cet été que j'ai décidé apprendre français...avant qu'il devient illégal.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=89976
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
probably the only poetry i will ever put together....'til the next season.
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!
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!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
an alien in america series: entry 1: a crappy problem
...recently i have been intensely disheartened by the immigration process. however, i try to decompress whenever i can....Sunday, July 01, 2007
on ruins
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
further descent...
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
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
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Sunday, May 06, 2007
le changement est un perdant?
"the more things change, the more they remain the same"....famous french words. Maybe that is not so bad in the end?
Monday, April 30, 2007
numbing numbers
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?
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Highlight of the week
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
oh suck it up... sourpuss!
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?
Monday, March 12, 2007
weekly dosage of anti-PC advice
Another joins the club... the latest online 'Aunt Agony', the Colbertish/Gollumesque 'Unethicist'.
[Sméagol:] Gollum hates thieves!
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Go G. I. Joes!!
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.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Learning [of] more left me sore...
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.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
whatever it takes...
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
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
brain train
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.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Annual Blindness
...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.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
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