Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Non-PC Joke of the Year

Q: How do you tell a Bangladeshi man from an Indian or Pakistani man?
A: He's the one wearing a life-jacket just in case a flood comes along

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Love in the Time of Maximum Controlled-Chaos

Here’s a piece of advice – if you’re planning to watch Slumdog Millionaire, the indie-sleeper-smash-hit of the year – don’t read this review. Or any other. This is a film that you’ll enjoy thoroughly even if you’ve just seen it the day before (I did) – but watching it with no knowledge of what it is about is a pleasure of a different level. For those not convinced by mere effusive (if non-specific) praise, read on and I shall do my best to get you interested in the movie without revealing too much about the plot’s highlights.

Three minutes in, Slumdog Millionaire will literally shock you into paying attention. Paying attention with your mind that is, because chances are good that you would have already averted your eyes from the screen in horror. Then faster than you can say Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the film takes off, starting with a break-neck chase through the permanent dusk of Dharavi’s gutter-alleys. In a giddy romp, exhilarating and horrifying in turn, and lasting nearly two hours and several film-years – the movie tracks the lives of three slum kids Jamal (Dev Patel), the love of his life, Latika (Freida Pinto), and his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal)– as those lives intersect, then diverge, then intersect again. And no, its nothing like Salaam Bombay.

As the three protagonists collectively jump over slum-walls and into open septic pits, escape marauding rioters in dhobi-ghaats, climb up hills one would never want to scale and fall off train roofs; take in an open-air opera in Agra before busting a nascent mujra back in Bombay; fall in with the mob, fall out with each other – director Danny Boyle reveals life in modern India as might be experienced by her marginalized masses. The film shines the light on the country’s newfound but still fragile promise and its often brutal beauty (Think of a view of the Taj Mahal with homeless kids playing on the dried-up Yamuna bed in the foreground). Boyle manages to do so without succumbing either to Hollywood’s impulse to exoticise the Orient or to Bollywood’s impulse to filter a reality that can be truly difficult to see.

Slumdog reveals every piece of grit under modern Bombay’s beautifully painted finger-nails. Dharavi looks like nothing you’ve seen before, perhaps because the film was shot in Dharavi and not on a set resembling it. Two of the child actors are actually from the slums. Yes, it leaves you in a bit of despair. But even more than that, in awe and a strange pride at the slum-dwelling Mumbaikar’s ability to love and laugh and her ability to dream in circumstances where one might perhaps imagine being able to cling to one’s humanity – but only by a thread. And it warms your heart at her ability to feel happy for someone else when they are close to winning a million bucks and a ticket out of the underclass’ collective misery.

That ticket is the million dollar jackpot available to the winner of the Indian version of the game-show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Jamal’s getting on to the show sets the story into motion and the question-answer interludes provide the only relief from the sensory overload of the three musketeers’ adventures. The interludes last only long enough to let the host, Anil Kapoor (doing a great job of channeling Amitabh, the host of the original show) take unseemly pleasure in making fun of the Jamal’s humble origins and light of his chances. The reason behind Jamal’s presence on the show and the secrets behind his success in answering the increasingly difficult questions, power the story through to its ultimately crowd-pleasing denouement.

Slumdog is perhaps the first, and certainly the best cinematic offspring yet, of globalization. Englishman Danny Boyle who gained fame with the gritty cult hit Trainspotting led a largely non-Indian production crew to create a film set mainly in Bombay and with an ensemble cast that’s wholly of South Asian extraction. Beyond that, Boyle manages to mesh the best traditions of Hollywood – use of innovative scripts, taut drama, and slick production values - with those of Bollywood – controlled melodrama, fantastic musical score, and an ability to unabashedly tell a story about true and truly star-crossed love. Screen-writer Simon Beaufoy and composer A. R. Rahman along with Boyle have deservedly won Golden Globe nominations.

This might seem like heresy when Milk is still playing in the theaters – but if there’s only one movie you can squeeze into your packed Holiday calendar – it should be Slumdog Millionaire.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Simply Put

Sourced from a Facebook profile

Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot,
who calls you back when you hang up on him,
who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat,
or will stay awake just to watch you sleep...

Monday, December 1, 2008

A Prayer for Beloved Bombay

Children in Ahmedabad offer a Candle Light Vigil for the Victims of the Bombay Terrorist Atrocity (boston.com)

The Silent Sunset and The Strange Symmetry of The Three Signs

TONGUE SOMEWHAT IN CHEEK

I want to take you back, dear reader to a past tale from my time at the Jikoji Silent Meditation Retreat way back in June. You might remember, that we left off with me walking at a rather determined pace up a forest trail that led to the top of a ridge, diligently meditating all the while, trying to catch up with the rest of the group. I've been meaning to tell you about what happened after that for some time now but never quite got around to it. So here's the rather curious tale.

As I mentioned, I kind of ran meditatively up the trail. But partly due to the uphill climb and partly because I couldn't convince myself that running and meditating really went together, I slowed down soon enough. And as I slowed down, the silence in its varying degrees, became noticeable. There was the muted crunch of the dew-damp fallen leaves under my slippers. The whispering of a gentle, still-warm breeze as it weaved its way through the upper layers of the forest canopy that fully sheltered the trail from the setting sun. The sound of a deer's half-step - as it stopped momentarily upon spying me coming up the path and then placidly rustled its way away through the shrubbery. The sunlight only filtered through a couple of feet through the leaves - turning the upper layer an early autumnal red-brown and the lower layers a deepening, darkening shade of green. I felt the calm seep into me...even the rather meditatively-unhelpful sign warning about itinerant mountain lions only caused a momentary flutter in my pulse. My steps slowed further.

Three quarters of the way up the hill, I stepped into the sun, as the canopy gave way to knee-high sun-dried grass glowing warmly golden-brown in the sun. With another few steps I turned a corner so that the crest of the hill lay directly behind and above me. A vunderful (Yes I'm Indian and proud that I economise on my v/w sounds) vista opened up before my eyes. A grassland stretched lazily rampant across the landscape, covering rolling hills and dipping valleys - besieging the occasional clump of trees before itself being restrained in its reach by the forest that formed its irregular border. An Olympian discus-thrower's stone's throw away from the freeway - I had reached a sanctuary seemingly untouched by civilization. The quiet of the surroundings stilled my thoughts. I spied the dark-tan silhouette of a deer against the grass on the opposite slope - his antlered head turned towards me. Still. Unmoving. Which is when I saw the first sign - of civilization. A weather beaten bench just the right shade of dark brown - the kind that one would pay quite a handsome sum for in Crate n' Barrel. Placed at the center of the ridge - capable of seating up to three (Vegan...read malnourished) meditators - it was placed at just the right angle for watching the sun as it set in the western sky.

I sat down and as I turned to look at the great big ball of fire in the sky - that had obligingly hung around despite my tardiness - I saw a slow-moving, red-bellied SouthWest Airline plane making its way to San Jose airport. I continued to contemplate deeply about nothing and sometimes about whether this was the wrong ridge - because I couldn't see anyone else there. Soon the rest of the group file silently into view. It seemed, I had beaten them to the top. The realization, that they must have had a short meditation session in the zen temple before starting up the path, wafted into my conciousness. There were more than 20 people in the walking meditation procession. None of them acknowledged my presence. Each one silently found a vantage point from where to see the sun finally set. Some sank into the inviting grass. Others joined me on the bench. Others still, stood scattered across the slope. Look, I wanted to say - Isn't that setting sun beautiful. But I held back. Look there, I wanted to point, at that unmoving deer - providing the relieving speck of fauna to the flora-rich landscape. My hand stayed by my side. Gathered together on that ridge - each one alone - we watched as the sun completed its descent below the distant horizon. I'm guessing some of the others saw the deer and some didn't. I'm guessing some of them saw every change in colour that the section of the sky hugging the horizon went through. While others missed some of the transitions because no one pointed them out.

Let me ask you, dear reader, is a sunset beautiful if no one watching it says it is? The answer I realized that evening is of course, a definite maybe. The twenty of us watched a beautiful, beautiful sun set without once commenting on how beautiful it was. How purple the sky was right at the end. How, the unnaturally still deer, looked more like a shadow in an Indonesian puppet show than a living, breathing being. Or how the landscape, brown grass and green trees, took on a deep cool blue hue once the sun had set. It was a bit of a strange, and strangely fulfilling, experience.

Without a word or a sign to one another, we started our way back down the trail. I felt engorged and sluggish with all the beauty I had taken in. As I savoured this new way of feeling full - I spied the third sign - a white plastic bag - caught in the upper branches of a tree - fluttering noisily in the cold breeze that had now started blowing. I hadn't truly linked the bench and the plane in my mind beyond making the connection that they were the two man-made things in that otherwise natural scene. But seeing the bag - brought me another realization. This one didn't waft through - more like rushed in and screeched to a halt in my mind. I realized that the three signs were not a coincidence. That I had gone beyond communing with nature - to communicating with nature. The signs - in their weird symmetry - contained a message. Just for me. For only I had seen all three - the Southwest flight having disappeared before the others arrived.

I understood what the elements, the powers that inhabit the ether, were trying to tell me - I was neither the well-grounded bench nor the crimson aeroplane that had already attained soaring heights. I was the plastic bag caught in a limbo - struggling to rise sky-high but in just as much danger of falling into the mud below. What finally happened to me would depend on whether I was able to figure out what the branches of the tree represented - for that was what was restraining me. And what I did to free myself. I had another day of silent meditation to do that. I was thrilled at having had Mom Nature or other higher beings take it upon herself/themselves to personally deliver a piece of zen enlightenment to me. And that she was sophisticated enough to use a riddle that needed to solving versus an akaashwani that spelled it all out. (Plus I wouldn't have understood Sanskrit anyway!)

We were back under the canopy on our way back to the lodge. The air was considerably cooler now that the sun had fully set. I saw the T-shirt clad guy ahead of me shiver slightly in the breeze. I hadn't noticed the cold myself - warmed as I was by the cloak of narcissism that had fallen lightly over my shoulders.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

The Light At the End of the Tunnel?


I never thought that three weeks away from the election Obama would already have such a large lead that would have nearly everyone predicting a landslide. It almost makes you wonder whether we might actually be seeing the light at the end of a long tunnel.

You might think its a funny thing to say when the financial system is crashing down around your ears and the number of issues being described in Presidential Debates as "one of the most significant challenges that faces our country" now officially runs into at least a half-dozen - the credit crisis, disappearing jobs, disastrous state of healthcare, global warming, failing war effort in Afghanistan, crippling energy costs (happily, the credit crisis might solve this issue for everyone - oil has fallen below $90/bbl). Even the Apocalypse only has four horsemen!

Note that this does not even include issues like the Iraq War and the attendant condoning of torture or immigration or crumbling infrastructure or falling education standards - each of which has been raised by various commentators and even by the candidates as being of singular importance. So yes, it does look like we're entering the dark maw of a very long tunnel - one that we may not trundle out anytime soon - rather than coming out of one.

In the last few days, the only ray of hope - seems to be that of a victory, potentially in a landslide, for Obama. But the same days have also seen the attacks from the Republican side change from being downright dishonest (ho-hum, its a political campaign, you might say) to downright dangerous. McCain and Palin cannot not know what the potential consequences are - of rallying a base by calling the other guy a terrorist sympathiser, directly and indirectly implying treasonous behaviour. A base that by many, many reports contains innumerable nut-jobs looking for an excuse to do something, anything, about the uppity black man who increasingly looks likely to lead the country in the very near future. Well how about saving your country from a man who pals around with terrorists for an excuse? This is being done so blatantly its not even a dog-whistle. As even conservative commentator Kathleen Parker says "words can have more serious consequences than lost votes". Combining the increasing demagoguery on one side with rising, if still a little unbelieving, euphoria on the other, seems to me, to yield a brew fit for sending an unbent individual on a nasty bender.

So I worry that that light at the end of the tunnel that many of us think we're seeing is a high-speed train hurtling towards us while the media is too busy playing the driver-too-busy-texting-to-watch-the-tracks and see the other train thats broken down on the tracks. We know how that turned out only three weeks back.

Will someone tell the driver to get the hell back on the job before its too late? There are some that are standing by the tracks and shouting at the top of their voices, doing their best to alert the damn driver. Will it have an effect? I wouldn't bet on it - the McCain-Campaign-Raising-Ayers story is still new - still worth days of debate - and no new story can die until a newnew one comes along.

Even though all other events seem to indicate that that rabbit foot we've been carrying all along is likely to have belonged to a hare fallen on hard times - perhaps on this one latest game of catch with a grenade, unlike all the other recent ones - we'll all get really lucky. If so, all we'll have is a narrower election on Nov 4 than is currently predicted. I'll take that - even a narrow defeat for Obama (bitterly I might add). But if thats all that happens - it will be no thanks to the media. Or the John "Country First" McCain campaign.

Friday, September 19, 2008

First Cuts Run Deep

WARNING: RAW EMOTIONS ON NAKED DISPLAY

The other night I wandered into the Edge, one of the Castro’s more decrepit bars. It’s a not-very-popular leather bar – more dark and dingy than edgy. As usual it was mostly empty – and I would’ve left, having spent all of 5 seconds in the bar which is about how long I usually spend there – except that they were playing Wish You Were Here.

Wish You Were Here. Pink Floyd’s impossibly beautiful ballad to ex-band member Syd Barrett - who like Icarus had crashed and burned having flown too high and too close – not to the sun – but to a Lucyous diamond encrusted night-sky. It was an improbable choice of song for the bar and for a Thursday night. Its also a song that never fails to reach into my memory bank, pull out and play back, in my mind’s eye, videos of my most deeply buried, beautiful memories of my first relationship; my first love.

Wish You Were Here was the first Pink Floyd song I liked. And Pink Floyd was the band that I discovered and came to love because I had to listen to their songs for hours everynight and for large parts of the day everyday, for nearly three years…lying next to the man I loved. (He was a card-carrying member of the Pink Floyd Fan Cult in my engineering school - that pretty much included everyone who wasn’t deaf. And I use the word cult instead of club advisedly).

If life has a sound-track, and long stretches of mine do; then Pink Floyd, The Doors, Nirvana and others – but mainly Pink Floyd – provided the sound-track to those three too-short years. I continued to listen to those songs for quite some time after our parting of ways…just to re-watch and re-feel; relive the best moments of those days:

Lying in bed together at night, each of us reading a book – he, something along the lines of Sartre; me, something along the lines of Stephen King. Watching the latest Bollywood blockbuster on-screen – reluctantly on his part – and just knowing exactly why the on-screen, in-love pair was singing; because my heart seemed perpetually filled with song too. Dedicating a song at the MTV booth during the college festival to the only girl in the branch because I just had to, had to!, dedicate a song...and couldn’t really dedicate it to the person I wanted to openly. Spending the entire day away from each other in different classes and loving it; savouring the anticipation of meeting up again in the evening. Nestling in the crook of his arm throughout one night on a train when a severe case of sinusitis made it difficult for me to sleep without having my head propped up…never hearing a comment about how that benumbed his shoulder. Having him meet my family and seeing how well he got along with all of them – how much they grew to like him. Being introduced to and coming to love a whole new genre of music and of literature – Tolkien and Golding; Pratchett and Kundera.

During the good moments, you really couldn’t have found anyone happier than me. I’ve been in relationships since – some in which I cared deeply for, even loved, the other person. But never like that first time. Never did I agonize even years later about their failure. And never truly did the memories from that first time fade or become like silent home videos from someone else’s life that I could watch dispassionately when they switched themselves on.

Wonderful as it was, I’d always assumed that the relationship was doomed – that we would go our separate ways once we left college. He would find someone lovely and marry her (he did) and I would try my best to become straight (I did). When that actually started coming true – it just seemed to prove that I was good at analysis and forecast, even when it came to life events. I did make some clumsy, incoherent attempts at saving our relationship. But in the two years that I spent in silent and bitter self-congratulation on how accurate I’d been about the future course of the relationship, I never once believed I had any real chance at succeeding. If I had believed I did (have a chance), I might have done some things differently. My pal RD told me once, after hearing how it all ended, that perhaps I hadn’t tried hard enough to save it. I don't think he realized that his words sent me into a minor panic...because it hit me suddenly that he might be right. And then RD wondered why I spent so much of the rest of the ride reading the Economist instead of talking to him. :)

For several years after we were together no more, I was just grateful to have had the love I had, abruptly truncated though it was. That feeling has dissipated over time. Three years of being in love no longer seem sufficient to sustain me through the rest of my lifetime, especially when my financial advisor tells me I have at least another 60 to go and should be planning for them. What has attenuated too (somewhat), is the intensity of the emotional mini-orchestra that strikes up every time I hear a familiar rock melody from my engineering days. But it's still strong enough to stop me mid-thought most times.

Nine years since the relationship ended, why does a Pink Floyd tune affect me like it does – giving me a hollowed out, sinking feeling every single time; causing me to buy a beer in a bar I don’t like? Have I not moved on? Or maybe I have but not fully? Or maybe I’m over him fully but am now an abject case of once burned, twice shy. Is that why I’m pretty much a perennial singleton? Do I need some kind of – (gag alert) – closure? Did I really fritter away my chances of saving the relationship through a lack of faith? Or am I just falling prey to the very-American pastime of self-indulgent navel-gazing (That one’s easy, right? ;).

To tell you the truth, I don’t know. If there's one thing I've learned about relationships - its that they can be very complicated. So I don't know – whether I should’ve tried harder; whether it would have made a difference; whether we’d still be together if it had. If I had to take a guess, I'd say: I could have done with better closure, there probably was an element of once-burned-twice-shy in my relationships that followed and I likely am being self-indulgent. I'd also venture to say I’m pretty sure I’m over him. What I’m not over, is the happiness that I had when I was with him. I want those same or similar feelings back; I want to be in love again. And thats probably what Pink Floyd's abiding hold on me is about.

People tell me that first love is more about rampant hormones than real, true feelings and that the intensity is impossible to replicate. But just when I find myself thinking that that might be true; by a strange coincidence I’ll find myself in a theatre watching a movie like Dan in Real Life. Or on Youtube watching Joe Biden (yes, really) get all teary-eyed as he recounts how his second wife told him she wanted to marry him because his deep love for his first wife, who died in an accident, made her certain he could come to love her very strongly too.

So I still know hope. I also know, as I finish this post listening to the somber, mellow, achingly familiar tunes from Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, that damn, Sheryl “The First Cut is The Deepest” Crow knows what she’s singing about.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Whats in Front of Your Nose?

One of the blog's that I read almost on a daily basis is Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish - I often disagree with him but I find him to be in interesting guy because he has so several unpredictable dimensions to him - he is a Conservative but a lapsed Republican, a Clinton-hater (there's really no other way to put it) and a repentant supporter of the Iraq War, a man of faith and gay. However one of the things that's stayed with me ever since I started reading his blog is the quote from George Orwell that serves as his blog's motto/slogan - "To See What Is In Front of One's Nose Needs a Constant Struggle." If you're not quite sure what that really means beyond sounding clever - here's an example of a statement reflective of someone who's managed to peer through the propanganda put out in the Republican Convention in the last week and the Right's embrace of Sarah Palin -

"If you are biracial and born in a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs darn near 2 years and 3 major speeches to "get to know you." If you're white and from a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs 36 minutes and 38 seconds worth of an acceptance speech to know you're "one of us." If you spend 18 months building a campaign around the theme of "Change," it's just "empty rhetoric." If one week before your party's national convention you suddenly make your candidacy about "Change," that's "red meat." "

From John Ridley's Guide to the Conservative Palinguage - The People's Edition

Friday, July 25, 2008

Small Mercies

QUOTE OF THE DAY


"I found my father's legs two years ago, and two weeks ago I found his head"

Avdo Suljic, 35, an unemployed Bosnian Muslim who lost 200 relatives at Srebrenica in 1995 - on what has eased his pain since the mass murders 13 years ago. He was responding to a question on whether Radovan Karadzic's capture had provided him solace. Before talking about what truly brings some peace - namely being able to lay his relatives' remains to rest, - he said "Karadzic is an old man. Nothing with his arrest has changed for me."

Karadzic was the leader of the Bosnian Serb army that laid siege to Srebrenica for three and a half years and massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men over just 5 terrible days in July 1995. He was arrested this week after hiding in plain sight in Bosnia and Serbia for the last 13 years

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Pink, Punk, Rock, Pop

SONG OF THE WEEK

I'd heard this song played scores of times on the radio without knowing who the artist was - I assumed it was a one-hit singer. Whoever it was, she'd managed to convey deep angst through a soft-rock hard-pop melody that was as easy on the ears as harsh the sharp-edged lyrics were on the psyche. I wondered how much of the lyrics were autobiographical - and whether putting the pain to music had helped alleviate it at all. I discovered after several weeks of hearing it on the radio - that the song was called "Don't Let Me Get Me" and the singer was Pink (Yes the same artist who impressed me a few months back with her ability to turn an angry emasculating "You And Your Hand" into a monster club-hit).

I think the lyrics to Don't Let Me Get Me are beautiful - not beautiful in the manner of Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put Your Records On" which leaves you soothed, suffused with a summery glow with its dulcet tones, pretty words and prettier imagery. Dont Let Me Get isn't beautiful in that way at all. But in the willingness of the singer to express one's deepest, rawest emotions. I'd urge you dear reader, to google and read the full lyrics, but here are my favourite lines:

LA told me, "You'll be a pop star,
All you have to change is everything you are."
Tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears
She's so pretty, that just ain't me

Doctor, doctor won't you please prescribe me
somethin
A day in the life of someone else?
Cuz I'm a hazard to myself

Don't let me get me
I'm my own worst enemy
Its bad when you annoy yourself
So irritating
Don't wanna be my friend no more
I wanna be somebody else

The funny thing is, that while the lyrics are angst-ridden, the music that they've been set to isn't dark and at no point does Pink allow her voice to stray into the anger zone. Instead she's sung it for the most part in a light-hearted monotone, with only a faint plaintive inflection creeping in when she sings the chorus lines. There was oodles more anger in "You And Your Hand".

The discovery that she'd sung Dont Let Me Get Me, added to my growing admiration of Pink's skills as a lyricist and of her ability to straddle the alternative (Dear Mr. President), rock (You and your hand) and pop (Get The Party Started) worlds with seeming ease. She's often called a punk artist and she is one - but all of that punkishness seems to be expressed through her personality, get-up and most-of-all through her usually memorable lyrics. She writes and sings, not for Everyman but for Everypunk and still manages to connect with the likes of me. Of course that could mean that she has broad reach or it could mean that there's a punk inside of me that I haven't yet met. But until I colour my hair blazing-vertical-orange I'm going to go with the first option

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

You Know You're Addicted When...

A few weeks back I was reading a newspaper…or maybe it was a magazine…and came across, as one does so often these days, a reference to a young blogger who apparently was gaining a lot of readership for the things he was writing about and the interesting way in which he was writing about them. An Indian blogger based in the US.

Finding a fresh, new blog with its own unique mix of topics that the blogger’s chosen to write about, is, I now find, very similar to discovering an author that you’ve never read before. Except that a blog unlike most good books generally go on and on without end, and if you’re lucky will be updated, multiple times, on a daily basis. I made a note of the website address and later that evening I typed in the blog’s address and with a short pause designed to heighten the anticipation, hit enter.

The browser page rolled itself up, held its breath for a couple of seconds and then unfurled a new look…The virginal white expanse of the google page replaced by a page with two broad blue borders and a white center with words running across it in neat black type. I don’t quite remember all that I read and saw on the page, but I do distinctly remember liking the writing style, finding the choice of subjects eclectic and the overall aesthetics restful on the eye. Some of the posts were accompanied by photographs…and were all so clear, they looked like someone had taken a scrubbing brush to them…so clear that the edges seemed to have a faint glow around them.

One particular photo-post caught my attention. The title said simply, “My Brother”. It showed a curly haired guy sitting intently at a desk, in front of a computer. He wore specs and was smiling…something on the screen was evidently funny. It was a pleasant smile. The brother. There was another guy standing to his right, leaning in towards the screen, one hand on the edge of the desk, the other on the chair that the first guy was sitting on. Also smiling. While the post didn’t say so it seemed clear that the guy standing was the blogger himself. His features are vague in my mind.

Even weeks later the picture is fresh in my mind, though I’ve forgotten virtually everything else that I saw and read on that site. For two reasons, primarily. One, There seemed to be an easy camaraderie between the two brothers. It had a rather cosy feel to it. You wanted to get to know these guys…you kind of knew they’d make good friends. The second reason was the caption. It said: 48. Kill at 48. I saw the caption before I saw the picture because I had started reading the blog from the earlier posts and was scrolling up the site versus down. The caption sent a chill down my spine…and the lack of congruity with the picture itself was puzzling. Even more than that, it was disturbing. Suddenly I became aware that night had fallen outside…that I was now sitting in the dark leavened only by the glow from the laptop screen. I looked at the picture for a long time…trying to figure out whether the caption was a joke or a declaration of malicious intent…trying to get my rising dread to settle back down.

That’s when I woke up…with a start...and an aspirated "phew!". I’d been holding my breath in my sleep out of sheer tension. I was back in the log-cabin-like living room of the Jikoji Zen Temple and Retreat Center, at the bottom of a valley in the Santa Cruz mountains…having fallen asleep helped in equal measures by enervating heat, a surprisingly sumptuous lunch of marinated and baked tofu squares sprinkled with crunchy sunflower seeds.

I was on a two day silent retreat – having committed to not speaking during that period in addition to not reading, writing, watching TV, listening to music, surfing the web or doing anything that might distract me from my conversation with myself. Sleeping, however, was acceptable and I’d managed to do a lot of it that first day. And apparently the withdrawal symptoms from not having web-surfed for a full 24 hours had, unbeknownst to me, so ravaged my subconscious in that short time, that my superego had given into my id and manufactured a fantasy blog for me to read in a place where no Ethernet port had gone before.

Dusk was falling outside – just as it had in my dream and that told me that I had missed the mid-afternoon meditation session, on top of the mid-morning one – both due to the soporific nature of my internal conversations. It looked like I was already late for the final session of the day – a walking meditation that was supposed to take the group up a dirt-path to the top of a nearby ridge to watch the sun set. I scrambled up from the couch; wondering what I could do to redeem myself – my fellow retreat-ers couldn’t scold me without breaking their vow of silence but they were still allowed to glare. Seeing the sun was still hanging around on the horizon – I decided to try and catch up with the rest of the group- of course to truly redeem myself, I’d have to meditate my way up (versus just run up) to the ridge-top and hope the sun hadn’t set by then. The philosophical riddle (wikipedia’s description, not mine) – If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound – seemed particularly apt in this situation. Perhaps if I was quiet enough no one would notice that I hadn’t already been there when they arrived – and that would make me not-late.

So, I started up the hill at a determined trot, meditating furiously all the while.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

A Quote for the Ages

"Its like a pterodactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park"

- Tim Gunn, host of Project Runway on Episode 2, Season 5, on a pink dress, that wasn't fully shown, but which I'm guessing has a rather 'innovative' silhouette.

The poor designer is probably now wishing he'd taken that trip to the remote Costa Rican island that housed Crichton's creations and taken his chances with Velociraptors devouring him; instead of coming on Project Runway. Or maybe that Gunn had. :)

Apparently this is Gunn's last season...He's going to be sorely missed.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Plus Ca Change...



Lately I've been finding inspiration for a lot of my posts in art - well music and literature anyway. The only youtube video that I ever added to my favourites list is this cover version of the Beatles' Across the Universe by Rufus Wainwright. RW is apparently a fairly well known singer though I'd never heard of him until a blog pointed me to this video. I liked this even more than the original Beatles' version - I know - Sacrilege!! :)

As you can guess I love the haunting quality of the song and of the video - fits right into a certain mood of mine :) - but also love it for the laidback way in which the song has been sung - almost lazily accompanied with a big dollop of sensuality. I can just feel my muscles all begin to loosen up, the knots begin to dissolve, stress beging to seep away. The little girl in the video is also just adorable.,,no she's actually mesmerisingly pretty. I had a feeling of deja vu as I watched her...and then a quick google search told me why...she's Dakota Fanning who played Tom Cruise's daughter in the War of the Worlds in which aliens invade the earth and massacre tons of people in sight. (Some Iraqis probably think that's contemporary history, not a film - And just so we're clear, I'm referring to the initiators of the war here not the soldiers who're just doing their duty). On a different note, I also just realized that there's a certain symmetry in using Dakota Fanning in a video called Across the Universe, given one of her most prominent roles has been in an alien movie.

I wonder if this video somehow or in some way is inspired by the 1956 French movie by Albert Lamorisse’s “The Red Balloon,” about a young boy and the talismanic sphere that follows him through the gray streets of Paris like a dog, a lover, a ghost". That movie partly also inspired a 2007 film called "Flight of the Red Balloon"

Anyway, as I played the song on an impulse today, after months, I was a little surprised by a new reaction I had to the refrain,

"Nothing's going to change my world
Nothing's going to change my world
Nothing's going to change my world
Nothing's going to change my world"

It felt like the lyrics were referring to how I felt about the vote on the Warrantless Wiretapping bill passed today by the Democratic party-controlled Senate...A deep disappointment in the political process in general. The fact that this happened when the Democrats controlled both the houses of Congress seems to say we'd be foolish to expect any big changes even if they win the Presidency in November; a fact emphasized by the Barack "Change-you-can-believe-in" Obama's oh-so-conventional capitulation in voting in favour of the bill. In a delicious irony Hillary Clinton sided with the liberals (like me) who opposed her in the primary, and voted against the bill that destroys most protections against electronic spying by the government on residents and citizens of the US.

I worry that even if the Republicans lose, it will be their slogan and not Obama's that will win out in the end. They briefly talked about bringing "Change you Deserve" to the country before it was discovered that an anti-depressant has the same tag-line (In my view, this makes it totally inappropriate for the Republicans to use the slogan - though not because of copyright issues. If the medication in question was a "downer" rather than mood "upper" the slogan-theft would make perfect sense)!

My fear is that the Wiretapping bill is a signal that given the passive resistance that this country has put up to 8 years of a corrupt, violent and inequitous government, perhaps we don't deserve much of a change at all, and that is what we might get come November and beyond.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Stop-And-Smell-the-Flowers Thought for the Week


Have you noticed how green grass in a park, shimmers on a sunny day when a light breeze is blowing? It looks beautiful. Almost makes you want to put up electric-powered outdoor-fans all over the place just to be able to see that effect . Kind of like these guys have done. :)

Voicing the Vanquished's Version of History

What do you know about President Eisenhower? I didn't really know much except that history recognizes him as one of USA’s greatest Presidents. A quick look at wikipedia informs one that:

"Eisenhower was a five-star general of the US Army who served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe...1944-45....As President, he oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, enlarged the Social Security program, and began the Interstate Highway System."

Sounds like quite an accomplished guy, huh? I had never read anything very critical about Eisenhower until I read The Poisonwood Bible by Barabara Kingsolver. The book is truly, in my average-joe-reader opinion, a master-piece of literature, of story-telling, of creating multiple (6 in number) full-blooded, sharply etched, distinct protagonists and of using writing to establish a record of history from the point of view of the vanquished instead of the victor, of using writing to deliver a moral rebuke, a sharp awakening slap, to the powerful and empowered who, blinded by a sense of their own moral superiority, act to oppress thousands in the garb of salvaging their lives and souls.

Written in the late 90s and set in the 60s during the struggle for Congo's independence; the Poisonwood Bible has 6 protagonists - 1 woman and mother, 4 pre-teen to teenaged daughters and The Congo, the heart of the Dark Continent. The five female characters are ruled by the family patriarch, a born-again evangelical priest who, convinced of his sacred mission to save the heathen Congolese tribes by converting them Christianity, moves his entire unwilling family from Bethlehem, Georgia to a small village in the darkest depths of the African equatorial forest.

Most of the book is dedicated to the hapless family's tribulations but Kingsolver seamlessly weaves in the emerging turmoil in the Congo. The Congo was Belgium’s only colony and bore the full brunt of its colonial master’s attentions. The atrocities on the native Congolese were legend, and are well documented by history – they included chopping off rubber plantation workers’ hands if they worked too slowly on a particular day. The independence struggle was led by Patrice Lumumba, a postal worker, who was Congo's equivalent of Nehru. Like Nehru, Lumumba was also a Socialist, an anti-colonialist and showed signs of being non-aligned in the cold war. However in Lumumba’s case all of those turned out to be fatal mistakes. As Kingsolver puts it in the book…

“In 1975…a group of senators called The Church Committee… found notes from secret meetings of the National Security Council and President Eisenhower. In their locked room, these men had put their heads together and proclaimed Patrice Lumumba a danger to the safety of the world. The same Patrice Lumumba, mind you, who washed his face each morning from a dented tin bowl, relieved himself in a carefully chosen bush and went out to seek the faces of his nation. Imagine if he could have heard those words – a danger to the safety of the world! – from a roomful of white men who held in their manicured hands the disposition of armies and atomic bombs, the power to extinguish every life on earth…And President Eisenhower was right then sending orders to take over the Congo…he’d made up his mind about things. He’d given Lumumba a chance he felt. The Congo had been independent for fifty-one days.”

After 51 days in power, Lumumba was overthrown by the army led by Mobutu Sese-Seko who was backed by the CIA and Belgium. Lumumba was first imprisoned and then beaten to death. There were many other parts to the plot including a Belgian-incited rebellion in Katanga, the most mineral rich province, but they seem to have been side-shows staged to create the chaos that would justify or at least enable a coup to happen. Once Mobutu was in power, the Katanga rebellion seemed to die down. Mobutu then effectively went on to rule Zaire for 37 years, brutalized its citizens and plundered its treasury. His departure was followed by years of civil war that has still not completely ended and in which thousands of women have been raped.

Its difficult to describe how angry and sad I felt at reading what had been done to the Congo in the guise of saving it from Communism. The Poisonwood Bible
reminded me again of the argument I made in Blasted Into Agnosticism? that extremists succeed too often in sowing misery and chaos - for decades - for at least me to confidently continue to believe in God. It also reminded me that history is often just an account written from the victor's perspective. And sometimes it might make sense to put in that extra effort as Kingsolver did to dig up and voice the vanquished's account too. For it might hold valuable information about true culpability (The Eisenhower name will just not have the vaguely positive resonance for me that it did till recently). Vanquished's accounts can also hold valuable lessons - for example - that the current administration's policy of "You're with us or against us" is not something that was invented 8 years back but has a much older and hallowed tradition.

We might have given George Bush too much credit...even on perhaps the best articulated doctrine of his Presidency. For once that discovery makes me sad.


Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Picture Worth a Thousand Strides?


A few months back I ran a marathon on a lot of Ibuprofen and...determination. Several runners carried cameras on themselves during the run, strapped to their upper arm and ended up with several memorable pictures. I only have this one picture to remember the whole experience by. Its a list of all the registered marathon participants that one had to go and check one's name against. Even though I'd been training for the marathon over a six month period by the time I got in front of this list in Florence, this was what made it feel real. That I was really going to try and run a marathon. I felt a thrill run down my spine when I spotted my name on this page - and had to capture it - using my phone camera for the purpose. I've blocked out my name to keep the anonymity on this blog that I just know you've all come to like and prize so much, dear readers (Ok its really me who prizes it ;) . But thats my name behind that white rectangle. In plain black print. Its kinda cool, huh?

Melancholia Lapping At My Feet

It started as Monday morning blues that began on Sunday afternoons…not long after I woke up, late, often after two consecutive weekend nights of merriment. Ironically, on the day of the Sabbath I would take my deeply irreligious self into a short hibernation…hiding behind the Sunday newspapers, complemented with steaming hot coffee and maybe a piece of cake or a sandwich at a Starbucks or in the early days, at a Barista. I’d ignore calls from friends and from Global Telelink’s irrepressible telemarketers. I’d check emails with an unblinking red Stop sign on my chat client. I’d lie on the grass by the Marina tennis courts, eyes shaded from the sun but also from the glances of over-friendly passersby or picnickers who might try to strike up a conversation, book open but unread by my side. Sometimes I’d sit in the outdoor section of the diner in Ghirardelli Square, my chair turned towards the broad sea-view and away from other patrons, actually reading a book. Only smiling politely at the waitress refilling the coffee, but otherwise keeping to myself. Other times I’d stay at home and watch TV and surf the net until there was nothing to see and nothing to read…and then I’d read some more and watch some more. After five weeks’ worth of a sane person’s talking squeezed into a regular work week and a couple of nights of catching up with friends, Sunday was My day. It was the day that I let the melancholia in.

I only put a word to the mood a couple of years back. Until then it was…as I mentioned…it was just an early onset of Monday morning blues. But even when work was good or not stressful, I’d still find myself slipping into the warm, cozy, misty, floaty sense where I was shut off from the world in a daydreamland of my own. Its difficult to describe the feeling. Its not a happy feeling, nor a sad one. Its not an intense feeling of any kind. Vaguely soothing is the best way to describe it, I guess. I’ve never really looked up the meaning of the word melancholia – always just worked with a vague sense of what it meant and the emo-picture it conveyed to me. But once I verbalized it as what I was feeling – it just felt completely right. And so now that’s my word.

Often the mood comes unbidden if I’m alone but I can summon it too by listening to the right songs (I have a playlist called Melancholia on my iPod). Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here will do it every time. So will George Michael’s Older, Corey Crowder’s Here’s Looking at You Kid, or Michael Buble’s Home. I can just as easily chase it away by putting on my Club playlist or calling a friend or just putting on a Will & Grace rerun.

For a short period back there, I wasn’t feeling melancholic any more. My life was full of activity every day of the week. At work and outside. On Sundays the closest that I could come to it, was feeling mellow. A nice feeling but not the same. The first few weeks I actually found it refreshing that I’d somehow found a way to charge my batteries without a periodic bout of semi-isolation. That was also the period that some of you may have noticed, dear readers, that I wasn’t posting very often. But then as more weeks passed and there was still no sign of the bloody mood (or of a post), I found, to my surprise, that I was missing it. Missing melancholia…It sounded silly even to myself. I mean its not like I liked being melancholic did I?

The truth is, I actually like my bouts of melancholia – its when I usually end up writing…and I like writing quite a lot now. Once I’m done watching TV, browsing sites, lazing in the sun, driving aimlessly and there’s nothing more to do…that’s when I find I can clear my mind and let the words spill into the void, words that I’ve been watching form themselves into fragments of sentences in the back of my mind…for days, sometimes weeks and months. My friend Cheery Cynic during his short Bay Area interlude would sometimes ask me, if I told him I’d been out on a drive through the Presidio or at a movie alone, whether “I was depressed again?”. “I wasn’t” I would tell him “I’m melancholic. There’s a difference.” There is. Ask the Irish.

I think its my way of resting up – recharging my batteries so I can go out and feel ecstatic and crushed and sad and smiley and social all over again. Perhaps it has to do with my Piscean nature – per Linda Goodman, we’re condemned to be constantly torn in two directions (hence the symbol of two fish facing in opposite directions), one part, full of life and vitality wanting to jump headlong into the surf of life, the other seeking comfort and escape from the rigors of it, even if for a short period.

Whatever the explanation, I have come to realize two things. One – I like my regular melancholia time-outs. Two – this is not something that everyone can understand easily without also worrying if you’re perhaps a nascent manic depressive. But one of the great things about growing older is that you get to understanding yourself better, your likes and dislikes, and you generally start being kinder to yourself. So; just as a waist-watching foodie will over time allow herself that extra helping of pineapple upside-down cake, so will I let myself regularly have dreamy lie-ins on a phantasmic beach, letting soothing waves of melancholy break gently around me.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Cheesy Romantic Refuge

PLAYING ON MY IPOD



OK I know I'm probably going to be ragged no end for admitting to this...but, I love listening to this song when I'm feeling tired - physically or mentally...Though its no masterpiece, the simple school-yardish innocence of its lyrics and mellow mood, never fail to have a revivifying effect. There's something really romantic about a pretty girl with a guitar sweetly and openly serenading you. It would've helped if Kareena had shown some ability to simulate even holding a guitar properly. But maybe thats asking for too much.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Irony of the Week...maybe Month!


My friend going to a social event organized by a group called "Actively Out" and giving his pseudonym to people during introductions! To his great credit though, he saw the irony and the humour in the situation ;)

I think Alanis Morissette might have made something of this a few years back.

Choosing Beauty

This one’s for you P.

Are you one of those wonderfully grounded people? You know – the kind who know exactly what is possible and practical and what is not, and don’t have a lot of patience for the latter? Who tend to take every major decision based on a careful analysis of multiple criteria chosen with a view to maximizing comfort? Who might often have an air of levity about them but almost never one of levitation? Well, if you are, I want to put on my philosopher cap and talk to you about bringing beauty into your life.

Now don’t get defensive…Gentle those hackles down. I’m not saying that you don’t recognize beauty or that you don't understand that it has many forms – from the stunning genius (and hot, muscled men) of the Sistine Chapel to a blazing orange-red-pink-purple hued sunset off the waters of Key West to the oratory of an inspirational leader, to the love of a nurturing, perhaps unhandsome, life-partner. I'm ready to accept that you recognize beauty, understand it and appreciate and enjoy it, that you value it and make place for it in your life.

I just think the amount of beauty in one’s life is a direct result of choices we make. And that too many people, specially if they have always had both feet solidly planted on earth, pick beauty too seldom. That when there is a choice to be made between beauty and comfort and/or security, many of us pick comfort and security. Even though we would like to pick the beautiful option. And we do it because we don’t realize the full extent of what we might be giving up.

Lets take how people choose homes as a way to illustrate what I mean. For example, one may choose to live in a window-less studio in downtown instead of an apartment with a view because it is 15 minutes further away from the freeway. Some people may pick a character-less apartment-box closer to office versus a pretty suburb with picket fences and manicured lawns (if that’s your thing) since it would add 40 minutes to the daily commute. Some may even decide not to rent an old Victorian house that totally charms them because it comes without a dish-washer and involves walking up four flights of stairs. Well of course, you say, all those decisions make sense on the face of it. Its just a question of what you value more…

It is. But I think in making these decisions one may not be doing all the right calculations. Have you thought that perhaps, being 15 minutes further from the freeway could put you 15 minutes closer to a daily walk on the beach, giving you a lifetime of splendid sunsets instead of just a couple of vacations’ worth of it. That it might increase the prospects of being woken up by itinerant parrots perched on your window-sill. It could mean the difference between needing a shrink and having a natural stress valve built into your home. Living in a pretty tree-lined green-grassed suburb might mean having your children grow up with a greater appreciation for the environment and a desire to protect and preserve it. Hell – it might make the difference between them making a movie about global warming…or claiming that it’s a hoax. And who knows what epiphanies might strike you while washing dishes at the sink – as a result of the confluence of the happy state induced by just being present in that charming Victorian and the soothing calm that repetitive simple manual labour brings. I mean, there’s gotta be a reason for why artists over the ages flocked to cities like Paris and Rome instead of say…Baltimore.

I feel that beauty inspires and works in ways that we may not fathom fully – and perhaps we should take a chance on it. More often that not.

A Second Coming

Yes I’m back, dear reader, after a too-long hiatus. The reasons for which I might divulge in a future post once I fully figure them out myself, and if at that point they seem even remotely interesting (to me ☺)

I can tell you right now, that the reason was not that I haven’t found anything interesting to write about in the last two months. In fact, I’ve had fragments of six or seven posts swirling around in my head in a very distracting manner over the last few weeks. I’m going to try and get some of them down before the next melancholectomy (I wouldn't trouble myself looking that up in a dictionary).

I want to ask for your indulgence though. I feel out of practice. So do factor that in as you read the next few posts, specially if the words in the sentences stumble over each other instead of flowing together; and if the thoughts seem patched together like parts of a badly knitted sweater with horrendous numbers of dropped stitches. Like an out-of-practice marathoner it will probably take a few practice runs before I find your favor again with a polished post.

I also think I should stop now - before you (and I) overdose on mixed metaphors.

Just wanted to let you know I'm back.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Young Museum

ADVENTURES IN FOG CITY - SOMEPLACE COOL



One of Forrest Gump's enduring lines for me, was how his Mom described life to him as being like a box of chocolates - "you never really know what you gonna get". That line apparently has now been immortalized on wikipedia here. Anyway, thats how I feel about San Francisco - After three years of living in what is really quite a small city, I regularly get surprised by discovering something new, someplace cool, some gem hidden, someone true.

Last Friday evening, I wandered into this short free, live concert by a 1980s band I'd never heard of before, called Sid Luscious and The Pants at the city's famed De Young Museum. Nestling in the Golden Gate Park, the Museum building itself is a work of art with a wonderful outdoor sculpture garden - I like the De Young because I think they try hard to make art accessible to relative philistines like me and (perhaps) you. I especially love its sculpture garden which I've visited multiple times while venturing inside just once. Mostly as a result of the Museum's efforts, on any given weekend day or night, you'll find it run over by people of all age groups and interests that gives it a cool buzz and a youthful vibe.

Anyway, the band was playing in the museum's large interior court thats dominated by a huge, memorable, piece of artwork named Strontium - an electron microscope image of the crystal lattice of Strontium Titanate. Not everyone likes it, but I felt it was the perfect backdrop for the band which was, gratifyingly, pretty good. C and I caught only the last 20 minutes of the band ...but the novelty of the experience - of seeing a raucous (in a good way) band merrily rip the usual near-reverent near-silence of a museum - seemed to me, a harbinger of a fun-filled weekend.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Out-of-the-Bottle Thinking?

As if the loss of market share and pre-eminent status to Toyota wasn't enough humiliation for Detroit's Big Three. Here's further proof that the world's largest car-makers - who've enjoyed iconic status in pop-culture and in industry for decades - are in danger of forever being relegated to the scrapheap of un-coolness.

The car on the left is the Loremo (Hat-tip to Caderageous) - a "green"vehicle in race-car disguise. Apparently it can get 145 miles (and multiple exclamation marks!!!) per gallon. And its going to be available not 20 or 10 or 5 years from now. Its hitting the markets next year. And it costs only about $22,000 - not that much more than a fully loaded Honda Civic and several thousand dollars cheaper than what my Prius cost me. Click here to learn more about the car.

The Detroit Three can't even complain of being left behind by disruptive new technology - the Loremo is NOT a hybrid (though a hybrid version may be in development). Its NOT a hydrogen car. It runs on diesel - you know that high-tech new-fangled fuel thats powered trucks and tractors for eons. The efficiency comes from "engine efficiency, low weight, and minimal drag to boost the fuel-efficiency". Wow - who would've thought that those things could ever work.

The power of the Loremo is really in the breaking of the mental barrier around fuel-efficiency, the barrier which said that 45mpg was about as good as it gets. The Loremo could be the Roger Bannister of the automotive industry. Now that one car has gotten more than 100mpg - I wouldn't be surprised if every automaker worth their salt comes up with several more super-high efficiency models like this.

Of course, the other potential loser in this case in the long run is the oil industry. While this isn't disruptive technology, its impact could definitely be disruptive. Whats going to happen to all those billions of dollars being spent by the oil industry on exploration and millions of tons of new refining capacity? You'd be surprised how quickly car populations can get replaced in cost-conscious countries - which includes nearly every nation from the US to India and China. The days of ExxonMobil's $40bn in profits might soon be over - a quintupling of fuel-efficiency would definitely slow or reduce oil demand and prices.

Of course - its much too early to celebrate the end of oil (or the arrival of a powerful tool in the fight against global warming) - the Loremo may yet mysteriously develop design flaws or have safety concerns raised about it, or it may be bought out by competitors who may or may not deem it to be a viable project to pursue. But heck - its Friday evening - always a good time to pick up that beer-stein and cheer on an idea that has taken way too much time to arrive.

And one that seems to be the outcome of some great out-of-the-bottle thinking :)

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Joy of Lying to Small Kids


Browsing in a book-store in Florence a couple of months back I came across a laugh-out loud book of cartoons named "Great Lies to Tell Small Kids" by one Andy Riley (also author of The Bunny Suicides as the blurb helpfully told me). The book has one lie per page accompanied by a funny illustration - its laugh riot!

As someone who thoroughly enjoys making up elaborate, unbelievable fabrications in response to irritating questions from kids and sending them happily on their way, I felt I'd found a kindred spirit. I also admired the ingenuity of the author for having found a way to make money out of an activity that I'd always just seen as a lazy hobby. I immediately bought the book for my precocious seven (or is it six) year old niece who was wandering through the bookshop with me, and we had a great time going through it.

Partly in tribute to Andy's genius and partly to further the cause of confusing annoying kids, here's a few more lies I came up with that I think might be good to put out there. Feel free to use any and all of them on any unsuspecting brats that cross your path, dear reader. Also - of course - feel free to contribute.
  1. Moths are actually very old butterflies who are too proud to use hair dye
  2. The Romans were great environmentalists who fed people to lions to keep them from eating deer (Bambi!) instead
  3. Babies come when two people send a jointly signed letter to Santa asking for a boy or a girl. Meanwhile Mom starts eating a lot of food and becoming really fat so she can produce milk for the baby when the stork finally brings it over.
  4. There is no such thing as the moon - its just the sun at very low power, recharging itself until its time to go to school again.
  5. Sea water is salty, because the United Nations decided to mix all the salt in the sea since there was no other place to put it
  6. You never hear that Red Riding Hood lived happily ever after because the wood-cutter who killed the wolf was really an axe-murderer...
  7. Have you heard? Santa won't be coming this year because his elves formed a union, went on strike and no toys have been made. You might as well have stolen that last biscuit from the jar!
  8. Microwaves make things hot by piping heat in from the Sahara Desert
  9. Lightning never strikes the same place twice because Indra/Zeus has really bad aim
  10. Giraffes have two or more bumps on their heads depending on how many coconuts have fallen on them while trying to eat the coconut tree's leaves

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Surprising Similarities Between Vampires and Bisexuals

TONGUE FIRMLY EMBEDDED IN CHEEK

A few weeks back I found myself in an animated discussion on a now-forgotten subject with a couple of my friends who’re avowed bisexuals. I saw avowed because really, I only have their word that they’re bisexual for proof. All the time I’ve spent with them each has tended to show a marked preference for persons of their own gender. Sure they claim to have slept with members of the opposite sex but have little evidence to show to back up their claims. And no P, being married to someone for 5 years does not automatically mean that you had carnal relations with them – in fact, the case is often the contrary. And there are thousands of nuns, wedded to The One True Saviour, out there who will tell you I’m right.

For some reason that conversation took a turn into how I never see my bisexual friends, specially M, in daylight. Its almost always at night, sometimes on cloudy days or indoors. At that point M did come up with an instance where I’d met him under the glaring sun. But by then, the train of that particular thought had already left the station in the direction of the common ground uniting vampires and bisexuals.

Having given it not a lot of thought, I’m convinced that there are undeniable similarities between bisexuals and vampires. For example, both demographic groups are equally happy partaking of their pleasure with men or women. And then there’s that common tendency to involuntarily co-opt the rest of humanity into their respective groups. Vampires, as we know, have a rather lamentable ability to sign you up to lifetime membership of their club with just a caress of their canines. Bi-sexuals, try to do the same thing using, The Kinsey Scale and fallacious reasoning as weapons of choice, to considerably less success, I should add.

“Sit yourself down Mr/Ms. of professedly mono-sexual persuasion”, your bisexual friend/acquaintance will tell you if they sense you’re in a moment of faltering logic, “And let me tell you why you’re not straight/gay at all.”

This is when the Kinsey work will be brandished, “The Great Kinsey spake thus:

Males (ed: insert MCP alert here) do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.’ ”

Followed by the astute use of fallacy:

“And so it must be that everyone’s bisexual. How bisexual they are depends on where they fall on the Kinsey Scale that runs from 0 to 6 with 3 being actively (as opposed to avowedly) bisexual.”

To me it’s a bit like saying there are no primary colours, no red, blue or green, only the colour white. I actually believe in the Kinsey scale and in the existence of a continuum of sexual orientations, but to me the fact that there’s a scale means that it has ends and the Kinsey scale is book-ended by Straights (0) and Gays (6). However, try telling that to an avowed bisexual, and you might very well find yourself staring at bared – hopefully blunt – canines.

Finally, and this is a curious similarity: The existence of both demographic groups is doubted by large sections of the population. There are many, many gay, straight and bisexual people who believe that there’s no such thing as a vampire – that they don’t exist. And similarly there are tons of people (straight or gay, though likely not bisexual) who are more likely to believe in the existence of a unicorn-capable-of-healing-wounds-in-a-twinkle-with-pixie-dust than in the existence of an actual bisexual person. Within every bisexual person, they will say, is a confused gay man/woman. I should point out that as a convert to the Kinsey scale I’m not one of the bisexual-sceptics. I am, though, a vampire sceptic. Which is good, otherwise the fact - that I believe in the existence of both groups - would be a fourth (and surely damning!) point of similarity!

So what does this all mean? What of it? After all, similarity does not imply sameness. It does not. And so for me, this analysis has little utility. But if one is not a vampire-sceptic and not a vampire-wannabe, then the curious commonality between bisexuals and vampires would suggest that checking if one's bisexual friends sleep on (in?) box beds or not, might be a very good idea.