Friday, March 31, 2006

democracy

under threat
and I'm afraid

Thursday, March 30, 2006

seen

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-"
Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864.

a video, and a mind-control device

found a video of an old classic here.
For fans, the lyrics and the music are as good as ever. The video, I think, looks like something from a newspaper.

I also found this, don't know what to make of it

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

I would

If I could
But I just don't know what to say

secure

link

V for Vendetta ( go read the graphic novel )
Snowcrash
1984

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

season d'etre



The darling buds
have popped their heads
and broken rank-and-file
the snows are melted
the skies untinted
and gone is the land's ice-cold veil




Spring is on its way
but the snowflake is melting
into oblivion



the carboy of acid sits
the sunny clime is wasted
on the bright flowers that dare
to seek its dark depths



winter was the season cool
frozen squirrels and dark dead wood
like a nippy crab with quick claws
that ends up on someone's dinner plate



the wintry sunlight fades
with my sting laced with arachnid-hate I wait
for the next sun-drenched wretch
to walk my way



the winter's cold
lies spent and old
like an old man's unheard refrain
the sunbeam and the yellow blooms
mock it with child-like disdain

Monday, March 27, 2006

bus window, 16

how to bug people

me : isn't it obvious ?
friend : what is obvious ?
me : okay, then it's not that obvious for you ...

by the fireplace

wild metal monster, or furry toy ?

Sunday, March 26, 2006

just when

you start wondering what the highest purpose of life is, the answer comes screaming in;
the highest and lowest purpose of life remains what it always was: survival

rage

helpless impotent rage. I need my space. I need a study
with an oaken desk, and a window overlooking lush green gardens with hedges and a river flowing by

Saturday, March 25, 2006

solitary

Alan Parsons Project. That's what's playing on the radio. Radio ? no no, not the radio, on the computer. FM stations tend to be a dicey matter.

It's after lunch at the office, there's no one around. The corridors lie un-stalked - people don't seem inclined to. Maybe because it's friday.

Alan Parsons Project - The Definitive Collection. It's a two-CD pack. It cost quite a bit - more than what I'd typically have spent on music, but my trip here is winding down, and I'm making impulse/emotional buys. This would be the time to ask me for a big favor.

The cover has the picture of a seashore, with a half-sunken aquarium with 1. a broken porcelain vase 2. a statuette of a topless someone 3. a couple of starfish 4. a toy soldier in red uniform coat and cap

Friday afternoon. After lunch. Empty corridors and a sunny deserted patio. The children aren't out playing. Traffic has started trickling in on the road outside. In a couple of hours, the road will be choked with cars. As the light fades, so will this corporate section of the city bleed out people

I like aquariums. I had one a long time back. It was very rewarding to line the glass floor with sand, and fix in the plants and watch the fish swim around exploring the place, and at some subconscious telepathic level, my heart would tell the fish, "Meee !! all that you see!!! I made it all for You!! you like ? "
( choice of upper-case letters not incidental )

There's a bunch of yellow petalled flowers sitting in a clear plastic cup of water on the shelf . They are from last weekend. Last friday, when I got to my desk, there was a long-stemmed yellow-petalled flower sitting on my desk ( and on everybody else's too, they were put there by the Management, there's no romantic angle in the story, except for the stapler .. )
The petals were closed around each other in a tight embrace. After putting them in the plastic cup of water, they opened up. Now they are of the texture of dried old paper, and their edges are turning brown.

And the water. Swirling water gently moving the stalks of plants & slender weaving fish. The whole thing was terribly harmonious and soothing. The first chapter of Moby Dick mentions the how the narrator would seek out large water bodies for succor when the day-to-day existence was getting too irksome.

Civillized -from old european - means to put in a box.
Civillization is a huge machine clunking and wheezing. Culture is the software,the programs which describe/prescribe/limit the possibilities of each component. There is only so much 'Culture' one can take, hence the large water bodies. Or small ones, captive in amber colored glass.

A friend had asked me once, do you believe in 'God is Truth', or do you believe in 'God is Good' ?
Well of course, if there is a God, he/she/it would definitely be good, by definition, but you notice, the question has Good with a G.
I figure the former people are usually not people persons, because a lot of human interaction does not follow teutonic correctness in purpose and execution, and is not usually consistent. These are the people who are usually left wondering what to say next, or rather, what would be the proper thing to say next, while the latter kind are already yakking away with consummate ease. Hence, not people-person types.
The latter are the kind to believe in co-incidences, lottery tickets and mercy.
Of course, I'm deliberately not answering the question.

The blog explosion is percieved to amplify creative stuff coming out of the heads of the people. It should ideally create a 'sea' of creative parts which can then be searched and components isolated and re-assembled into the next literary Picasso or van Gogh(although I personally believe it's headed more towards Dali)
I believe it simultaneously dilutes the content.
The hypothesis of a million monkeys sitting at keyboards was never tested for lack of infrastructure. Not so anymore.
Differently, an explosion of 'creativite material' is supposed to stem from folks reading stuff on other peoples' blogs, and deriving ideas and inspiration from that. Then creative output is then expected to spiral, re-re-inforcing itself and riding on positive feedback, to touch the upper most levels, wherever applicable.
But mostly, posts tend to be echoes - rehashes of material read elsewhere, opinionated rehashes, language translations, or irrelevant and/or redundant altogether. The spiral tends more to diminish as it races to cover all versions/ possibilities/ combinations of ideas.
The next work of Shakespeare, spontaneously created out of synergy of a million minds ( 75% of them seeking porn, sadly ), is of no use if it is distributed over ten million blogs.
In the meanwhile, to restore lost faith in technology, there's Flickr...

Electronic Arts, the video game company, has made a game based on the Godfather novel. The Don, Sonny and Hagen look like they did in the movie. For someone who has a Mafia logo embedded in his brain, I find the new development, well, disturbing. I am going to find having to shift my affections to be a little wrenching. The demo clips I saw on the net seem glorious indeed. I have a friend who would read the Godfather before all exams. Godfather quotes are cool. The word consigliori is cool
We of course, have to forget that the good Don Corleone was a crook.
Leaving Mafia for this, would make sense. However, Mafia is my first love ( I am irrevocably geek ), thus my dilemma rages ...

It's past midnight and I need to get some sleep. So does my post. But I will not let it get any, instead, I'm going to sic it on y'all.

And oh, I'm clean

Thursday, March 23, 2006

street musician,Chicago

apathy

coming soon to a server near you ...

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

music mystic 1.x

article

science or voodoo ?
Also, 'Ravi Shankar' is not a type of music !!

Sunday, March 19, 2006

heed my call

This is NOT funny. Not at all. Pass this on.

bored. to death

Saturday, March 18, 2006

paths















Some paths always lead into summer, but once in a while, you have to get off that path for no reason at all ....

photo by the pink-polka-dottie

old times

Flash, caught on film

Friday, March 17, 2006

solitude

friends

Right now, three guys I know in Mumbai are fighting to make it home. They are being made to sit in stuffy crowded buses and exposed to FM Radio over the bus speakers. This happens for two hours every day. One way. I pray for strength for them.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

the balloon hordes

Labels: ,

Monday, March 13, 2006

still

twenty odd years. People come and go. You get used to it.
Wait, strike the last sentence. On second thoughts, don't. Good riddance be the new motto.
A long road drive to the big bird place and back in the night. Surreal.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

a GOOD THING

They took the Chuck Norris top 10 facts, and put it across to Chuck Norris himself on t.v. Here Chuck reads his top 10 ...
Considering the 'Chuck Norris facts' started going around the internet first, and were probably some teenager's humorous prank, it's pretty good going I'd say

tagg

I don't like tags. I don't think these chain-mail equivalents should be called memes, which is, I think, a case of the clueless appropriating the beautiful for the mundane. I also don't like to not oblige people (and of course, like talking about myself). So, here goes :

Seven things to do before I die:
-get myself lots of money to leave behind, so that people can fight over me
-build a model helicopter and an insect robot
-sketch/paint a tree on canvas as well as on mspaint
-learn yoga until I can stand upside down on one hand and meditate
-get my own aquarium, and aquascape it every two months
-learn sanskrit and read the scriptures in original
-meet with all my friends

Seven things I can't do:
-remember what I started out to do ten minutes after I get on the internet- I get -distracted and end up on reddit or something else before I know it.
-wake up early - self explanatory. I have a big lazy bone somewhere in me
-return the 'borrowed' copy of 'the cuckoo's egg' that I have since early college
-kneel on my right knee, it buckled when bowling once, and has bawled ever since
-carry a tune, of course , I wasn't always like this, as a child, my singing was , umm, rather appreciated
-watch sports, which is similiar to reading newspapers for me -
-dates I know I'm doomed. I'm keep forgetting birthdays and anniversaries. It's only a matter of time before someone gets annoyed enough and hits me with a stick or something
-bargain/argue with people

Seven things that attract me to Europe:
-funny british accent
-curious as to what Belgians look like
-the London Tube
-it's being on the way to America
-being the home of Sherlock Holmes
-proximity to Sicily, where the good Don Corleone hails from
-prominent featuring in many many spy novels

Seven good books :
Seven indeed. Seven is an injustice to the rest thousand. Still, leaving out a lot of biggies, like Tintin and Asterix and Sherlock Holmes and assorted war comics and lots of other similiar stuff, the list becomes ..
-The Cuckoo's Egg, by Cliff Stoll
the attitude and the humorous observations are liberating ...
-A Pelican at Blandings, by P.G Wodehouse
P.G Wodehouse is a warm cozy place. I ought to go there more often. The stiff upper lip and dressing for dinner marked a very sleepy-comfy school time for me.
-Cryptonomicon , by Neal Stephenson
a whirlwind tour of magical trinkets for the geeky.
-Nightfall and other short stories, by Isaac Asimov
I consider Asimov to be the best science fiction writer ever. The word 'Father' would not be far off. None comes close to weaving characters,plot and humor so smoothly with sci/fi devices like mind-control etc.
-Three men in a boat, by Jerome K Jerome
Book has a calming influence. The travel and humor soothes, recharges and rekindles spontaneity and enthusiasm.
-The Wind in the Willows, Kennethe Grahame
grew up with it. A staple during the vacations. Enid Blytons come and go, this one does not. Puttering around in boats is sooo much fun ....
-Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance
made me think, made me ramble off track and meander ever since. Is my excuse for insanity.

Seven good Movies :
Snatch
Enemy of the State
Ocean's Eleven
The Big Lebowski
The Big Fish
The Matrix
Vanishing Point

almost all masala films, you see . Haven't included any serious stuff that I have seen and liked ( for the simple reason I can't remember them here )
Seven blogs to tag:
naaah, I don't do this

seen on a tee

Rock is Dead !! Long live Paper and Scissors !!

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

seen on the internet

Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't

Sunday, March 05, 2006

guitar echoes

Django Reinhardt is the guy talked about in Guitar for Dummies, along with Andres Segovia ( pardon my spelling (if it be wrong) ). And when I say 'talked about', I should also mention hushed tones, and printed letters kneeling in awe, if they could do that.

If you would read the book end to end, and a few more books like it, and practise a few hundred hours - if you're a bright-eyed, green behind the ears, not-a-natural enthusiast with loads of time and energy to dedicate to the craft, you could become somewhat as good at playing the guitar as the semi-mythical Django.

I say semi-mythical because for a long long time I didn't get to hear any of his works, never heard anybody mention him, less discuss/rate him, never saw a printed or an internet word about him. All but non-existent, you might think.

Then I got Mafia , and played it for hours on end, foregoing work and sleep (until the Telephone Calls happened, which is a story for another day and time) . And found the soundtrack absolutely delightful. And forgot about it.

Today I got a link from reddit, who got it from steveaudio's blog which pointed to a link from boing-boing which pointed to link which had a downloadable Quicktime clip of the master at work.

Since it sounded familiar , I checked the Mafia game soundtrack and found that it did contain Django Reinhardt's works. Pleasantly surprised. That's about it. Sorry, there's no deeper plot.

Good stuff. Listen, if you can, and hear the guitar sing. Again, it might not be your cup of tea, as it isn't entirely mine either.

Btw, a bit of trivia for you. The master used only two fingers on his left hand(and thumb), the remaining two were injured in a fire during childhood.

and oh, I guess 'Django' was a nickname

good pic here

Friday, March 03, 2006

ask

If the tar in cigarettes is bad for you, what about the tar on the road... ?
Does it leak tiny amount of carcinogenic fumes when heated for hours on end by the hot Indian sun ?

seek

Do not let kindness interfere with survival

- old jungle saying

Thursday, March 02, 2006

ponder on the naming

ponder on the naming

JKD

The highest technique is to have no technique
My technique is a result of your technique; my movement is a result of your movement

If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. Be water my friend.

Q: What are your thoughts when facing an opponent ?
A: There is no opponent
Q: Why is that ?
A: Because the word 'I' does not exist

entity

The manifestation is everything and hence not tangible in the parts. Forget the sum being greater than the parts, the sum is just NOT the parts ( except when there is only one part which is academic anyway ). To search for the sum in the parts is pointless and rather stupid.

roads

Incentives and information. Progress or revolutions. Or both.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

ramble

The shadow ever lurks at the corner of my vision. Always there, I'm never free of it. Sometimes, it sits on my back and whispers in my ear. Earlier, the voice was loud and strong I used to pay heed. Over time, it's voice has become hoarse and tiny, it's grip feeble. I am afraid of it, yet it is gladdening whenever it flexes it's wings. It's name is Passion, and you will notice life abides by it.

".. you don't seem to know,

don't seem to care

what your heart is for .."

-Natalie Imbruglia