” “no-nonsense,” and “genuine” in vernacular English. In addition, it stands for “no-frills,” “concise,” “straightforward,” and “plain-speaking,” as well. To be sure, I am most pleased with all of the above. Indeed, the adjective is emblematic of my magnum opus from cover to cover, as it were. The only trouble with it is the word “bullshit,” it goes without saying. By itself, it stands for everything I despise in every shape or form, let alone in writing. Would that there was anything like no-bullshit bullshit, though. That is, brutally honest and genuine bullshit. Or bullshit for real. To my chagrin, I am succumbing to mere dreams one more time. Alas, no-bullshit bullshit is nothing but a straightforward contradiction in terms!