ßã$ħ kãRãŋ jōĦãR.ĊØm

The Middle Ground

2010-04-01T06:22:00.004-06:00

"The basic math remains unchanged: a country that consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil, but owns about 2 percent of the world’s known reserves, cannot drill its way to self-sufficiency".

Happy 2010!

2009-12-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Slumdog protests! I am not a dog...but a kutta.

2009-01-24T09:30:00.017-07:00

Much has been made of Danny-boy shooting in an Indian slum, and what a departure that is from the Bollywood dream factory. The protests surrounding the film also focus on the same thing. "Why don't foreign filmmakers depict another aspect of India, besides the poverty?", and so on . To show or not to show it seems, is the question.

Then there is the name business...apparently, people living in the shanties seem more than little upset being referred to as a slum-dog. I suppose it could have been a literal translation from "suar ka kutta" or "gali ka kutta". But just as a brother can call a fellow brother "nigger" whereas anyone else calling a black man "nigger" is beyond offensive, there is something jarring about a Brit referring an Indian slumdweller with a translated 'dog' from the local parlance of 'kutta'. It just is. I wonder if The Slum Millionaire, or The Millionaire from the Slums, or maybe even The Curious case of a Slumdweller would have as much effect?

There are two movies within the Slumdog Millionaire (which I should be pleased about - you know, two for the price of one!). The first third with the subtitled Hindi, and the rest, with the very British English. Everything changes as the language changes. the faces, most obviously. The coarse and piercingly beautiful children are replaced by polished and still beautiful adolescents. The direct documentary of the city with sets and crafted locations. The drama with melodrama...what is "bizarrely curious (more on that later)" is the directorial decision of not letting us in on this transformation (why the hell is Danny-boy nominated for Best Director?). It is beyond patronizing to demonstrate a fondness for the subject, and then to abandon it with as much calous laziness as one would abandon an adorable street puppy once it grows into a mongrel. Dealing visually with the adorable labrador Marley is so much easier than doing anything with a gali ka kutta; no matter how tiresome he is, he looks so sweet!

Somewhere else, in the media coverage of Slumdog, I read about the recent depiction of the 'underbelly' of India being scratched - in film (like this movie), and in books like the Booker Prize winner Arvind Adiga's White Tiger. Unfortunate comparison, I thought, because the White Tiger is all about that transformation (and I disagree heartily with Guardian's Mr. Rushby on his take of the novel): How the rag became rich. Slumdog on the other hand wants to enjoy the times after the rag became rich, but gratuitously shows a little bit of the stinky rag because it was aesthetic and visually stunning.

To be fair, it seems Danny-boy is fond of his characters, and the city in which his characters live. What makes Bombay fascinating to him is that in any frame, the belly and the underbelly seem present simultaneously. Very cubist, I suppose. But there are separations, despite the closeness. The transition from Dharavi to Malabar Hill is not seamless, and that is where he remains trapped in his visual frame. Adiga's White Tiger slit a throat to cross that line. Danny-boy's Jamal just changed clothes, sat in a chair, and spoke immaculate English. There is something more fake in calling that real than all the Bollywood fantasies (with all the songs and dances) put together. My sister (link deliberately not provided) articulates this language business more eloquently and bluntly than I can. She said, "the decision to move from Hindi with subtitles in the first part of the film to British English with teenage actors was actually offensive. Indian English is a wonderful and playful genre on its own. For instance, which policeman in a Bombay police station would say 'this is bizzarely curious'!!!! That was just lazy or an oversight---but it demanded too much of a leap of faith and I could not suspend my disbelief and forget that the actors were speaking british english. That's when the film lost me"...

The ability to move from Hindi (or any other vernacular language) to English, and all the kichhdi (yummy mixed stew of rice and lentils) inbetween is probably the closest we come to blurring that class line. And yet, even there, you maybe given up with a slip in the accent, or an expression. To deny the characters, and the audience, the tricky drama that Jamal, and the rest of us play out and seek our thrills and frustrations in is an opportunity missed. Bombay and Jamal, his love and all else captured by Danny-boy become mere entries in his tourist diary - fascinating, beautiful and enjoyable, but also disingenuous.

There are two things I do hope happen in all this - that A R Rehman gets all the awards he can possibly get at the end of the awards season. I like his music. And second, that should there be a sequel, Shah Rukh Khan is allowed to ham it up, instead of Anil Kapoor. One needs the ham when working with the kutta.

goodbye, dr. strangelove.

2009-01-20T12:36:00.005-07:00

Dick move? What was Cheney doing packing his own boxes in the midst of [supposedly] 90+ movers. Makes me curious about the contents of the box. But that's Cheney - bizarre and mysterious to the very end.

revival. onto sunday reading.

2008-10-12T20:41:00.002-06:00

slavoj zizek's political economy clearly needs wider reading...

float like a bird, not a feather....

2008-05-24T16:22:00.002-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPWCaRWe0w

an alien in america: railway revival

2008-04-15T12:48:00.002-06:00

India is full of enterpreneural ideas these days. A consistently loss-making entity such as the Indian Railways is now making hefty profits. The US can learn from IR, says GE CEO, among other admirers.
But could they please preserve our view?

netflix encounters #2: a classical masterpiece

2008-04-14T14:55:00.004-06:00

Recently, I rented The Wire. Loved it. Got effusive about it: "The pacing - breathing itself. The dialogue, Shakesperean in its rhythms - the notes enframed in that pace. The characters, complex and complimentary - the orchestra. A Classical Masterpiece".
Critics (just about the entire NPR cew, for one) and the creators of The Wire compare it to a novel. In which case, it would be in the Classics section. Probably next to the Iliad, Odyssey or the Mahabharata.
As far as popular TV shows go, I can't argue that the classical view is superior to the Romantic one; to even introduce the idea that art is meant to nudge us toward moral improvement and social awareness is to concede to Romantic hope. But for some people, in some places, the classical view is more true, and in such cases, the artist's duty is to show us that these lives are no smaller for that. And it is -- as we always, always seem to forget -- not depressing but strangely exhilarating to see this truth about humanity acknowledged for once. It may not be the only truth, but it's a truth all the same.

kitty kitty bang bang

2008-04-10T22:40:00.004-06:00

I would've almost missed this one. Gratuitous violence gives me nightmares - I wish they didn't, since I think I can intellectually argue with myself about the different facets of violence. So, when The Lieutenant of Inishmore began laying at the Curious, and all I heard was cats and humans being blown up, flung about or chopped up, I told myself there was no need to go see on stage what I can't see even on fast-forward.
But I did go (clearly). And saw dead cats, and a live one. Live humans being made dead. Spurts of laughter, spurts of blood.
"Lieutenant" is unapologetically a farce...and knowing Ireland has finally found the peace needed to be once again discovered by tourists allowed the laughter to be raucous. But I laughed the loudest at several critics and audience suggestions at the post-show talk-back of the cats - the dismembered and the intact - being the metaphors for Ireland - and all the accompanying sentimntality. Maybe so, but in a view utterly from the present, wouldn't it be more shocking if one didn't retreat into a metaphor and let it be unapologetically farcical about pet-lovers? Only ever so slightly more deranged than the regular ones. And yes, with Irish accents.

an alien in america: entry 5: the games we play

2008-04-10T12:45:00.006-06:00

dubai, mumbai, shanghai. or else, goodbye...

2008-04-10T12:39:00.004-06:00

...the joke circulating on my vacation.

an alien in america: entry 4: on parole

2008-04-10T12:26:00.003-06:00

6 bags, 2 escorts, 7 flights and 2gb photographs later, I'm back on parole....

A Conversation among Adults

2008-03-24T09:39:00.004-06:00

A reminder that an anti-PC converstion need not only be a comedic routine or a self-righteous rant against status-quos...it can be irrevocably gracious, sincere and free of any rancour - academic or otherwise. Regardless of the outcome of these elections, there is something so inspirational, yet pragmatic about Barak Obama. Bravo, and thank you.

(click on picture to start video)

wow?

2007-10-12T12:26:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC. The conflation of issues the NPP recognizes is certainlygetting interesting...although I cannot ignore the irony in an American winning the prize for work towards global climate change! It would have been entirely justified to award the IPCC the award by itself given how much global impact the publication of its fourth report had earlier this year, but the inclusion of Al Gore is a potent reminder to the Americans - who still hold most of the trump cards at such talks - by the Nobel committee about who it feels is on the right side of this debate, with the implication that Bush, Gore's political nemesis, being still very much on the wrong side. With Bush thankfully now into the final phase of his disastrous presidency, it can be safely assumed that he has his legacy very much on his mind. Anything that can nudge him towards choosing the right course of action on climate change is welcome - but I suspect forlorn.

As for Gore, I wonder whether this will now persuade him

to go again for the biggest prize of all? Well, the $1.5m Nobel prize fund should help pay for a few hours on the campaign trail, if he does.

I love the BBC readers' forum on this one....10+ pages and counting!

Precious cover, blank book

2007-09-30T11:04:00.000-06:00

This weekend's movie accompanying take-out-Chinese, turned out to be a teasingly unsatisfying meal. For all its hip-and-trendiness, Japanimations can be downright vacant. Lavish graphics, cartoon plot. The wonderfully detailed animated Japanese flick "Tekkonkinkreet" is a wonder to look at, even as its increasingly pretentious manga-inspired story line outstays its welcome.

It's set in a crumbling Bladerunner-esque metropolis called Treasure Town, where a childlike (I suppose because he is one) 11-year-old urchin named White and his slightly older friend Black fly through the air - and get caught up in a Yakuza boss' scheme to level the old city and replace it with an amusement park. Save for an avuncular prune, Gramps , the adults who pass through their lives, including a couple of kindly cops and some oddly dressed gang members (they look ready to rumble with droogs), generally pass through without much comment. They offer the children greetings though precious little else, which makes the loneliness that clings to Black and White — illustrated by the expressive use of negative space — all the more poignant and unacceptable.

Beautiful and a touch bewildering, “Tekkonkinkreet” kinks up a fairly familiar story of love and loyalty with a helping of underworld crime action, the usual juvenile agonies and fuzzy philosophy. And more exasperatingly, this well-worn record seems to be stuck on a never ending "replay". The first-time feature director Michael Arias, an American who lives and works in Japan, stuffs a lot of exposition and action into 100 baggy minutes. Amid all the sharp turns, the periodic slicing and dicing, the gangsters and the shifty deals, the old man in the bathhouse and the snake in its lair, it can be tough to pinpoint what precisely Black and White are up to, much less the filmmakers.

Even so, “Tekkonkinkreet” demands to be seen, if only for its beauty. The generally bright palette and overall soft look work a nice contrast to the dark theme, as if the world itself were on the children’s side. The character design of the boys is particularly lovely, almost loving, from the scar slashed across Black’s right eye like a warning to the hat shaped like a bear’s head that White wears, his mischievous, smiling face peeping through the animal’s open mouth. There’s a touch of Saint-Exupéry’s “Little Prince” in these two children, whose adventures and lessons seem plucked right from this book: “To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups. ...” And that, as everyone knows, would be disastrous.

total masti?

2007-09-24T12:35:00.000-06:00

India won the first 2020 Cricket World Cup. I am sure this is big news in the subcontinent. Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Dhoni. Imran Nazir and Shahid Afridi. There is a solid defense of the Twenty20 format by Osman Samiuddin from the Pakistani [and Indian, as well] perspective:

About right, too, for the format is one the average Pakistani, fan and player, easily recognises and feels comfortable with. England may have been responsible for institutionalising and selling the concept, but its informal, Asian cousin, played out on streets with apartments as spectators and on grounds with cement pitches and dangerous outfields has long been Pakistan cricket’s lifeline.

This is, then, really the game that desi kids played and play. The tennis ball version [taped ball or not], usually 10 or 12 overs; the hard ball version, 20 or 25 overs; on a cement pitch; front-foot, across the line batting; block hole, yorker bowling; aggressive fielding, running; uptempo and hurried pace. Here is the rub, though. In this version, the goal is to get better, to learn to stay at the crease, to master the art of bowling according to a plan not as a reaction, to learn to keep control of the ball even after you have hit it. The goal, is to play a full game of cricket. There were/are tons of yuvrags, afridis … everyone had to have such players. They were called sloggers. I can't recall any particular pride associated with such a designation.
Admit it. The odds are stacked against the bowler in cricket. The batsman is padded, and has a very thick stick and can catch a break by moving to the non-stricker’s end. The beauty of cricket is to make those odds even out - by pitch, by bowl, by field, by pace. And then ask the bat to rise to the occasion. 2020 makes a mockery of that balance and stacks everything to credit the bat. Smaller boundaries, hampered field placement, and the urge to “measure the distance of the Sixes”.
Sure it is fun comparing Yuvrag’s 6 in six balls performance, to Gibb’s 6 in six balls during WC 2007 and, further back, to Sir Gary Sobers’ 6 in six balls in 1968. But do these batsmen qualify as genus Britannicus, to quote CLR James? Judging from the Test career of Sir Gary Sobers, of course. Will we get a similar chance to judge the young Yuvraj Singh? I have no idea. And I fear that we will not find out. I fear that the 2020 will splinter a team into a perfectly natural division of skill-sets, of specialist sloggers like Shahid Afridi never having to grow beyond what they played in their backyards. How will someone like Shane Warne or Abdul Qadir or Imran Khan emerge out of this format? Nathan Bracken? Pfft. That, in a nutshell, is the reason I remain unenthusiastic about this format.

netflix encounters #1

2007-09-22T11:46:00.000-06:00

Through a recommendation, I recently discovered a director.

Here is the first of the films I have seen of Emir Kusturica:

When Father was Away on Business (1985)

The title euphemism of ''When Father Was Away on Business'' refers to a trip taken by the young hero's parent - not a business trip, but a journey to a labor camp. It also indicates the boyish perspective from which the story is seen. This warmly appealing Yugoslav film makes charming use of 6-year-old Malik Malkoc and his outlook without sacrificing a larger and more knowing directorial overview.
While offering a humorous, richly detailed portrait of Malik and his family, Emir Kusturica also outlines the political climate in which the story unfolds. Set mostly in Sarajevo in the early 1950's, the film makes frequent references to the uneasy relationship between Marshal Tito's postwar Yugoslavia and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Stalinist loyalties are continually being put to the test, so that when Malik's father, Mesha makes a sarcastic remark about a political drawing in a newspaper, he risks dire consequences. The fact that Mesha's brother-in-law, a stern, bureaucratic Communist Party official, shares Mesha's interest in the same flirtatious young woman only seals Mesha's fate. He is sent to work in a mine as a result of his vague transgression, and the rest of the family is left to manage on its own.
Kusturica creates a wonderfully vivid sense of the various family members and their life together. Malik's long-suffering mother takes in work as a seamstress and looks after her father and three young sons, while also pining for her absent husband and conveniently forgetting the philandering that helped put him away. One of Malik's brothers is a bookish type who hoards every snippet of film stock he can lay his hands on. Malik himself has a habit of sleepwalking and a remarkable talent for interrupting adult sexual encounters. In one of the film's most affecting sequences, a funny scene that is also terribly sad, Malik goes to extraordinary lengths to keep his parents apart after his mother is finally able to arrange a visit to the mine at which her husband is imprisoned.
The film, which has a broad, expansive narrative style, follows the family through this crisis and back to some sort of equilibrium; in the meantime, it also captures some of Malik's formative experiences, including his first stirrings of love for an amazingly diffident little girl. Kusturica's measured direction is able to weave all these disparate elements together into a gentle, touching film alive with humanity and humor.

an alien in america: entry 3: shopping for world piece[s]

2007-09-17T22:31:00.000-06:00

from l-r: saddam hussein, tony blair, kim jong-il, george bush, osama bin-laden

the flip side (osama to the left): war criminals. (these are special edition. especially the ghost saddam)

I am preparing my christmas wish-list to avoid crowds. This is wish list item #1.

http://www.superradtoys.com/elite/
Plastic God’s Axis of Evil is a limited edition boxed set of 5” rotocast collectibles, featuring everyone’s favorite cast of current political icons: Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, Kim Jong-il, George “W” Bush and Osama bin Laden. The dolls have 7 points of articulation and come packed together in a flip open window door box

of KJ's audience....

2007-08-31T17:09:00.000-06:00

the newest oldest story...middle class moralities

The Bourgeois-Caress-My-Superego Guide to Happiness: Reflections on the Experience Economy

2007-08-19T22:00:00.000-06:00

...which happens to be Harvard endorsed [which guarantees future networking with other happily caressed superegos]: http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=91293

Caffeine-free Diet Coke: Reflections on the Experience Economy

2007-08-19T04:07:00.000-06:00

Today's ethics are the ethics of the superego*; no longer circumscribed by moderation. One is encouraged instead, to limitless consumption, because the product consumed is in itself deprived of its "dangerous" constituent. There is an injunction to enjoy, and one is guilty if enjoyment is not desired and subsequently attained.

Decaf. coffee.

Fat free ice-cream.

Caffeine free diet coke.....(chocolate laxative has also been mentioned occasionally, but since I have never encountered it, I shall leave it alone till the fateful day when I do have that pleasure).

and my personal favourite - mass customisation - a product being its own counter ethic. Instead of removing action, one "balances" it with counter-action. Is being good, finally, being less bad?

...I want to begin with Coca-cola. It’s no surprise that Coca-cola was first introduced as a medicine. Its strange taste seems to provide no particular satisfaction. It is not directly pleasing, however, it is as such, as transcending any use–value, like water, beer or wine, which definitely do quench our thirst, that Coke functions as the direct embodiment of "IT", the pure surplue of enjoyment over standard satisfactions. It is the mysterious and elusive X we are all after in our compulsive consumption. The unexpected result of this is not that, since Coke doesn’t satisfy any concrete need we drink it only as supplement, after some other drink has satisfied our substantial need — it is rather this very superfluous character that makes our thirst for Coke all the more insatiable. Coke has the paradoxical quality that the more you drink it, the more you get thirsty. So, when the slogan for Coke was "Coke is it!", we should see in it some ambuigity — it’s "it" precisely insofar as it’s never IT, precisely insofar as every consumption opens up the desire for more. The paradox is thus that Coke is not an ordinary commodity, but a commodity whose very peculiar use–value itself is already a direct embodiment of the auratic, ineffable surplus. This process is brought to its conclusion in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke. We drink a drink for two reasons: for its nutritional value and for its taste. In the case of caffeine–free diet Coke, its nutritional value is suspended and the caffeine as the key ingredient of its taste is also taken away. All that remains is pure semblance, an artificial promise of a substance which never materialized. Is it not that in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke that we almost literally drink nothing in the guise of something? What I am referring to, of course, is Nietzsche’s opposition between "wanting nothing", in the sense of "I do not want anything", and the nihilistic stance of actively wanting the Nothingness itself. Following Nietzsche, Lacan emphasized how, in anorexia, the subject doesn’t simply not eat anything, he rather actively wants to eat the Nothingness itself. The same goes for the famous patient who felt guilty of stealing, although he didn’t effectively steal anything — what he did steal was, again, Nothingness itself. Along the same lines, in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke, we drink Nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property. S. Zizek in "The Superego and the Act", Aug 1999.

*Since the association between super-ego and an injunction to enjoy may seem counter-intuitive at first glance, one needs to keep in mind the radical separation between superego and the ethics of desire. For Lacan, superego is vehicle for such that what appears as a renunciation of pleasure for the sake of duty may be a way to get off, to enjoy.

**Superego is the revenge that capitalizes upon our guilt--that is to say, the price we pay for the guilt we contract by betraying our desire in the name of the Good. Slavoj Zizek in The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verso, 1994), 69.

ps: I should have made links to terms such as "the experience economy", but I shan't. It isn't worth it, enjoyment-wise.

mismatched

2007-08-17T13:33:00.000-06:00

"A man can't whistle through clenched teeth but sees clearly through eyes blurred by tears."

American sentences - paul nelson; and
Dylan Sisson's gallery;

mad about mad men

2007-08-17T01:47:00.000-06:00

'Smoking, Drinking, Cheating and Selling' that's how The New York Times summated this tv flick. "There were seven deadly sins practiced at the dawn of the 1960s: smoking, drinking, adultery, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and racism."
Can't say the times have changed much. But there is something about the vintage 60's that draws me to it. The men are stoical, suave, politically incorrect, and downright sexist. The women are either 'conflicted' professionals or 'blissful' homemakers. And, its a cut-throat world of an advertising agency in the heart of 60's New York. Nothing really has changed much if one thinks about it. Then what is it?

I still can't justify my obsession with Godfather. And neither can I explain my obsession with (a Michael Corleone), or a Don Draper. I guess I will never know.

60 years young...

2007-08-15T12:34:00.000-06:00

Birthday reading for post-partitioners:

New Yorker thinks that the only thing worth telling about South Asian history is that decade in the 40s and the communal killings. So does NY Times, for that matter.
Guardian, however, has got the dibs on India.
BBC thinks it has got Said figured out.
Outlook's showing off its bookshelf (seriously, Jhumpa Lahiri?).
But, the best thing I read today was thanks to a "memo". I am fascinated.

2nd coming, 1st viewing

2007-08-05T19:38:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while I go to watch live theatre. It has to be so because theatres are not as prolific as cinemas, and they have fewer plays per seasons. And also because it is fairly expensive...well, sort of. $30 per ticket. Of course, that is less than a haircut. Probably which is why one cuts hair occasionally as well. At a lesser frequency than one goes to the theatre.
Anyhow, this weekend was Curious's prelude show to its 10th season. A bit about Curious Theatre - it is housed in a chapel (that is, it used to be a chapel, but most of the curious weren't around for that) and stages plays that would I suppose be WAY-off-Broadway...about 1700miles off. The house is fairly small, in an intimate sort of way, a bit inconvinient with two columns supporting a balcony in the middle of the house, and a fantastic balcony. The plays are at best sharp and remarkably refined, at worst, err...erratic. But in the end, I sort of love this theatre.
Back to the prelude show - Robert Dubac's "Male Intellect: The Second Coming". Multi-talented is what he is, Dubac. Playright and actor in a one-man production; part magician and wholly super-technician. The play began as a familiar banter that goes on between the masculine, and the feminine set inside Robert's head. Through the comfortable chuckling, one could yet detect a purposeful set and precise lighting that allowed Dubac to slip effortlessly between the various shades of characters. He spoke, sang (I think), caricatured and... wrote on a blackboard...and erased from the blackboard, and wrote and erased...each time revealing and hiding the "truth" that he was trying to remember. It was a brilliant prop at so many levels. The second act, though a bit pedantic expanded the domestic into politics, culture and social hypocracy. The theme of the play was the same as so much of what today's political commentary is about - the polarised and the polite - only done differently. And thank goodness for that difference.

Robert Dubac's "Male Intellect: The Second Coming" plays at the Curious Theatre from Aug 4th to Aug 26th, 2007.

an alien in america series: entry 2: language barriers

2007-07-22T11:42:00.000-06:00

cet été que j'ai décidé apprendre français...avant qu'il devient illégal.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=89976

the wet midlands

2007-07-21T12:24:00.001-06:00

Chinka, somewhere, watching the river Leam gradually flooding.

probably the only poetry i will ever put together....'til the next season.

2007-07-15T09:28:00.000-06:00

Capoeira & Corbusier
Chinese Opera & Alfred Hitchcock
Walt Whitman & Whole Hog Cooking

Mixed Taste: After Taste
Tequila & Dark Energy in the Universe
Soul Food & Existentialism

Prairie Dogs & Gertrude Stein
Japanese Anime & Zora Neale Hurston
Marxism & ... Kittens, Kittens, Kittens!

an alien in america series: entry 1: a crappy problem

2007-07-12T17:59:00.000-06:00

...recently i have been intensely disheartened by the immigration process. however, i try to decompress whenever i can....

on ruins

2007-07-01T18:43:00.000-06:00

Watched Children of Men this evening, and the commentary by Zizek in the Bonus Features section of the DVD. One need not have to say much regarding the bleakness of the film, if this brief commentary seemed the most animated part of the viewing. Zizek gave his interpretation of the film. On infertility as a foreground (the plot) and background (the lack of historicity in a post capitalist-apocalyptic scenario) etc, etc. What struck me, in the film and his commentary, was the bit on the preserved art - that all art looses its meaning when deprived of a world. And by that, I am guessing both the film and Zizek mean a historical continuity. Without that continuity, the art has no meaning, and a certain "cutting off of the moorings and drifting as though in a boat" (film ending) is the only course/recourse. I wonder.
My father, on a recent trip to the US, was often amused by the stud construction going on all around him. It wasn't so much the honesty of materials that seemed to be the issue, really. He simply wondered if this form of building would ever produce ruins.
Coincidentally, I have encountered recently an intriguing form of treasure hunting, that has nothing to do with pirates or parties. It gives a whole new meaning to a walk in the park.

further descent...

2007-05-16T12:54:00.000-06:00

Chandramohan Srilamantula is a final year post-graduate student in Graphics at Fine Arts department at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, Gujarat. In 2006 he received the Lalit Kala National Akademi Award for his work. As part of his final examination, along with other students, he put up his graphic print installations in the Faculty building. His submissions were “Durga Slaying Krustacean” and “The Beautiful Vexation” — figuring ten-headed deities, resembling Ganesh, Vishnu and another featuring a Cross was “untitled”. These installations, closed to the public, brought a mob led by BJP goon Niraj Jain and police authorities who promptly arrested Chandramohan and roughed up the faculty and staff of the department. This video - on the left side - shows the installation being attacked by the goons.
Chandramohan is being charged under sections 153A, 114, and 295 of the Penal Code for “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race etc, commiting acts prejudicial to the harmony of the public.”
He was denied bail and transferred to Central Jail. Emboldened by this, BJP is demanding that all faculty and students in the department be suspended or expelled. The University has suspended Dean Shivji Panikker who publicly backed Chandramohan.
Please spread this news. Write a letter to Indian media. Publicize this across emails and blogs. Baroda has been the site, recently, of communal violence led by the BJP. This guy, Niraj Jain, was also involved in that earlier incident of demolishing a Sufi dargah. Not to mention his involvement in the Gujarat massacre - “Muslims will have to live the way we want otherwise we will pull them out of their houses and kill them”.
It is time to work against the tyranny of hatred spread by the likes of Niraj Jain and Rev. Emmanuel Kant.
Below the fold is a letter to the Human Rights Commission written by the Faculty at MS University.

11th May, 2007
To
The ChairmanNational Human Rights’ Commission
New Delhi
Sir,
We are hereby soliciting your immediate attention to a grave crisis and danger that we the faculty and students of the Faculty of Fine Arts, The M.S. University of Baroda, Baroda are faced with.
On 9th May, 2007, while the Faculty was in the final stages of its annual examination, a VHP/BJP leader, Mr. Niraj Jain, descended on the Faculty and pounced upon certain paintings that were on display as part of the examination work declaring them to be an insult to religion. We may underline the fact that the “display” of the works by the students was for the purpose of evaluation by the external jury and not for public exhibition and the entry to it was restricted.
Mr. Niraj Jain and the mob came accompanied by the police and the local media. While a student, S. Chandramohan, whose work it was, and a friend of his (who had come from Andhra Pradesh), were whisked away and put behind bars, Mr. Niraj Jain and his cohorts held the faculty and students to ransom for over 5 hours subjecting them to insults and humiliations in the presence of a contingent of policemen includingofficers. The In-charge Dean of the Faculty, Prof. Shivaji Panikkar, received the worst of these. The violent incident disrupted the examination process and brutally violated the autonomy of the University. The police had entered the University campus without seeking the Vice-Chancellor’s permission, and allowed a mob of known rabble rousers to take over. Although the friend of Chandramohan was released the same day, Chandra Mohan himself, arrested by the police without an arrest warrant, continues to remain behind bars or the third day. This is shocking and unprecedented in the history of the university.
Even more shocking has been the response of the University authorities. Far from standing up to the assault on the autonomy and jurisdiction of the University they have made common cause with the perpetrators of the assault. Instead of taking legal action against the mob and its leader, and file a FIR against them for disrupting examinations and infringing upon the autonomy of the University, they have put pressures on the faculty and the In-charge Dean, Prof Panikkar, to tender an apology for hurting public opinion.
With the Faculty having refused to comply with this unprincipled diktat, the University has today in the late afternoon sealed the Office of the Department of History to which Prof. Panikkar belongs and in the late evening issued an order suspending him from the University. In tandem with this outrageous act, Mr. Niraj Jain has filed an applicationwith the police seeking the inclusion of Prof. Panikkar as a co-accused in the FIR against Chandramohan. Both the students and the Faculty are now being threatened with direconsequences. There is now an acute danger to their safety and a drastic curtailment of their fundamental rights as citizens of a democratic country. Contrary to this anapplication filed by students of the Faculty against the offence committed by Mr. Niraj Jain to the police asking the latter to file an FIR against Mr. Jain for criminal trespass, intimidation, and unlawful disruption of the examination procedure of a reputed University has been ignored by the police. The result is that we have been left to the mercy of the mob. Day after day, hour after hour, we are being subjected to verbal attacks and threats of vengeance and destruction conveyed through the media. Giventhe stark and ignominious complicity of the University authorities, the Vice-Chancellor and the Pro-Vice Chancellor with the police and goons in this sordid drama we are leftwith no alternative but to appeal to you for intervention for the protection of our lives and security. We want you to intercede with the University administration, theChancellor of the University and the Governor of Gujarat who is the Visitor to the University to ensure the same. Over and above this the examination being of the final year Masters has been left incomplete and seriously jeopardizes the future of the students.
Yours sincerely
Faculty and students,
Faculty of Fine Arts
The M.S. University of Baroda

mobile toilettes

2007-05-13T17:38:00.000-06:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6623211.stm

i concur

2007-05-06T16:52:00.001-06:00

Global Yawning...

le changement est un perdant?

2007-05-06T09:19:00.000-06:00

"the more things change, the more they remain the same"....famous french words. Maybe that is not so bad in the end?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/weekinreview/06smith.html?ex=1336190400&en=ddeb806b21845217&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

numbing numbers

2007-04-30T12:54:00.000-06:00

partly ticked off at each of the following - not being able to watch the endless affair, not being able to watch India play to their listless best, and not being able to enjoy the Carribean beaches - I take solace in the numbing numbers:

4,258.3 overs were needed to confirm that Australia are the best side in the world
164.4 overs were not used by Australia in winning their 11 matches, either by reaching their target early or bowling the opposition out
10 of the 51 matches went down to the last over, in only three of these was the result in any doubt in that last over
45 games were decided by winning margins of more than 45 runs or five wickets - that is, comfortably
47 days the 16-nation tournament lasted - 16 days more than last year's 32-nation football World Cup
£12.50 to £25 ticket prices hit attendances. In Guyana the price of seeing a game was equivalent to two weeks' wages
7,000 fans had to make a day trip to St Lucia from Barbados for the Australia v South Africa semi-final. St Lucia hoteliers accepted only 14-night stays at $500 per night

Glorious game, what?

Highlight of the week

2007-03-28T00:01:00.000-06:00

Long days at work, running against time to make the best of insane deadlines, ratcheting up the ciggies in the process: forgotten after back-to-back season finale episodes of BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA.

I was on board for this one from the start: I loved Lee Adama's heartfelt speech at Baltar's trial, particularly after he spent most of this season mooning and pouting and just generally acting like a petulant baby, loved the creepy music and the fact that Anders, Chief Tyrol, Tigh and Tory (Roslin's press secretary) were the only ones who could hear it, loved the growing suspicion that they were all Cylons (Who better to be a Cylon, than Tigh?), loved the power outages and the mounting suspense... Yes, this was a finale that anyone could get behind.

Maybe it was a stretch to make so many longstanding characters Cylons, but maybe they just think that they're Cylons. Who knows? Most importantly, it all felt momentous, big changes were clearly afoot, changes that didn't involve any temples or empty stand-offs with the Cylons or adulterous affairs. Last night's finale had me by the throat.

Oh yeah, and Starbuck's still alive. I almost forgot.

oh suck it up... sourpuss!

2007-03-13T09:11:00.000-06:00

MTV sues YouTube. Whatever happened to that world where love was supposed to be free?

And, can we seek punitive damages for Viacom insinuating we are all free-loading penny pinchers?

weekly dosage of anti-PC advice

2007-03-12T12:23:00.000-06:00

Another joins the club... the latest online 'Aunt Agony', the Colbertish/Gollumesque 'Unethicist'.
[Sméagol:] Gollum hates thieves!

Go G. I. Joes!!

2007-03-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

In a deeply disturbing news,
The biggest, most shiny, most chrome covered, most yellow, most 'wide and ugly' Hummer is "going green". And nothing says "I am less of a man" than going green and smelling like spring flowers. On a totally different note, here are some nice pictures from a hummer fan site.

Learning [of] more left me sore...

2007-03-04T19:17:00.000-07:00

A recent trip to Las Vegas left me overwhelmed, exhausted and a tad bit irritated. What the hell did Venturi mean, legitimizing tackiness through clever tags (less is a bore)? Over 30 years ago, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and the late Steven Izenour wrote Learning from Las Vegas, a case study that attempted to open the world's eyes to vernacular architecture and iconography-the "ugly and ordinary" structures and signage born to satisfy the needs of regular people, not architects. Having re-read it upon my return from the sensation overload, I realise that what the book was commenting upon was the irony that Americans hate signs; that they are enormously afraid of being vulgar because of their signs in their cities, and of being thereby materialistic, commercial, and all that. It is this commercial signage that the book sought to celebrate, within the framework of 'place' and the 'city'.

Today, the Las Vegas they wrote about no longer exists despite its ugliness. The buildings and the signs they studied have merged. The former Strip is now officially "the Boulevard." And the city is less iconographic, and more merely scenic -in a sense Las Vegas is now City as Scenography; it's a Disneyland. Most cities are to some extent scenographic, but few are as explicitly theatrical. It doesn't hit our funny bone, our crazy bone anymore - it has become sentimental. Everything reminds you of someplace one was lucky enough to travel to - only a cheaper version of it. If the ordinary itself succumbs to its insecurity at being ordinary, what is the point in glorifying it?

Incredibly, there is a return - somewhat. A moment where faux is legitimized. The Guggenheim Las Vegas begins where the opulence ends. The Venetian Resort's gilt moldings, faux marble columns and scroll patterned carpet come to a dead end at the unmistakable sign of contemporary art -- steel. An array of steel doors is surmounted by the name of the new museum spelled out in metal letters attached to the entrance ceiling. All very industrial, cool and utterly foreign to the average casino junkie, despite architect Rem Koolhaas' assurance that "it is all part of the same thing, including the casino." The Dutch architect is known to be interested in the urban context of his buildings and as one of many of his admirers I was curious to see what he would come up with for a museum cut out of the side of one of Las Vegas' most spectacular fantasies, a hotel that has recreated what it calls "San Marco Square," along with canals with live gondoliers offering rides under an ersatz Bridge of Sighs. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is what he calls the "jewelbox" (in contrast to the "big box") and appropriately enough, it opened with jewels from the collections of its namesake in St. Petersburg and from the Guggenheim collection in New York. From the outside, this is signage as architecture. A wall of brown Cor-ten steel cuts along the front of the Venetian's faux terracotta surface, giant letters proclaiming "Guggenheim Hermitage." Inside the lobby, within 7,660 square feet, Koolhaas designed a museum both luxurious and modern. The interior walls are also made of CorTen steel but appear to be as soft as sienna velvet. They are suspended several inches from the floor, so that light seeps in from below, lending a flavor of airy Japonisme to the space, enhanced by the angled ceiling of blond wood. Narrow slot windows allow a diffused light to enter. How skillful and restrained is Koolhaas' comprehension of space, proportion and surface! Speaking of surface, the masterpieces are attached to the walls with giant magnets, a fact as ingenious as it is quirky.

The museum was empty when I visited - lack of funds in a city which literally throws its moneys around. A mind-boggling 35 million tourists visit Las Vegas each year. If a fraction is willing to spend $15 for a ticket, the Gugg and the Hermitage may be able to pay rent to the casino for their spaces.

whatever it takes...

2007-02-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Recent trends to conserve IT [Indian Tradition]'s culture of love:

warning shop keepers not to sell cards and gifts in the name of Valentine Day.
[failing which] Encourage the burning of Valentine Day cards.
Taboo the word Valentine.
Present - um, insist on - the option of celebrating lover's day in the name of current heartthrobs actors, Abhishek-Aishwarya rather than resort to a foreign name of St. Valentine to express love [I did not make this up!]
Erect billboard advertisements asking young lovers not to hold hands
[my personal favourite] photograph couples caught expressing their love in cinemas, cafes and shopping malls and hand the pictures to their parents.

read all about the practices in resistence at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6358531.stm

just a news

2007-02-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

those kooky kids...

brain train

2007-01-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

turns out that the path to smarts doesn't include gluttenous consumption of information, after all. au contraire, a fat brain and an old brain is a dumb brain. one and all...here come the new-row-scientists.

Annual Blindness

2007-01-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

...I wonder how much of this was last year's article, with a few names changed? As the movie awards season commences, so do the speculations on that ever eluding boundary of foreignness. We are reminded annually of our blindness, while the world watches (or so we are told). I can't wait to see if ever a day will come when we are left to our blindness.

Life In Mono

2007-01-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

logo a go go

2007-01-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

Using Flickr as jurying process, Architecture for Humanity has opened up the selection of its logo to the public. In less than 12 days AFH received 812 entries from more than 60 countries, an incredible response from the design community. Hats off to ALL who entered. During December more than 65 jurors from four continents voted both online (via Flickr commenting) and offline. AFH are now in the process of selecting the winner from the list of finalists. This week AFH made the Flickr sets open to the public to make their own comments - already it has been viewed over 1500 times. So click on the Final Round link and decide on who you think should win!

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lovers, Haters, Murderers, Barbarians ...

2007-01-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

...lend me your eyes. Even though the HBO series never quite rose, and eventually fell with an inconsequential thud, I was happy to read about its revival recently. Indeed, every works of the imagination on Rome reveals more about the epochs that produced them than they do about the vanished civilization they depict - much like all representations, I suppose. This one, I remember as having enthralled me by its , ummm, earnestly accumulated squalor and grit, as if saying: We must say ta-ta to empires now and introduce ourselves to civilizations. I don't know if they quite did that, but that squalor was sure requisitely pretty.

sold! to the devil.

2007-01-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

to bite, or not to bite - that is the question....
Even for an ardent macFan, this latest gizmo begs the question: at what price did Steve Jobs sell himself to the devil? The signs are everywhere!
(to the left: the LG Chocolate, to the right: the new i-phone. ohhh, the suspense is killing me...will i or won't i be $499 poorer?)

you are toast...

2007-01-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

I love the absurdity of this site and the fact that 100% of the proceeds (and they appear to be significant) will go to charity. Not sure where these crazy cats are from, but judging from their use of the word "brilliant", I am guessing the UK. It's too hard to explain, just click through and check it out for yourself. And... buy some toast... www.yournameontoast.com

oh, the burden of fun...

2007-01-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children then jumped into the water...

Initially I felt some cold, but one dip and the cold was gone.

sshhhh...

2006-12-29T21:11:00.000-07:00

an awwww... moment

2006-12-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

two Bengali Economists & Nobel Laureates meet in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Dec 25.

Left: Dr. Amartya Sen (Economics, 1998)
2nd from right: Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Peace prize, 2006)

bla time on christmas eve

2006-12-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

dude, where's my car?!

2006-12-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

my first blizzard, my first snow shovelling, my first falling squarely on my ass on the snow... and almost cracking my pelvis...
I think I will stay away from ice-creams for quite some time.

some wise words

2006-12-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

And when your life is in the toilet and that blue water is swirling around your head, just remember: The sky is also blue, and as we all know, the sky’s the limit.
(It’s important to hope, but vodka does not remove bloodstains from white linen.)
- from A WORD OF ADVICE.

It's dizzying

2006-12-04T09:41:00.000-07:00

...the criticism, that is. Check it out:

"Art is made to disturb," Georges Braque, the cubist painter and Pablo Picasso buddy, once said. But art museums?

The new Denver Art Museum addition, it seems, is disturbing some visitors by making them dizzy. Staring up at the soaring walls is - in a few people - causing tiny crystals to tumble around the inner-ear balance center, hitting cells and making the visitors woozy. Add the building's unusual angles and curving stairways, which can confuse the eyes, and the results can be stomach-churning.
"My patients are not going to the art museum," said Carol Foster, an ear specialist and balance expert at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. "You could bus a bunch of them over there and they'd be flopping around on the floor," she joked.
Museum officials say the effect is tiny - there has been only one official complaint of dizziness.
"There was never intention on the part of the museum to create a perceptual challenge," said Andrea Fulton, the museum's communications director. Still, with the reports of vertigo, the museum - designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, who could not be reached for comment - joins a list of buildings with high-profile architecture and unintended consequences.
There is the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles designed by Frank Gehry, for example. The building, a swirl of shiny metal, caught and reflected so much Southern California sunlight that it raised the temperature on a nearby sidewalk to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
And the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. - designed by Edward Durrell Stone - has a massive awning with no visible supports that triggers anxiety in some people, creating an urge to flee.
"Architecture is a speculative project," University of Colorado architecture professor Taisto Makela said. "Just by drawing things, making models, thinking about things, you can't tell how that space will be experienced until you do experience it."
Only one of the 223 official comments at the Denver Art Museum mentioned dizziness, Fulton said. Others suspect the problem is more widespread. When CU's Makela visited the museum last month with 11 students, three of them said they felt dizzy and uncomfortable.
"I was really quite surprised," Makela said. "I didn't experience it, but these students did." Makela has been a critic of the building not for its ability to induce vertigo, but as a strange and difficult place to display art given its tipped walls and odd spaces. The museum's space is challenging the ears and eyes, which work together to keep people balanced and comfortable on their feet, said CU's Foster. The inner ear's gravity sensors - the saccule and utricle - form a chairlike structure with a "seat" and "back," she said. When you tip your head up, the seat's now vertical and the back is horizontal, Foster said. In the new museum, she said, "not only are the walls interesting overhead, but they bend backwards over you, which is a really, really unusual position." "Ice skaters get used to it, but the average person doesn't practice that position enough to have reflexes for it," Foster said. So we feel dizzy - or fall down, she said.
Many people, especially those who are older, also have small defects in otoconia, a system of crystals in the inner ear that help people orient in space. "They're heavy, and they're stuck together with this sticky glue," Foster said. The glue becomes less sticky with age, letting some crystals float free, and whenever you bang your head against the car door or when crawling under a table - that can fling crystals free, she said. Eyes are also critical for balance, Foster said. Unconsciously, we're continually using objects within 6 feet for visual reference in space.
In the new art museum, walls slant away from the edges of the winding "canyon walk" staircase. Visitors descending the long stairways often clutch the guardrail. "People who are a little more visually dependent for balance ... you're gonna want to hang on to a railing," Foster said.
That was true for Trevor Pyle, one of the CU students who accompanied Makela. Pyle said he experienced slight vertigo when standing at the balconies. "I actually enjoyed the motion caused by the angles," Pyle said. "I thought it added to the experiential aspect of the building. None of the motion sickness made me uncomfortable, but it was present."
Craig Ruff, a Boulder resident, sometimes feels mildly motion sick when a passenger in a car, but the museum was worse.
"There were these sloping walls, bright lights that draw your attention other than where you're supposed to be walking, angles that were worse near the top," he said. Ruff said he overheard one museum docent advising visitors to "concentrate on a piece of art and not look around too much."
Inside the new museum, paintings hang on angled walls. Explanatory videos play on surfaces that tilt away from the viewer, or on trapezoidal walls, making a projected rectangle appear distorted. "Our approach in general is that not everything has to fall into the normal boundaries of what you might expect. We like that," Fulton said. "We like the conversation it's created."

Denver Post/9News staff writer Ernie Tucker contributed to this report. After which he promptly packed up for the weekend and left for the equally dizzying experience of the Rocky Mountain National Park...most probably. He is currently writing on his experiences, and the experiences of other climbers and outdoors men and women and the article will take a critical view on the effects of mountains and other natural expressions on unsuspecting, ill-prepared humans.

Ashes upon us! #4

2006-12-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

Good lord! England 551 for 6 DECLARED! Declared [while] ugly!

migrating [to] museums, museums migrating [to]...

2006-12-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

Toni Morrison at the Louvre
...Rap and Film at the Louvre? What's Up With That? [Thanks to Fab.]

Running out on technology

2006-11-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a headline that caught my eye recently: ipod + nike = surveillance.
I thought, "who cares?". Apparently, a few people do care, fairly deeply, and get funded for their paranoia as well. Why? Because a thief could use the set-up to case several houses at once, figuring out when Nike-wearing owners are at home and when they aren't. Seriously, can one laugh and cry simultaneously?

From left: 1. The Nike+ iPod consists of a small sensor (right) that fits under the pads of your Nike sneaker, and a receiver (left) that plugs into the iPod Nano. 2. The University of Washington researchers broke open the Nike+ iPod receiver and wired it up to a PC. 3. The tiny iMote receives data from the Nike+ iPod sensor, and then it can pass that data along to a Microsoft SPOT watch for easy and convenient stalking. 4. This is the gumstix-based Nike+ iPod surveillance device, with a wifistix antenna attached (left) and the Nike+ iPod receiver attached (right). It can broadcast surveillance data back to a computer network.

always a pleasure

2006-11-25T18:18:00.000-07:00

... to watch you act. Anthony Hopkins.

a still from Bobby

Ashes upon us! #3

2006-11-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Poms tonked!

DDD

2006-11-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Daring Director [Robert Altman] Died [today].

Ashes upon us!#2

2006-11-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

A few hours into the cricket and Geoff Boycott is already pulling out a few punches at the English selectors for picking Giles over Monty Panesar (in more serene times Boycott spends his time comparing his mum and grand-mum's cricketing abiliies vis-a-vis the current crop of players).
Meanwhile, another Ashes ritual - people commenting endlessly on the Eng/Aus time difference: "I keep hearing references to how late it is in the UK, things like 'I'm sure you're all stifling yawns'. The thing is, for myself and many other students, this sort of hour is when we're most in our element. My sleeping patterns last week were ridiculous; usually I got to bed at about 9am and then woke up at 5pm..." Ned Pendleton of Leamington Spa. Chink, do you know of this night crawler???

Ashes upon us! #1

2006-11-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

I seem to love starting series-posts that go nowhere. Here's one more - after 15 months of preludes to "the definitive battle" between the "old enemies", it's HERE! Tomorrow. The Ashes, that is. For me it also means a chance to read endless miles of Brit and Aussie reports, opinions, bravados, bettings, whimperings, bitchings, yellings, whinings, screechings for the next two months. Once again we will hear that England "can't bat, can't bowl, can't field". And once more we will hear of those bullish Aussie players, huffing and puffing and blowing England's defenses down. Oh, joy!

In recent times, no contest has begun before McGrath has had a pass at some prophesizing. 'We'll smash 'em', Mcgrath said earlier in the week at a press conference. 'They come out here and piss on about how strong they are and how they aren't scared of Brett Lee* throwing a little red ball 150 km/h** at their heads or Adam Gilchrist*** walking after being given not out. What they're really saying is holy shit we have to play Australia again!' Mcgrath also brought up how, with the help from the rest of the pace attack, put half of the New Zealand team**** into phsycological wards. 'We had been working really hard on the phsycological aspect of our game. There have been more pranks and insults beeing thrown around the dressing rooms now and i believe, not only has it made us stronger mentally, but also gives us the ability to read people's minds.' When asked why he thinks he can read people's minds, he simply replied, 'Coz Warnie***** said so.' When asked whether he thinks he's back to 100%, he got up, picked a cameraman up, and threw him across the room, 'does that answer your question?' he was then escorted out of the room by John Buchanan****** and sent to bed early with some warm milk.

*Aussie very-fast bowler. Has apparently gone through some life altering transformation to become a senior member of the team, as against a young pin-up boy that he was, like, yesterday.

**93.21 mph

***Aussie Vice-Captain, legendary ball-whacker and ball-keeper

****A forever underdog team from the land of the Ring

*****Famous spinner - of the ball and the tabloids

******Periodically offers Philosophy 101 to the Aussie team

...and finally, McGrath: Aussie medium-fast metronymic bowler - who always perdicts the Ashes to end 5-0, Australia.

economy

2006-11-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

feel free to click on the photo

perfection

2006-11-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

the one that got away #1

2006-11-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while one comes across a project that one not only thinks one could have so easlily done oneself, but should have done before anyone else. This then is a series in celebration of those acts that makes one flinch and grin simultaneously.

tragedy in art and soliloquy: part II

2006-11-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this post, I hereby dedicate a portion of my day-to-day posts to the great Shakespearean tragedies. This section will time-travel into the minds of the valiants who refused to die "many times" before their death, through pre-raphaelite and neoclassicist images that sought "refuge" in tragedies.
Please listen to Henry Mancini's "Romeo & Juliet" while going at it, to heighten your sense of sadness.
[tragedy in art and soliloquy: part I]

... For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Romeo and Juliet. Aaah... young love! And how it torments! For the very young, very naive and very beautiful Juliet, "It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden..." and for the young, passionate Romeo, "all this is but a dream". The two young lovers get trapped and torn between two warring families in Verona, Montague and Capulet. "My only love sprung from my only hate", mentions Juliet.
This saga of Shakespeare's 'Lyrical Period' is merciless, and the two love-birds are doomed from the beginning. "Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye..." The impending tragedy is obvious.
ACT III, Scene V: images by Dicksee [top-left] and Brown [top-right]

ACT IV, Scene IV left image by John Opie

No happy endings. Everyone dies at the end. Mercutio dies, 'accidentally and dramatically', in a duel between Romeo [a Montague] and Tybalt [a Capulet and Juliet's cousin], but had enough time to wish A plague o' both your houses! right before he passed away. Romeo slays Tybalt, and as a punishment, goes into exile. Juliet refuses to marry Paris, as she is secretly betrothed to her Romeo already, and goes into mourning. Herbal medicines and potions come to the rescue. Juliet gulps down some to go into a comma, so she can escape away with Romeo after she is taken to the family crypt. Misinformed about the staged death, a grief-stricken Romeo haggles with the Apothecary [There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls] to buy some poison, kills Paris on the way, and drinks the poison to die on Juliet's lap. O true Apocotheary! Thy drugs are quick! Thus with a kiss I die. Juliet wakes up, sees the dead, and stabs herself with his dagger. Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die. And the two lovers lie dead together.

Surprisingly, it is not considered one of Shakepeare's 'great tragedies' like Macbeth or Hamlet. The tragedy stems more from mistiming, or misfortune, than individual flaws of the two lovers. The long-running feud ends at the price of the two lovers' lives.
ACT V, Scene III: Romeo at Juliet's Deathbed by Füssli ;

The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets by Leighton ; Death of Romeo and Juliet by Millais;

We are the Aliens

2006-11-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

...when alien-ness is so dramatically incorporated, our location mysteriously shifts from the western hemisphere to Kerala! (Finally: outsourcing locations for outer sources.)
Meanwhile, humanoids still hold on to their caucasian-woman-in-the-red-dress source location. The few incursions by non-caucasians have met with eventual victimization.

happy grazing

2006-11-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

its moo-time once again !! and so is A&T Balconism.

A Moo Sonnet
Your absent heart's the image of my need
Your hollow eyes I fill with my desire
These vacancies are all that I require
For food on which my fantasies can feed.
The hands that hold you here are undefined
The lips that kiss you now you must invent
My touch transformed into an argument
That finds its major premise in your mind.
We make of soundless tunes new harmonies
Embrace each other's fancies in the night
And find in these uncertainties delight--
We share, not selves, but possibilities.
I make myself your dreams though we're apart
Come fill the empty spaces of my heart.
[disclaimer: poem source unknown]

utter betrayal!!!

2006-11-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

picture courtesy ToyFare
...and look who's decided to make some extra dough for the holidays....behind our backs!!!
Lies!Lies!Lies!

where are the numbers?

2006-11-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

To lighten the day of nailbiting countdowns:

Stewart on taking political satire too far: “Here’s the way I look at it. Bush has uranium bunker busters, and I have puns. I think he’ll be okay.”
Colbert on meeting Bill O’Reilly: “He was very nice. He said, ‘I like you. You know why? You’re not mean-spirited like most of ‘em.’ And I thought, ‘Take me now, Jesus.’ I was so thrilled.”

Amen!

vaguely familiar...

2006-11-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

"...they considered themselves uniquely positioned to lecture everyone on a variety of topics: accounting professors on accounting, Vermonters on the fall foilage, Indians on America, Americans on India, Indians on India, Americans on America. They were poised; they were impressive; in the United States, where luckily it was still assumedthat Indian women were downtrodden, they were lauded as extraordinary - which had the unfortunate result of making them even more of what they already were".
Kiran Desai. "Inheritance of Loss". Penguin Books 2006. pg. 50.

Are you THE ONE? [ real world part - II]

2006-11-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

Ladies of the Butterflies: Amazonian and Elizabethan .

Are you THE ONE? [real world part - I ]

2006-11-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

“Look at us...I'm frozen, you're dead...and I love you.”

Some dude wants me to believe that I have a Second Life waiting for me in some cyber world, far more real, far far more interesting than the one I have right now. It is just a click away. Hide away into a world of avatars, fountains, birds and live with people that you can pick and choose.

		Fembots are in. So, are cosmic narcissism, eternal youth, ’Beautiful People’ fantasy, and extraordinarily narcissistic vanity projects.

"the [real] world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." It’s a choice between two pills, as Morpheus has warned Neo. One blue, which would enable him to wake up safe in his bed but never learn the truth about the Matrix. "You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.” The other is the red, which would allow him to "see how deep the rabbit-hole goes".

And finally, it is believed that if one's mind cannot adjust to the implanted reality that results in a Schizoid Embolus, a lobotomy is the only solution.

Overdose #2

2006-10-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?????

A Daily Dose of India #5

2006-10-27T21:18:00.000-06:00

After a week of Diwali merriment, thoughts turn to a more tempered approach to food intake [die, yet]. At the top of the list is that Creamy Layer* (viscosity TBD) - hardly surpirising, since India has long been obsessed with cream and its clarified version, ghee. Yavat jivet sukham jivet/ rinam kritva ghritam pibeyat (Be happy as long as you live/ Drink ghee even if you have to borrow for it). As one can see from the Sanskrit saying, support for the [die, yet] attitude is often not forthcoming - internal joint lubrication by the milk fats being one of the many justifications. Also, since what results from the fat are 'delicacies', there is no danger of being grossed out, is there? In due course, however, the interaction of the obsession with the [die, yet] attitude leads to doubts. Fat/no fat. Skim/2%/Low fat. Cow/Buffalo. Good fat/ bad fat. Saturated fat/non-saturated fat. Trans fat. Progressive [f]at/non-progressive [f]at. Forward at/ Backward at. Forward/Backward/the Other Backward/the forward Backward/ the backward Forward...you get the picture?

....Ah! creamy layer.

* Main Entry: 1cream Pronunciation: 'krEmFunction: nounUsage: often attributiveEtymology: Middle English creime, creme, from Anglo-French creme, cresme, from Late Latin cramum, of Celtic origin; akin to Welsh cramen scab, crust1 : the yellowish part of milk containing from 18 to about 40 percent butterfat2 a : a food prepared with cream b : something having the consistency of cream; especially : a usually emulsified medicinal or cosmetic preparation3 : the choicest part : BEST 4 : CREAMER 15 a : a pale yellow b : a cream-colored animal
or
**Main Entry: 2creamFunction: verbintransitive verb1 : to form cream or a surface layer like the cream on standing milk2 : to break into or cause something to break into a creamy froth; also : to move like frothtransitive verb1 a : SKIM 1c b : to remove (something choice) from an aggregate 2 : to furnish, prepare, or treat with cream; also : to dress with a cream sauce3 a : to beat into a creamy froth b : to work or blend to the consistency of cream c : to cause to form a surface layer of or like cream4 a : to defeat decisively b : WRECK c : to hit with force : SMASH
or
***“the correct criterion for judging the forwardness of the forwards among the backward classes is to measure their capacity not in terms of the capacity of others in their class, but in terms of the capacity of the members of the forward classes. If they cross the rubicon of the class of backwardness, they should be taken out from the backward classes and should be made disentitled to the provision meant for the said classes” Indian Supreme Court Expert Committee (1993 report)

A Daily Dose of India #4

2006-10-26T22:29:00.000-06:00

[Times of India, Page One]
....wading through a cacophony of advertisements, random celebrity news and a whole load of cricket trivia, one occasionally finds an "issue". The chai and Gluco biscuits are momentarily forgotten....

Eid Mubarak and Happy Diwali!

2006-10-23T09:05:00.000-06:00

Yeaaa for firecrackers, fireworks, halwas, biriyani and movie-marathons somewhere in dhaka and ahmedabad !!! and yeaaa for let's-drag-my-neighbour-out-and-give-him-a-hug !!!

Thus ends the month of fasting for the Muslims. And the Hindus celebrate the festival of lights. There's celebration back home!
wish I was there... :-(

Overdose #1

2006-10-22T23:36:00.000-06:00

While watching the Aus-Eng match, I realised I saw more of SRK than cricket. Tons of ads of course - BCCI milking the cash cow in full view - and an absurd number of them with King Khan in them [apparently he has made commercials fo more than 25 brands]. Here is the list as I remember:
Hyundai Santro (automobile)
Compaq Presario (Laptop)
Pepsi (soft drink)
Lux International (soap)
Videocon (mfg. of home appliances & electronics)
Tag Heuer (watches)
Omega (watches, again)
ITC-Sunfeast (biscuits)
ICICI Bank
Navratna (Talcum Powder)
Clinic All Clear (Anti-dandruff shampoo)
Airtel (cell phone plan)
Freedom Topper (Motorcycle)
Sona-Chandi (a.k.a. Gold/Silver) (Multi-Vitamin)
....can't remember anymore.
On being asked the products that were on his wish-list as the Endorser, King Khan scratched his head through his lissome tresses and pouted his pouty lips and replied: probably Shikakai and Chap-stick. aaarrrggghhh!

A Daily Dose of India #3

2006-10-21T00:10:00.000-06:00

Daily evening sessions over a drink...this evening's was spent reminiscing political satire & irony. One said Stewart, the other said Laxman.

A Daily Dose of India #2

2006-10-20T04:13:00.000-06:00

Good Parking Karma - when one never runs out of parking space.

A Daily Dose of India #1

procreative racial deconstruction*?

2006-10-19T12:40:00.000-06:00

EVOLUTION
* Bulworth (1998): " All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color"

finally - a dog.

2006-10-19T12:21:00.000-06:00

DOG under a cart of marigolds.

the martians are coming!!!!

2006-10-19T11:59:00.000-06:00

...and leaving their poo behind, too!

2006-10-15T12:54:00.000-06:00

they smoke, they drink wine, they eat divine cuisine...

VIDEO
"This is France... and our rights and our freedom are guaranteed by our Constitution. These people must be free to do as they like - and as you can see, they like to smoke" - waiter in smoky restaurant
disclaimer: the author realizes that she began talking about the French. however, she takes no responsibility for being distracted by Omar Sheriff.

... when tiny things happen a million times

2006-10-13T11:21:00.000-06:00

"The journalists kept pestering him: 'What is this programme? How dare you think that something that works in Bangladesh can work in the U.S?' It was in this context that Clinton said, 'This guy deserves the Nobel Prize.' "

Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh wins Nobel Peace Prize, 2006.
It's a great, great honor!
... When tiny, tiny things start happening a million times, it becomes a large thing. It lays down the foundation of a strong economic base. With women participating in building this economic base, it becomes the foundation for better social and economic future ...
In the future the question will not be, "Are people credit-worthy", but rather, "Are banks people-worthy?"
The bank that started off with only $27 in 1976, now has 6.6 million borrowers, of which 97% are women. Even beggars are eligible to get Grameen loans, without interests. The micro-credit schemes of Dr. Yunus was introduced in different countries all over the world [that included the Clintons introducing it to some of the poorest communities in Arkansas, in the United States].

happy pictures of the win!

Big win for Small Things

2006-10-13T08:58:00.000-06:00

The Nobel committee continues its rampage of making-news: Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh were awarded the Peace prize. A true pioneer - his bank gives loans without collateral, relying on a system of trust and honor - he has done more to fight poverty than all those Bono jeans at Gap. As of May, 2006, the bank has 6.61 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women. With 2226 branches, the bank provides services in 71,371 villages around Bangladesh. A truly deserving recognition.

La cité des enfants perdus

2006-10-12T20:30:00.001-06:00

Anyone looking to lose themselves in an engrossing fairy-tale world will be richly rewarded.

and now it is Madonna's turn...much ado about adoption.

going, going..and still going!!!

2006-10-12T19:47:00.000-06:00

my soul is horrible. where can i get a new one?

2006-10-10T00:03:00.000-06:00

i am told i have never experienced a rose.
on the one hand i am offered a sonnet on the experience of a rose, and on the other a rose itself (for a price, of course). the first offers no guarantees, but lists a number of awards it was awarded - probably for invoking a rose better than any other sonnet on a rose. the second, also offers no guarantees, but claims authenticity through being a global phenomenon: pure, fresh and inevitably patented as The Rose. what both do offer is the potential to get what i want by directing me to what i should be wanting....

satisfaction guaranteed, daily

2006-10-08T18:19:00.000-06:00

Initially this post was going to be bemoaning "satisfaction guaranteed... or your money, quizno sub or love-longing back" advertisements. Because seriously, at what level of instant distaste does one return a half-eaten sandwich/sub? Or does the dissatisfaction build up with every bite - in which case what happens if that stage of return arrives after the sandwich is fully consumed? Of course, one can go on to extraxt meanings of goods-and-customer interaction, the making of the mass market or shopping customs...ummmm, no thanks. Ironically, in a parallel tab, I was searching for a book supposedly banned in India, to take home to India. Only vaguely remembering the title, I soon found that instant satisfaction in googling my way through it.

Fall is here...

2006-10-07T19:05:00.000-06:00

One Small Iced Mocha...$3.24
One Fossil Handbag...$40.00
Fall mornings at Diedrich's...priceless.

Slow News Day...

2006-10-06T10:55:00.000-06:00

Something strange about the headline "World's Youngest Person Born"...

OMGWTFBBQ*

2006-10-05T16:40:00.000-06:00

see VIDEO
* go to urbandictionary.com

KJ's "ON NOTICE"!!!

2006-10-05T10:18:00.000-06:00

...and so, it finally happened!
Thursday morning internet surfing at work leads me to the "On Notice" random generator. Totally brilliant!

kidult cult

2006-10-01T14:56:00.000-06:00

...there are 400 ways and more to be a rejuvenile, be with one or identify one, depending on the severity of your intimacy-issues and your stuff-syndrome. [just remember, at the heart of it all you may find a GGB]. Here are a few:

ps: you know you are a rejuvenile if you clicked on every single image and giggled helplessly, and then did that all over again, and then googled more rejuvenile stuff....

weatherMan

2006-10-01T00:23:00.000-06:00

Florida Weatherman attacked by a roach

sorry...

2006-09-28T16:13:00.000-06:00

couldn't hold myself back from posting this video. Looks like our house-favourite is going national, and international big time. And I am not apologizing for this cheesy image. See the video and judge yourself: The Stewart Factor on MSNBC.

tragedy as art & soliloquy, part I

2006-09-27T16:34:00.000-06:00

Inspired by Toski's post, I hereby dedicate a portion of my day-to-day posts to the great Shakespearean tragedies. This section will time-travel into the minds of the valiants who refused to die "many times" before their death, through pre-raphaelite and neoclassicist images that sought "refuge" in tragedies.
Please listen to Tchaikovsky's SwanLake while going at it, to heighten your sense of sadness.

She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous...
Antony and Cleopatra. This was true love, in a true love-hate relationship fashion. After losing the war to Octavius, Antony denounces Cleopatra. "This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me". Cleopatra stages her own death to get Antony back in her life which backfires on her. Antony, not being able to bear the pain, takes his own life. His asks Eros, his aide, to do the dirty deed for him (which drives a guilt-ridden Eros to commit suicide) and finally after several failed attempts wounds himself bad enough to die in Cleopatra's arms. Not one to back down, Cleopatra, refuses to surrender to Octavius, and intends to meet her love in her afterlife. She silently takes the bite of an asp in her hand. "Where's my serpent of old Nile? For so he calls me".

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Julius Caesar. A story of envy, ambition, power, honour and patriotism. Ignoring soothsayer's premonitions, Caesar faces death at the Senate in the hands of the conspirators, who have taken oath to save Rome from a supposedly corrupt Monarchy. And such treachery is too much to bear for Caesar. "Et tu, Brute?" says Caesar, and "Then fall, Caesar..." says Shakespeare. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears...", says Marc Antony at Caesar's death and drives the Romans against Brutus. Caesar's ghost haunts Brutus to warn him of his impending defeat in the war with Antony and Octavian "thou shalt see me at Philippi". Brutus and Cassius commit suicide rather than falling into the hands of enemies.