ViralFish

A love letter to all my Chinese fans

2011-12-13T00:34:00.000-08:00

So it appears that over the course of many years, through dint of diligent blogging and rigorous application of the rules of humour, I have acquired a small legion of fans. This is, of course, natural, for such a dedicated and humorous blogger as me, though the small matter of the demographic from which these fans arise did attract my attention. It appears that most of the people who comment on my blog are Chinese. At first, this was not immediately apparent to me, mainly due to the fact that, in the absence of a Chinese language pack on my browser, their names and comments appear as so many wingdings. Nevertheless, one intensely packed workday, I was curious enough to run the comments to one of my most popular posts (and doubtless, one of my finest pieces of poo) through the Google Translate. Mine eyes are now open. The entire comments thread (comprising 23 comments) is in Han Chinese. Wonderful. It occurred to me to ponder what it was that attracted my Chinese compatriots to this particular post. It must be their inordinate fondness for Avatar, or probably their insane attraction for any word with +500,000 hits on a google search (also called SEO whoredom). Nevertheless, I felt honour-bound to call out my Chinese Friends by name and to respond to their kind comments on this public post.

For ease of reference, I have categorised my biggest fans and their comments by nature of comment. There are three basic categories: Words of encouragement, wise advice I should follow and thought-provoking advice to visit the red-light district of the internet. Lets start at the top, shall we?

My first round of thanks go out to all those simple and touching notes of appreciation, which, though uninspired, were nevertheless encouraging and information-rich (at least as far as hyperlinks go. I did not know that Chinese people did those things with aardvarks. And no lubricant even!). Accordingly, a big shout-out to

'Happy yo', for saying that my post was 'wonderful',

MathewP_Thu22269 who said 'Nice post ~ 3Q' (which, I am given to understand, is some sort of Chinese 5-star rating system),

Yi Ying Yi Ying for having a name that sounds like a martial-arts chihuahua and for saying 'Hello ~ nice article' and

batesda, for saying that my post about how Avatar is really not so bad was 'Really touching article ~ ~'. I like to try.

Special Award to :

Zi Yi Zeng g Zhi Ke Yingke dgdd for having a name which caused my tongue to go numb for a few minutes and for saying: 'I am so grateful to the dynamic of the blog!'. This is truly a touching and insightful statement, which speaks to the heart of what I am trying to do with this blog.I have often searched for the dynamic of this blog,fiddling with templates late into the night, mixing secret potions and chanting invocations to the Elder Gods to grant me a great dynamic. It is gratifying to know that you are grateful for its dynamic, as you should be, as the dynamic of this blog comes to you from none other than Shoggoth himself! Weep Tears of Gratitude, Mortal and Cower before the DYNAMIC OF THIS BLOG.

and

Hui Ping Pei G who said 'Hello ~ welcome My world ~ '. Ever since I read that, I am not sure if I am any longer in the real world. I may have finally found my way back to the Matrix, all thanks to HPPG. Or maybe HPPG was empathising with my point of view. Either ways, HPPG, we're both in this together, alone against the universe, and alone we shall stand. To the death!!

Round 2 of thanks goes out to all those people who have provided me with sound words of advice for a smooth journey over those potholes that are the MCD renovated road of life

Wang Jungui said ... Choose the least of two evils - I'm just going to leave that there because it says everything by itself. Confucious couldn't have put it better.

Johnath Meng Xuan said ... Li Heng Chi gentleman, villain constant determined, which may sound like babble to you, but is actually Johnath's way of updating me on his ongoing quest for deriving the equation that governs evil in the universe.

And Avril Lavigne's good sister, 'Good child ChristiLavigne11' said 'Cast not the first Stone' which is probably advice she has to follow on a daily basis with a sister like Avril Lavigne.

And finally, the 'amazing subversion of a common proverb' trope award goes to the simply, yet intriguingly named Lulu, who said 'You can control the weather, but you can change the mood'. Full points for ignoring conventionally accepted uses of the conjunction 'but' and for blowing the minds of people who expected a 'can't' in the latter half of that sentence.

Last but not least are those who wouldst tempt me to walk the wild side of the internetz, with such alluring invitations as Hao Shan's where (s)he said ...

"Nude photobeautiful nude pictureporn messageyellow pictureself-timer naked picturesexnaked picturesof 18 restricted85cc a pieceof Taiwan porn sitesfree porn plana night of passion chaterotic chat roomratedburst milk Actressfor loveBig Collegesex eroticlabiaone-night standlower bodylove chat netsaltyself-timer sexadult galleryadult Studiossexvideo loversex video watchnudepornographic U.S. adult forumav PortraitSelf-Timer Nude mappingav mapmap sex eroticadult VCDsexybabes video chatsex videowhoreerotic Taiwan ForumG-string mappingfree of charge a piece videoslewd womanlive showsex between men and womenhot younger sisterpassionate love chat networkbeautiful women nudefree porn sites".

Indeed.

That Salty Air - A Review

2010-07-19T06:08:00.001-07:00

So I had a chance to catch up on my graphic novel reading recently (I also discovered why so many people around me are starting sentences with 'so' nowadays). One thing I will truly miss about New York is being able to buy amazing comics from Top Shelf for dirt cheap+shipping. Unlike my usual book purchases, which are at least moderately researched (by which I mean at least 1 referring article+a bunch of amazon reviews deep) I essentially jump off the cliff with Top Shelf, doing no more than reading the blurb, checking out the price and then jumping into the sale. This is mainly because these people believe that comics dont have to be about underwearsofacushion people, pseudo-surreal absurdism (though that's mostly pretty ok with me) or slapstick humour to be an art form. Top Shelf publishes comics written by people who want to tell stories. Timeless stories about aspects of the human condition which ring true (which I miss reading because so many people are writing Human-Condition Porn for Booker Prize lists and other such junk that its so hard to sort through the dross).

So one such story was That Salty Air (If my opinion means anything to you, I would seriously encourage you to buy this book. If you're in the US, please buy direct from TopShelf. You'd be helping a wonderful publisher to grow. If you're in India, Flipkart amazingly has it. I love you Flipkart).

I dont know how many themes this story covers for me. Its a story about loss, irrationality, anthromorphism and the sea. Anyway, I was pretty moved by it, and I should issue a disclaimer at the outset: This is probably because I love the sea and most of my internal metaphors work water or the sea in somewhere. That said, I did have some thoughts on this story. They're pretty raw, as I typed them out on my qwertyphone while I was killing time waiting for something specific to happen, but I think they pretty accurately reflect what I think about the story, so here they are:

What is 'That Salty Air' about?

Its a modern day, magic-realist parable about the capacity of a man's hatred, and of the acceptance of change. its also a revenge story about a man who tries to rape/murder/defile the sea (the verb that actually flashed through my mind while I was reading it was 'to fuck' though not in the sexual sense rather than in the sense of defiling). The protoganist, Hugh, is a fisherman in love with the sea. The book tracks the souring of that relationship, its zenith and subsequent redemption.

Why was That Salty Air a beautiful work?

It immersed me emotionally. Granted, a kinship with the sea may be required to feel the same level of immersion, or, alternatively, some equivalent feeling of connection with your surroundings (I think the city lends itself to anthropomorphism as well as the sea).

Despite asking this premise of you, however, I still feel that the pace and story are beautifully proportioned and calculated to immerse you in its reality. Each portion of the book featuring Hugh and the sea strikes the exact note it seeks, and in doing so, adds to the poignancy of the others. For example, the simple love and reverence he shows to the ocean serves to enhance the horror and revulsion evoked by his subsequent hatred.

GYAAN ALERT - Was there a message?

At least, I thought there was. Besides the moderately obvious ones concerning loss and our relationship with the Fates, there was something in there about our relationship with our world which made me think. Watching Hughe's carnage, in the midst of the horror and revulsion, I couldn't help but think - man is the only creature capable of such wholesale destruction and brutality. All animals are capable of brutality, but only man can convert this into the urge to destroy his world. Our current attitude towards nature arises from our seeing it as an adversary; a jungle to be tamed, an ocean to be overcome; a river to be harnessed - one of the reasons we never think about our present relationship with Nature in this manner is because of our veils of perception, refusing to believe in that which does not conform to the established dogma and canon of reality. To that extent, this book is clearly a work of surrealism and magic realism, intertwining simple, mundane situations with the fantastic so that, in the midst of your emotional connection with the story, the veils are, for a time, drawn. And when they are drawn, I saw in Hugh a reflection of the present state of modern humankind, an adversarial, pugnacious creature, embittered by his dance with his environment, and seeking no more than to subjugate it entirely, to exact blind revenge for past wrongs. Hugh embittered is man at his ugliest.

Wait, isn't this a comic - why haven't you discussed the drawing yet?

For a number of reasons. Mainly, because I think that this is one of the rare stories where the story tells itself through the art. There's no need for evocative metaphors and photo-realistic adjectives because the artwork takes care of that, in spades. In that way, this is probably a bit like a Cormac McCarthy story in terms of its sparseness of dialogue, except without the need for abovementioned verbal cues. To put it another way, my entire rant so far has been about the artwork, because the artwork is the story. If you have to know about the artwork independent from the story, I think it covers some incredibly inked panels, with incredibly beautiful and surreal seascapes.

So should you buy this?

If you're reading this, you just managed to trudge through about 800 words of me gushing all over it, with an introduction encouraging you to buy it. You're probably at least moderately curious. If you like stories about the human condition, and you aren't averse to moderate quantities of magic realism, and are not automatically biased against comics because they are 'for kids', please buy this book (in fact, please buy it even if you're in the last of these categories, because you need to understand now).

on intellectual guilt over watching Avatar

2010-02-28T21:26:00.001-08:00

So I was reading through this article recently, with a mixture of cynical agreement and guilt. The sort of person this Avatar-heretic was talking to was probably the sort of person I am. The sort of person who sniffs at movies built entirely out of CG cotton candy and tough talk. The sort of person who tries to grasp the nuances and symbology behind characters and dialogue. The sort of person who believes they can spot an artist of quality when they see an obscure, once-unknown movie. And still, this sort of person bought tickets to Avatar, saw it, enjoyed themselves shamelessly and saved the intellectual guilt for after the entire experience was over. Well, I'm still saving that intellectual guilt for something to feel truly ashamed over. I'm not guilty about Avatar.

It can't be denied that this piece is a nice way to put all the hype about Avatar in perspective. I saw it, and I couldn't say I didn't enjoy it. It was an awesome visual spectacle with little in the way of story to recommend it. I can see how this can be a problem for people who believe movies are 95% about dialogue, characterization, acting, message and narrative. Unfortunately, the box-office reality is that different movies pull different viewers in for different things. Die Hard was not about symbology or complex narrative. The Incredibles was not about meaningful dialogue and questions that explored existential dilemmas (at least, not on its face). Similarly, Moon, which was one of the best-acted movies I've seen recently, was not about visual spectacle. The movie-snob tend to forgive such movies because they usually mix in some scraps from each of these factors to combine visual spectacle with some of the more refined ingredients we've come to expect most movies to contain today. The movie-snob would find it much, much harder to forgive something like Avatar for a simple reason. Avatar was little more than a glorified rollercoaster ride. But what a ride. It was massive fun, on a purely visual level. It managed to achieve one of the primary objectives of the commercial movie (wish-fulfillment) entirely through the visual spectrum. James Cameron achieved what he promised to achieve. He created a visually incredible world and then placed the viewer within that world through the magic of his revolutionary use of 3D. From a technical perspective, that was an amazing achievement. Story, dialogue, complex characterization be damned. This movie was not made as a showcase for any of these things. James Cameron wanted to be the Lumiere Bros of 3D. And if he gets recognition, he should get recognition for little more than this (nevertheless pretty amazing) achievement.*

I suppose the reaction that most moviegoers have to Avatar is the sort of reaction people must have had on watching a Lumiere brothers production in the 1900s. There would have been tons of open-mouthed fascination over... what exacly? People leaving a factory, gardening, babies eating food, a sea bath. There was no reason to feel intellectual guilt on the enjoyment of such things at the time because there was no such thing as a tradition of storytelling through cinema. It was, at the time, a purely technical achievement. The ideas of using characters as visual symbols, adding nuance to dialogue and acting, hell, even creating a story for the purely visual experience to roll on were slowly perfected over the next century and a half, and have now become de rigeur in even the most blatant market-pandering movie that thrown out of modern cinema factories. This may explain why, when a movie is released as nothing more than a showcase of technical talent and such a movie receives massive critical and popular acclaim and gigantic box-office takings , so much intellectual guilt is thrown into its enjoyment. It really shouldn't happen though. And I'm not wasting mine for what I knew, from the start, would be pure visual spectacle. Hell, that's the only reason I watch a movie in the theatre anymore. If I want to appreciate a movie for its storytelling, dialogue, acting or symbology, I'd have better luck pulling it off the net and watching it in the peace and comfort of my home.

* - Of course, there's the Oscar problem, which asks a completely different question. If I had time to waste on this, I would, but I don't, so I wont, except to say that the Oscars have been bullshit for a long, long time and I cannot fathom how a movie which is such blatant visual eye-candy (albeit tasty eye candy) can be nominated for best picture or best direction. With the other categories I have no beef. Film-editing, Art Direction and Cinematography have always been categories which fall somewhere between technical and artistic excellence, and a nomination in those areas is hardly a surprise. Sound-editing, mixing and visual-effects are not (though music is) and I wish Avatar all the luck in the world for a win in those categories.

New Net Addiction: Aardvark

2010-02-13T01:53:00.000-08:00

Oh man, I have problems now. If you've seen my earlier posts, you may have noticed that I'm a bit interested in the internet. Now I'm getting addicted to Aardvark (recently acquired by Google, by the way). However, this is quite a different addiction from any of my earlier internet opiates (like cracked.com, the google reader, wikipedia or achewood). This is the first of my addictions where I'm actually required to play an active role in information production/exchange.

Ok, so, some background on that. In my opinion, one of the primary problems of the creative mind is something I call consumption dependency. Most people love consuming movies, books, art, music and random internet humour. In theory, this is supposed to be a good thing because all the amazing stuff we consume is supposed to feed into the amazing stuff we produce. Unfortunately, the problem with the net is that it presents us with a neverending ocean of consumable information. Faced with such a bounty of cool stuff, the mind is numbed into repetitious consumption and no production whatsoever. This is what I call consumption dependency. Aardvark also thrives on consumption dependency to some extent, allowing users to post random queries into its search box like any other search engine. However, the difference is that Aardvark also creates some sort of production outlet, transferring those same questions to other users who have professed (some) knowledge of the field relevant to that question. So if someone were to ask the cold, uncaring internet for their opinion on a Kurt Vonnegut book, they could actually get a reply back from someone who knows something about Kurt Vonnegut (or at least books in general). This actually makes me feel productive while doing nothing more than answering trivia questions. Wonderful! I should quit my job!

Ok, so the other reason Aardvark seems like fun is that it allows you to feel just a little bit like a know-it-all. Need answers on efficient labelling in gmail? Which post-cyberpunk SF novel to read next? Where to get decent dimsums in Chennai? I'm the goddamn Oracle!

So, in conclusion. Illusions of productivity + Delusions of Grandeur = Oh no not another deadly but irresistable waste of internet time. In the context of the evolution of the net, however, this could just be the next big thing.

Celebrating the return of the Precipice and musing on MBs

2010-02-04T23:33:00.001-08:00

One of my favourite blogs is back again, with fascinating takes on life, literature and much randomness. I made the mistake of leaning over the Precipice into one of the places recommended here, and promptly lost an afternoon in hitherto-undiscovered poetry.
I also end up wasting way too much time commenting on the posts at the Precipice.

So I saw this post today on Indian MBs, the Kama Kahani series, apparently, and as usual, I couldn't help but respond. Before I realised it, what should have been a simple 3-line comment ballooned out of shape into a diatribe, an apt reflection on the distances I must travel before I consider myself an adequate writer. At any rate, I decided to pick up the scraps of my comments and post them over here (another apt reflection on my drive as a writer, the literary equivalent of serving leftovers instead of cooking a fresh meal).

I suppose I should provide you with some context. I'm specifically addressing the last paragraph of the post, which asks if we're making altogether too big a deal about the sexist cliches in MBs when all of television advertising is nothing more than a gigantic universe where scantily clad women lean at awkward angles over compression pumps and stare lustily at camera lenses. I can't help but agree more regarding TV advertising. However, I still think there is a massive difference over being exposed to stereotypes in books and on TV. The primary difference is that TV is a passive choice, where a person is bombarded in the middle of their favourite tv show with jokerfaced smiling Mas doling out kurkure. All this has to be endured by the viewer irrespective of their choice of show, or of its redeeming qualities, if any. A decision to purchase a book, on the other hand, is an active choice, where a person is choosing to put down money (or utilise human capital by loaning a book from a friend). When such books are MBs, however, this decision translates into an active choice to use money (or human capital) towards the ends of consuming formulaic writing about gender stereotypes in luuuurve.* This active decision-making usually implies a greater deal of openness to the ideas within the book, as opposed to the ideas presented on TV ads.** Of course, in the end, there's no denying that an MB is pulp, as is the whole 'Conan the Barbarian' series or the entire genre of noir fiction. But there's also no denying the impact of pulp fiction on our thought processes and our attitudes towards the world and its inhabitants. I could get into a whole other diatribe about this, but I should probably sum up because I'm beginning to lose your attention. Basically, it worries me that smart, progressive women who would rarely (if ever) snivel and give way to simple brute force (whether applied to the body or the mind) are choosing to read about smart progressive women who snivel and give way to charismatic, primal male stereotypes. It almost feels as if this is some sort of dark, repressed fantasy.

Of course, in the end, everyone has their guilty pleasures. Mine is probably reading comic books about anarchist revolutionaries who challenge the status quo.*** In the end, such literature allows the reader the illusion of revolt and non-conformism without all the fuss and muss of actually going out there and changing anything. I still love it though, and I cannot deny myself such escapist pleasures, guilty as they may be.

* - A side rant - I personally find the male stereotypes in the few MBs I have read about as offensive as the female ones. The totemization of physically and mentally aggressive men who believe in and practice force (whether physical or mental) as a means of achieving their ends is a problem that is not merely limited to MBs. In some ways, I believe that it lies at the root of the charisma that surrounds violent people throughout history.

** - A side note - I suppose this wouldn't apply to those people who decide to try out an MB for simple experimentation, or those who have one foisted upon them by a well-meaning friend. That may go without saying, but it was worth clearing up.

*** - More sidey-sidey - Consider V for Vendetta or Grant Morrisson's 'The Invisibles' series. In fact, it was the latter, in a brilliant twist of meta-commentary, which alerted me to this harsh reality, in Vol 2 Issue 13.

An Open Letter to DM Theatrics Regarding Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: Please Youtube This!

2010-01-18T21:35:00.000-08:00

This is a letter to DM Theatrics, who are planning to put up a production of 2 Gentlemen of Lebowski sometime soon.

from: ViralFish
to: press@dm-theatrics.com
subject: An Open Letter to DM Theatrics Regarding Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: Please Youtube This!

Ok, this is clearly not a press request. However, its the only contact email I had for the fine gentlepeople who were magnanimous enough to stage a production of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. Therefore, if you are one of these gentlepeople who are capable of making decisions about this, please consider my proposal. If you are not, and know one of these gentlepeople (whew, political correctness takes more effort to type), please forward this to them. Thank you.

Guys,

As a follower of the Dude and as an unabashed supporter of the Bard and all Bardly performances, I would so have loved to attend this event. My chagrin at being unable to attend is aggravated by the fact that I was in New York until a few months ago, and have returned recently to my native India. It is in this spirit that I present to you a modest proposal:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE YOUTUBE THIS!!!

You may think there are a thousand reasons why you shouldn't do this but I have presented a brief analysis of those that I can fathom:

1. It will kill demand for seats in the actual theatre

No it wont. Under no circumstances will it do so. Nuh uh. Not a chance.

The Big Lebowski is a movie that has attained cult status (No, I'm not kidding at all, look it up on wikipedia). This means that its fanbase may not encompass the bloated ranks of your average 'Twilight' movie. In fact, to all appearances, its fans may not appear even half as fanatical as your average neo-vampire pseudogoth who applies fake blood on her wrists 'for Edward' every day. However, that is because the followers of the Dude are not fans. They are disciples. They have internalised the Dude in body and spirit.

For every moron who looks at a q-tip and says 'What is this?' there is a Dude waiting to say 'obviously you are not a golfer'.
For every tool who screams out at us: 'The bums lost! The bums will always lose!", there is a Dude who is willing to put his hands up, say 'fuck it' and saunter out with his pick of any rug in the house.
For every bigot, chauvinist, fanatic and fundamentalist, there is a Dude who will stand up to them and say 'That's just, like, your opinion man.'

These people will come. They will prefer to come because, for a follower of the Dude, watching an enactment of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski is the same experience as Christmas mass is to a practicing Catholic: You can try to watch it on tv, but thats just not the same as mouthing the lines together, enjoying a feeling of communal brotherhood with your fellow follower or enjoying tasty snacks mid-performance (ok that last one was in bad taste).

They may not try to pay, because, come on man, the Dude didn't teach us to pay (except in the form of dubious checks for sixty nine cents). You may find a few more followers trying to sneak in through backstage than through the front of the theater. You may even find a few people disguised as security men who suddenly attempt to sidle into an extra seat. However, you will fill your seats. And with a few intelligent ushers, I'm sure almost all of them will be paid for. So thats not something you have to worry about.

3. It will be a pain in the ass to do.

Oh come on man, it will not. Now you're just being plain lazy. Which is cool, and very understandable. But if you guys dont have the time and energy to do it, just ask around man. I will bet you that someone will do it, probably for a pretty nominal fee, possibly for free. And it will be worth it, for reasons that I am outlining below.

3. It will kill demand for a video
You may already have plans to record this show and sell it. If you do, I'm sure you'll make some cash. But lets look at this realistically. There's 2 reasons why you may not get to make much cash out of this if youre only going to put out a paid performance.

a. Your audience comprises followers of the Dude. Their preferred means of access to anything is 'free', after which comes 'cheap'. And if there's one other thing a follower of the Dude likes, its sticking it to the man, low risk style. Put these two factors together and for every 1 dvd you sell, there will be 10 Dudes watching a pixellated low-res bootleg video of your show. As a guy who is interested in intellectual property, I can tell you that that's actually not such a bad thing. In this day and age, for every 1 copy of a blockbusterr dvd sold, there's 1 copy being pirated. But pirated copies tend to build demand for the original, and in the long run, can actually feed sales for the original work. (I should probably link to something here but I'm on a roll. Just take my word for it.)

b. However, this model applies well to blockbusters and big-studio productions because they have the cash to publicise this stuff endlessly, so even if 1 million guys pirate their movies, another 1 million have heard enough about them to go buy the original on dvd. However, you guys do not have that luxury. You do not have big budgets and you do not have enough clout to publicise something like this by conventional means.
What you do have is the power of the followers.
The Dude is very much an internet icon, being the sort of person who appeals to people who spend a lot of time giggling-high on something in front of a computer. Put out a youtube clip of 2 Gentlemen, and these people will transmit that information online faster than 2 girls and 1 keyboard cat. After that, you've got eyeballs, which is the biggest currency in the world today, more so, I imagine, for a group of people whose revenues are dependent on people seeing and hearing them perform. Let your imagination run wild.

c. And you can be sure some of these guys will be youtubing this stuff anyway. Sure, you can try as hard as you can to make sure no one takes grainy, horrible, low-res cellphone videos of the show, but in the end, someones going to put that shit on youtube. And I am going to watch it. And feel terrible about the fact that I missed this wonderful performance and all I get is a minute and a half of some nutjob who decided to record the show in the middle of an epileptic fit.

On the other hand, if you put that stuff on youtube yourself, you will have instantaneous coverage. The Dude is beloved all over the world, and if you combine the love of the Dude with the love of the Bard, you have a recipe for viral success! People will watch, and while watching, they may actually love it enough to want to get a DVD of your performance.

Also, a theatrical performance is, by its nature, ephemeral. A moment of beauty, then gone forever, save in the minds of those fortunate enough to witness it. A youtube video is not usually considered beautiful. But it is a record, one that hopefully may be perused by generations after ours, in an effort to understand the creature that was early 21st century man. Please man, leave them with something better to see than '2 Girls 1 Cup'.

You may have reasons other than this, but I just ran out of energy. Let me just end this appeal to your higher (and lower) conscience by imploring you,

in the name of the Dude and the Bard,

to consider and act upon the reasons I have offered.

ViralFish

P.S. I call this an open request because I may post in on my blog, ViralFish. If you are concerned about this, worry not, as the 6 people who follow my blog will agree with me wholeheartedly, while at the same time supporting your noble endeavour 100%.

Quotables

2009-12-03T01:11:00.001-08:00

I'm not usually into quotable quotes or suchlike, but this line is probably the one that best expresses my ideas concerning the past decade. Also not sure what the word 'profound' encompasse, but if profundity involves resonating with something at the core of your beliefs, then I guess this statement is pretty profound.

in reference to:

"Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy"
- BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he might be "al Qaeda operative" Boing Boing (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Jelly Mould and Suicide Advice

2008-05-22T00:25:00.001-07:00

Over the past few days I've been living inside a jelly mould. Moving involves an effort that I can't usually be bothered to take. Getting up off a bed is like fighting more than just gravity. Everything tastes the same uniform taste inside the jelly mould. Jelly. Conversations and personal interaction make it through some sort of viscous, colourless filter that strips everything down into a monotonous droning hum, sort of like carrying on a conversation after going 24 hours without sleep, but without the feverbright buzzing at the back of your head.

No I am not living inside a jelly mould called Daniel.

The tragic part is, this hellhole of a City has actually been beautiful over the past few days. Steady unseasonal rains for the past three days. Beautiful green streets and lovely weather.

It is sometimes possible for me to be unnaturally influenced by a recent piece of literature. Considering I've just finished reading The Bell Jar, I shouldn't be too surprised.

Not a jelly mould (but close).

Today I mildly pondered the possibility that I'm depressed. I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that one of the symptoms of depression was ennui. I also remembered that another important symptom was contemplating methods of killing oneself. Not merely exploring the possibility, but analysing the options, based on predetermined criteria. I then realised that I had never really given serious thought to the methods by which I may choose to kill myself. I have considered earlier the manner in which I would like to die (in my sleep, peaceful-like), but I realised that reflecting on how one would like to die bears little or no connection to how one would like to kill oneself. For one thing, the motivations for killing oneself may vary greatly from the motivations for dying (it could be argued that there is no real motive for just dying, but I don't really agree). You could kill yourself

a) out of sheer boredom,
b) out of sheer despair,
c) out of self-hatred,
d) as a simple 'fuck you' to the world or someone in particular, or
e) in rare circumstances, out of consideration for other people.
f) Any permutation or combination of any or all of the above factors

A reasonable illustration of motives a) and c)

A reasonable illustration of motive e)

While there may be other motivations, these are the ones I could come up with. Having selected a suitable motive or a bouquet of motives, it is then important to choose the general tone with which you could choose to end it all. Of course, according to your motives and your general levels of squeamishness, there are a variety of methods you could choose. In fact, the list of ways you could think of to kill yourself is almost limitless. However, for the sake of brevity, we could limit ourselves to a few important highlights. You could decide to:

a) Have a big, messy ending (e.g. jumping off a building)
b) Have a quiet, non-messy ending (e.g. take sleeping pills and drift away or the Sylvia Plath special)
c) Have a macho sort of ending (e.g. commit seppuku or shooting yourself)
d) Have an absurd, ridiculous sort of ending (take sleeping pills while standing on the edge of a tall building with a samurai sword strategically placed on the ground below. And a chicken.)
e) Have a long, painful ending (you could drink yourself to death like that guy in Leaving Las Vegas)
f) Have a long, (relatively) painless ending (slit your wrists and blow bubbles in your bath tub till you die. Or you could read a book, if you don't own a bathtub)
g) Have a stupid, desperate, suffering, extremely messy ending (hang yourself and void your bowels)
h) Have a long, drawn out, dramatic ending (drown yourself.)
g) Have an extremely psychedelic ending (overdose on something lethal and interesting)

Seppuku: A cool way to die

Chicken = What were you thinking?

may= +
Note: Studies have shown that an attempt at suicide by psychedelic drugs may result in seppuku with a chicken.

The presence or absence of witnesses at any of these will depend upon a number of factors, including whether you want the world (or that special person) to whom you want to deliver that final 'fuck you' to notice. Of course, in these wonderfully networked times, it is quite possible for you to deliver your message to the entire world with little more than a webcam, a laptop and a decent internet connection. Just make sure the angles are right because you know there won't be any second attempts for this little stunt :-) .

If youre really serious about this whole thing and not some sort of emofreak who's just craving attention, it is suggested that you please stop bellyaching about it to all and sundry before youre going to do it.

Also, it is inconsiderate and sloppy to get someone to help you out, so try not to. Unless of course, you're too chicken to do it yourself and you're paying someone good money to do it or you, in which case, it is advised that you hire a professional with good references.

A professional with good references.

Now that I have effectively contemplated suicide in as many of its motivations and forms as have occurred to me, I can officially classify myself as depressed. Hooray.

The moral of the story, children, is Look both ways before crossing the Street. Or don't. It's up to you after all.

Rose Fed Goat Bled

2008-05-19T02:52:00.001-07:00

Mildly disturbing variations on a slightly disturbing rhyme.

Rose Red Rose Red
Will I ever see the wed?
I will marry at thy will sir,
At thy will.

Most fed, ghost bled
Why you like to eat the dead?
Eyelids tarry at thy spill sir,
at thy spill

Fish head, moonsaid,
I wish I could lie in bed
I would harry at thy gills sir,
at thy gills

Godsped Goatshed,
Mother nature's waking dread
In the moonlight screaming shrill sir,
Screaming shrill

Hair shred, axe head,
Mortified he turned and fled.

Blood Red - Drop 1

2008-05-16T01:20:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my latest crackpot attempt at keeping up consistent output. From today onwards, I'm going to write 1 A4 sheet's worth of story and post it here. I know what my hordes of loyal and faithful readers are wondering: Why not chapterize? Why just 1 sheet? Do you actually think you will get off your metaphorical ass (or stay on your physical one) long enough to actually complete this? Well, I have a few answers to those questions:
Because fuck you. Because that's just the sort of random and arbitrary milestone I like to complete, and because fuck you. And, last but not least, fuck you. So, having completely alienated the 3 readers who constitute 90% of my fanbase (yes isn't it creepy? My remaining reader is only 1/3rd of a person!) and without any further ado, I introduce to you, the first instalment of Blood Red.

Blood Red - Drop 1

The girl's face peered up from beyond the murk of the city. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, her right arm outstretched in a gesture of supplication, her mouth slightly open. Behind her, a Mercedes waited for the traffic light, the sunlight catching its polished silvery hood emblem. Though the girl could be no older than eleven, her blank eyes seemed to hold some sort of portent. The light, shining as it did, shadowed the bottom of her forehead, plunging her eyes into gloomy pits from which little could be seen. Her ragged clothes resembled the vestments of some ancient oracle, as the chill wind flowed through the holes in her garments, billowing them in the wind like the wings of a grounded, recently roadkilled bat. As she stared balefully out at the world, her aspect seemed to morph the surroundings around her, turning the dull grey gravel of the roads into a wall of black and the flyover underpass into a cavernous mouth, waiting to receive prey. Vaguely discernible against the mouth of the underpass was a family. A child sat at the lip, staring blankly ahead at the motorcycle passing it by, as the father sat on the pavement of the road, his arm raised in a half-hearted gesture, his eyes jaded into dull grey orbs of resignation. The mother sat nearby, suckling a vague baby shaped blob at her breast. The Mercedes continued to shine smugly, its silvery emblem emitting a white hot light just behind the girl.

Suhan blinked his eyes and turned away. His face reflected his inner turmoil as he looked up. “I don't know how you take these”, he said. He passed the photograph back to Samrat, who knew too well how he took it. He had been standing at the crossing, waiting for the light to change, when the girl had approached him. The moment he saw her, saw the scene around her, the white light had flashed in his eyes. Mindlessly he reached for the camera, paused for a second to adjust focus and ISO, looked up into her pleading face and pulled the trigger. In the second he had taken to make his adjustments, her expression had set into the one staring from the photograph. He had driven away from the scene without giving her even a fifty paisa coin.

“Just lucky. So, what do you think? Do you think you can use it for your story?”

Suhan looked up from the picture, looked at Samrat, then turned away, eyes staring abstractedly into the wall clock. “It's a classic picture man. But I don't think I can use it. It's too dark, too frightening. Look at what you did to that little girl. She looks like someone from a horror movie. This sort of picture won't pull heartstrings.”

“Fuck, that's what she looks like yaar. You think she can afford to pretty herself up for the picture? She's starving on the street, trying to avoid getting raped, and probably hasn't seen clean water for a long, long time. What do you want her to look like?”

Suhan sighed. “Look Samrat, I understand. And I know what I'm looking at. But think of the goddamned readers. They need to see something they can feel pity and sympathy for. Not some sort of demon child, pointing some sort of blank accusing finger at them like they're going to hell. I need to find a picture that will pull at their heartstrings. Not something that will wake them up sweating in the night.”

Samrat opened his mouth to say something, then shrugged and put the photograph into his folder. “Fine yaar, if that's the way it is.”

“Listen, don't misunderstand me. I think the picture is classic. You need to submit it in a competition or something. It's just that I can't use it here man. Look, Mukherjee International is coming up. Why don't you submit it there?”

Samrat pulled the picture out, then shuddered. He recalled the act of taking the picture. He recalled riding away from the scene, and the guilt he had felt, exploiting a human being for the sake of a mention in a national daily. He shook his head sadly. “No yaar, I don't like competitions”. As he pulled out his duffel bag and put his things inside. “Anyway, best of luck getting the story through.” “Thanks man, I don't know how Saikat will feel about this. He likes upbeat, and I don't know if this will come through.” he grabbed the scrap of paper that represented his story, then headed towards the editor's office.

Samrat sat back, staring from his desk. It wasn't really his but that didn't matter. In the newspaper business, you can always find a free desk, just never the same one. He watched Suhan disappear into the cubicle, and listened. Scraps of conversation floated through the thin formica walls.

Ultimate addict

2008-05-16T01:06:00.001-07:00

I have discovered that I have a problem. Even better than my problem,
however, is how I discovered that I have a problem. The irony of my
situation descended upon me when I googled the phrase "internet
addiction".

Cartoon Crickets.

2008-05-16T01:05:00.001-07:00

Chirp chirp.

Staring at this expansive white space, I can almost hear the cartoon crickets in my cobwebby brain, reminding me that I seem to have nothing to say. I saw a movie yesterday where a man stared at his face in the mirror and said "while there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory... I simply am not there." Staring at this screen, I feel somehow similar, as if, confronted by the infinite blank voidness of this screen, all the pictures and smells and violent impulses that constitute me have fled, and there is nothing in there except cartoon crickets. I think I suffer from screen fright. Every night I open a new document, to pour my life out into. Once I'm seated in front of this beautiful, slightly dust marred expanse of potential verbal wizardry, everything disappears. I stare at the screen, stonefaced, waiting for something important to happen, or some sound other than cartoon crickets. Then I close the window and play Half Life 2.

Wait a second, those are real crickets.

Chaos

2007-11-26T09:47:00.001-08:00

Reigns supreme.

Wasp vs. Spider!

2007-10-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

I've always been scared of wasps. We've had this little hate-hate thing going for a long long time, the wasps and I. Both of us have scored some pretty significant victories, though they drew first blood with an organised ambush in a dark, abandoned outhouse. Of course, with the advent of the electric mosquito bat, I managed to get in a few as well. So, we have history. Perhaps they sense the negative vibes, or perhaps I just get stuck in stupid situations with wasps, but they are the species responsible for the maximum number of physical attacks upon my person. Cows come second.
Having run out of imaginative ways to make my life miserable, I suppose the wasps decided to try the old classics out again and see how they worked out. I'm talking about Killer Wasp Attack at the Outhouse II. All I wanted was to sit comfortably in my loo, read a book and be left alone in peace. Suddenly, a familiar hideous buzzing noise assaults my ears. Memories of fiery burning pain and laughing schoolchildren assault my solace, as I look up and dive, just in time to miss a careening carrier of venomous malice. The little bastard must have flown in through the crack in the window. He settled on the mirror and proceeded to preen his antennae. The entire time, I watched him with bated breath, fingers slowly reaching for the matchbox and deodorant spray. Suddenly I realised that he had stopped preening, and a strange creeping, tingling feeling began to crawl up the base of my spine. I tried to identify the source of this feeling, and realised that it stemmed from the fact that the bastard was actually looking at me. I had the distinct impression that the beady little compound eyes were staring into mine, daring me to make a move. I dismissed the thought, and nonchalantly reached for the deodorant. Scarcely after my fingers closed over it, the horrible buzzing began anew and I was treated to the sight of a yellow buzzing blur hurtling in my general direction. At this point, I abandoned all propriety and wildly sprayed deodorant into the air, forgetting in my joyous abandon that this sort of thing only works if you have a match. Enfragranced and incensed, the yellow bastard circled around for a second run and froze in its tracks. Or at least that was how it looked at the time. Within a second, the wasp began to struggle furiously in what appeared to be the middle of the air against nothing. Nothing, on closer inspection, turned out to be the web of a daddy longlegs.
I must interrupt the narrative at this point to point out that spiders are one of my favourite creatures. Most people are repulsed by their freakishly fast, yet jerky movements but I have spent many an evening entranced by them, staring up at my cobwebbed ceiling, watching them build their webs, slowly but industriously, and ever so beautifully.
At any rate, the wasp was stuck, and stuck fast. It had landed itself in the web of one of the largest spiders that I had allowed to take up residence in my humble abode, and was going nowhere fast. The buzzing increased in volume and intensity, but resulted ultimately in the yellow bastard entwining itself deeper When I was sure that the yellow bastard was not, in fact, going to break through and continue to wreak havoc, I stepped up for a closer look. A spiderweb is constructed in such a manner that if any insect is trapped within it, no matter where our friend the spider is, (s)he feels the vibrations and comes running to investigate. My friend had already arrived by the time I stepped up, and was busy with the important work of securing her catch. This was a truly fascinating process, and by tilting my head at the right angle to the light, I was able to observe how she would squirt webbing out of the sac at the base of her abdomen, apply a rear leg to the webbing, and then stick it to the wasp, then proceeding by an intricate working of her legs, to wrap it further in its own doom. When the wasp continued to struggle, and by dint of its final efforts, strain at the very structure of the web itself, the spider calmly continued to attach webbing to the creature, and then crawl off up the web, mooring it to the walls of the bathroom. The wasp continued to struggle and the spider continued to build, always careful to avoid the vicious stinger that flickered in and out of view at the base of its abdomen. In the meantime, I managed to take some photographs. I felt faintly voyeuristic, somehow as if I were intruding on a ritual I had no part of. I continued anyway. The wasp finally ceased to struggle, as if in resignation to its fate. At this point, the spider attached itself to its defeated opponent and proceeded to consume it.

Now, in case you are wondering, many spiders do not actually eat their prey preferring instead to inject their venom into the innards of the unfortunate, wait for said innards to turn into a mass of mushy goo and then suck at said goo like a slurpee. I watched, fascinated, for some more time, then allowed the spider to feed in peace. The next morning, the wasp was little more than a dessicated husk. I decided to allow the spider to keep its trophy a little longer.

Something wicked this way comes.

2007-10-25T03:15:00.000-07:00

The city is like a giant complex of smoke and facades, behind which a billion unspeakable things may happen in the course of a day. You may be living in an apartment block holding hundreds, but if your neighbours perform secret sacrifices to eldritch gods, you will never know. You will walk down a crowded street in the middle of the day, but if a hand should reach out and pluck the person walking next to you, you will never know. If all the members of your office are covertly engaging in organised mass sexual congress, you will never know. If you decide one night to go out into the dark and embrace your inner freak, whatever he may be, they need never know. In this sort of beautiful anarchic anonymity, strange things have the chance to lurk and grow. Strange, and perhaps even beautiful sometimes, but often merely macabre.
I love Delhi for its delicious urban legends. The flavour of the moment, for instance, is the Hammer Man. And before that, the even stranger story of the Monkey Ma n. This story is not about them. It is about the things you will never know about. Of course, if you're a sufficiently warped individual, there's nothing to prevent you from opening the manhole cover and taking a peek at what crawls beneath. And this is basically an effort in that direction. Witness:

I don't know what this is. In this crazy place, it could be anything, ranging from the mundane (some sort of MCD/DDA warning) to the misleading ( a bunch of students having fun) to the macabre (the symbol used to mark the spot where volunteers for blood sacrifices to Eldritch gods may assemble at precisely three fifty three in the morning, leaving no trace behind by three fifty six). It appears all over my part of South Delhi. On direction boards, on walls, on busstands. This particular specimen appeared on the wall of a flyover I was crossing. As you can see, its neither outrightly mundane or macabre. It's not your average skull and crossbones denoting danger. Rather, it is the sunken, emaciated image of someone's face, complete with eyes, a nose and a perfunctory sort of mouth. It's also not an overt image of threat or violence. The eyes hold no violence, instead, preferring to fix the observer with a baleful glance that seems to tread the line between bovineness and malevolence. There are bags under the eyes, perhaps to indicate some measure of malevolence, but more probably to convey suffering and depradation. The lines also seem to indicate that, while the person who created the stencil for this image (for I believe it is a stencil painted one, judging by the sharp, symmetrical outlines that accompany all the images, as well as the extra thick borders) inserted some of the features of a face, he clearly was aiming to portray a skull to the casual passerby. However, it is more than that. It is a portrait of a visage that is halfway between deteriorating from a human face into a vacant skull. Decay in its final stages before death. I would like to think of it as a message, but I am a little looney. I've asked my fellow Delhiites if they know what it is, but no one seems to have a clue. Very few others have even admitted to noticing it. Is it a desperate cry for help? A dire warning in the endtimes? A bloody marker for doings of unimaginable horror and depravity? You will never know.

Oh what a world it seems we live in

2007-09-28T14:09:00.001-07:00

Ok, major update due...

First off, winter is here. Winter is back in Delhi. How do I know. Firstly, we've actually had great weather for the past three days. Secondly, and more importantly, an old, familiar smell has come back to me.The smell of the flowers that smell like cardamom.

The flowers that smell like cardamom have been with me for about three years now. When I had my first job, I used to drive back, or be driven back at 2 in the morining about once every alternate day. The flowers that smelt like cardamom were there. Of course, at the time, I used to think that the smell came from all the elaichi tea that all the night watchmen all over Delhi made in order to keep them warm in the freezing winter nights. Now I'm told the smell comes from a flower. It doesn't matter to me. It smells like winter. Like Rufus Wainwright and Neil Gaiman. Inextricably tied with winter.

Secondly, don't ever live on bread, jam and butter for a week. It weakens your bowels and kills your will to live. I've been writing lies about myself all week and subsisting on breadbutterjam to help me through the ordeal. Breadbutterjam for breakfast may be a good idea. After a week you begin to lose your humanity.

Thirdly, this must be my second month living in limbo. Living in limbo sucks. You don't know if you're going to hell or heaven. You just hang there, suspended in space, watching the stars above and the fires below, and wondering if you will fall or rise. The funny thing is, I think most people, whether they deserve to or not, believe in the fall. Somehow, I think limbo is worse than heaven or hell. Certainty flies out the window as you stare at the void around you. In hell, you know what awaits you, and if youre strong enough, you accept it and bare your chest to the flames. In heaven, you rest, peaceful and relieved. In limbo, you stare afraid, forever wondering whether you will fall or rise.

Fourthly, I've missed a bus. Or a train, or a plane. I've sat around at the stop, watching my carefully laid plans drive past, staring after the number plate and the passengers in the back window, friends all, crowding the back window, wondering if there's any way it will stop and let me get back on, hoping I'll catch the next. Plans and plans and plans... We always make the best plans in our heads. Real life fucks them up in unimaginable ways. Like my brother said, I should have had a backup.

Fifthly, I've begun obsessing about Rufus Wainwright. I've even begun imagining the conversations we would have if we ever met.

Me: Rufus Wainwright?
Rufus: Hey, yeah that's me, what can I do for you?
Me: Rufus
R: (a little worried) Yes?
Me: Can I ask you a question?
R: Sure man, as long as you're not asking the obvious ones.
Me: Do you really think that men reading fashion magazines is such a strange thing?
R: Oh what a world we live in.
Me: Blank eyed admiration.
R: Whatever happens, never forget Bolero.

Saddam's Execution: Another link in the hate chain

2006-11-05T04:19:00.000-08:00

Anyone notice the way hate wars work? You know, like ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Hindu-Muslim hatred in India or even relatively smallscale stuff like family vendettas. I was just looking at this link here. Saddam Hussein sentenced to death, apparently. It just seems obvious to me that this is probably the dumbest thing to do to a former leader of an entire country. I'm going to make a little logical deduction here:
I am making the (not terribly tenuous) assumption that the entire court process can be manipulated by the American Government, going out on a limb and deducing that George Bush is insane.

He may be insane-smart or insane-stupid but that doesn't detract from the fact that he's probably sentenced the world to another century or so of violence and bloodshed. Either that or wipe out the entire middle east.

Why?

Look, Saddam is obviously a violent dictator. There seems no doubt about that. He may caused much pain and suffering and is probably respnsible for the deaths of many thousands of people. That does not detract from the fact that he's a charismatic leader and that right now, he is a symbol for the politicomilitariculturosexual oppression of the Middle Eastern Islamic cultures by the West. If the manipulative bastards in Washington have decided to execute him, all they've done is sentence him to immortality as a martyr. And there's nothing manipulative bastards like more than a martyr. Just give it a year and the manipulative bastards in the Middle East will be crawling all over him like flies looking for a place to lay their eggs. A decade from now we're probably going to have militant Saddamists who'll blow themselves and a roomful of little schoolchildren into tiny bits, screaming "for the memory of the prophet Saddam!!!".
And then they'll carpet bomb the Seychelles.
Idiots.

At any rate, this got me thinking and I decided to try and illustrate the natural pattern of hate violence in the form of this fun to fill hate-war simulator.

Here's a little fill-in-the-blank illustration of the chain of hatred:

1. ___(X)__ (insert stereotypical name of choice. e.g: Mohammed, Dhansingh, Syrnizxyk), who happens to be an __(A)____ (insert nationality, religion, gender, football club preference, anything a sufficiently manipulative bastard can con people into believing is a difference between them and other people, thereby making said other people "evil sadistic bastards") ___(F)___ (insert negative karma inducing action here e.g: stabs, rapes, stones) __(Y)____ (insert any other name here, it doesn't necessarily matter) who happens to be a ___(B)___(again insert fit material for manipulative bastards, doesn't have to be a counterpoint to the earliermentioned difference) or __(Y)__'s __(Z)__ ( insert property or person close to Y, may in some cultures be no difference between the two e.g. goat, wife, daughter, football).

Note: Actual reasons for aformentioned action are irrelevant.

2. __(Y)__ or (if Y is dead or otherwise disabled) Y's __(W)__ (insert name of person or group of people who were affected deeply by Y's death e.g. son, family, creditor, Rotary Club, fellow goatherds) grows to nurture an all-consuming hatred of (X) and decides to take revenge by (F)ing (X)
or (X)'s Z.

3. __(MB1)__ (a manipulative bastard or a group of manipulative bastards) of the (B)s sees an opportunity here to get __M__ (anything manipulative bastards usually like e.g. power, money, more goats, women) and convinces a group of (B)s that all the violence and negative karma happening here was because (X) was an (A) and that the only way to bring positive karma back to the land in general is to (F) all the "F"ing (A)s and their goats too. Soon all the (A)s above a certain age are F'd (most probably something to do with death and/or sexual/economic depravity) and their Rotary Club memberships are confiscated.

Note: The (A)s, (B)s, (X)s and (Y)s can all be interchanged here. But the (MB1) remains a constant.

4. All the little children of the (A)s grow up hungry and poor and unable to get a decent education and the only thing that they have left to hold on to is the memory of how all the (B)s (F)ed their daddies, mommies, brothers, sisters and their goats too.

5. __(MB2)__ (another manipulative bastard or group of manipulative bastards) manages to convince the little (A)s that the only way to put their ___(D)'s__ (daddy's/mommy's/brother's/sister's/goat's) tormented soul to rest is to (F) all the "F"ing (B)s and their rotary club memberships too. Soon all the (B)s above a certain age are F'd (most probably
something to do with death and/or sexual/economic depravity) and their goats are... whatever.

Notes: See how X and Y have conveniently left the picture. If they do remain, they will probably be nothing more than adrenaline boosters used by either of the MBs (Remember the (X)!!!! This is for (Y) and his goat you heathen (A or B)!!!!)

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5, escalating the level of (F)ing with every turn (start small, with smallscale murder and rape, move on to executions, mass burials and suicide bombings and move up to biological warfare and carpet bombing).

7. Meanwhile, the MBs have all the M they could ever ever want and live happily ever after.

8. Permutations and combinations and the occassional additions of other groups is permitted, provided that they all follow the abovementioned rules and involve a manipulative bastards.

Note: Since, for all concerned except the MBs this is a loop of (F)ing and counter(F)ing there is no point saying

"The End"

Death by Awwww

2006-10-05T03:31:00.000-07:00

Do you feel like dying today? Do so in an innovative new way.

Watch this website for two hours.

If you're still alive after that you don't deserve to live so go throw yourself off a building.

God's Final Test

2006-09-08T05:02:00.000-07:00

aIn the course of my unemployed trawling on the internet over the course of the last few years I have come across some intensely passionate and profound writing. For some strange reason a good amount of it seems to revolve around bad movies. It’s hard to match the vitriol and sheer visual breadth exuded by such masters of movie hating as Mr. Cranky or the people over at SomethingAwful. However, I for the most part have a relatively high pain threshold when it comes to watching movies. This has enabled me to withstand even the likes of such cinematic greats as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
Everyone faces their nemesis at some point or the other. I met mine yesterday, in the form of a hasty decision to watch “My Super Ex Girlfriend” at PVR Saket, for a hundred and fifty a seat, at 11:30 in the night. I did feel this strange premonition before I was walking through those fateful theatre doors. I had a feeling I’d made a big mistake somewhere. It may have been Uma Thurman’s drawn emaciated death’s head face attempting to look peppy, or her costume which made her look like a tricked out undead dominatrix who’d flunked S&M school for looking too cute, or the constant urge to punch Luke Wilson’s life-sized poster in the crotch, but I just had a feeling.
I’m not going to bother explaining the plot to you. I feel “explaining” anything in this movie may insult your intelligence. Barebones: Thurman play blonde bombshell superhero G-Girl (wtf does G mean? One of the many unsolved mysteries in the course of this complex and subtle movie) who fights crime when she isn’t a mild-mannered bespectacled brunette art curator in a New York Museum. Luke Wilson is the average Joe project manager who doesn’t get much luck with girls and decides that since he is so overwhelmingly desperate, the emaciated body of Uma Thurman will have to do. It is therefore, in the traditional manner that he sets off the resulting bizarre chain of events. He is ably assisted in his endeavours by *, who plays his relationship-guru-from-hell best friend. Unfortunately, what he assumes will be a simple one or two night stand turns into a boiling passionate romance (at least as far as G-Girl is concerned) with the skeleton revealing her secret identity. Wilson, who becomes a little perturbed about Uma’s increasing tendency to smash his car windows and her attempts to tear off his manhood in her lovemaking frenzy decides to break it off. This is where the movie is supposed to flap its soiled, bedraggled wings and fly a bit. Unfortunately it doesn’t. It hops about, spreads its wings and flops facedown in the proverbial box office trashcan it was dragged out of. Uma, in her Shakti-esque fury, boils Luke’s goldfish, almost destroys his apartment, turns his car into a celestial object and lasers the word “Dick” onto his forehead. The sad, pathetic attempt at upping the pace is spoiled by a boring and utterly chemistryless relationship blooming between Luke and * (who, by the way, seems to have gotten into the habit of playing the pathetic waif with inner strength since Scary Movie). The only cheery bit in the movie was the part where the enraged G-Girl tosses a great white shark onto the recently consummated starry-eyed colleagues. I was hoping the shark would remove the offending Wilson brother’s head (or at least his manhood, since that’s what started this whole sorry mess of a movie off anyway). Alas, this was not to be. The conniving two-timer survives and the noble great white (who really has done nothing wrong, really) ends up a sorry mess on the pavement. After this, the movie continues to crawl on to its inevitable finale, where the director (in what he must have considered an attempt to add some class to the show) introduces a full-on super powered cat-fight between the skeleton and the waif. However, the pathetic loser saves the day by introducing the skeleton to the man who truly loves her, her long-time arch-nemesis, supervillian and high-school sweetheart, Professor Bedlam. It was at this point that my subconscious began hurling insults at the movie screen of its own volition, and began screaming “Please make it stop! Please make it stop!” at my eyes. It is important to point out here that somewhere during the intermission I realised that I was fighting a strong impulse to kill the people who had come to the movie with me. And the people in the seats behind me who must have been hired by the theatre administration as live canned laughter.
This is supposed to be a smart New York movie with snappy lines filled with wit and cynical insight. Instead, * the character installed in the movie specifically for the purpose of funny one-liners gives us “I hear you have invaded the female nation and are spreading your democracy”. Of course, he was not the only person responsible for bad one-liners. Our hero the great thinking penis also gets in a few good ones. When faced with skeleton girls almost naked form the obviously dedicated architect goes “Wow! Now that’s what I call structural integrity”. I cannot think of a single intelligent thing said in the course of the entire movie, except for “Maybe we should all kill ourselves”. Oh wait, that wasn’t in the movie. It may have been wishful thinking.
In conclusion, I do not believe that this is merely some bad movie. I believe that this movie is a warning from God. God sent this movie here as a test to us all. It is important that we realise this and heed his message. If enough people go see this movie and it becomes any sort of success, God will kill us all in waves of fire and great white sharks, and the characters in this movie will all come back as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So do your part to save the world. Stand outside the theatres in picket lines and beg and implore all around you to not watch this movie. If required, use your live bodies as barriers to prevent people from entering the theatre. You may lose a limb or the life of a dear one, but trust me, in the final analysis, it’s worth it and you would have done your part to save humanity.

Rocket Raja Kills Pasupathi Pandian

2006-04-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

True Breaking News!

In other news, the wife of Pasupathy Pandian, famed Tuthukudi goonda was killed by Rocket Raja (another famed Tuthukudi Goonda) in Tuthukudi (wow). The usual elements exist as in any Tamil potboiler. Elections, goondas( both of them) mayhem, car-bombs and ambassador cars. Apparently, Pasupathi Pandian's posse is on the warpath, leaving no chai kadda unoverturned in their quest for Rocket Raja's gizzard. Witnesses questioned in the area quoted random other goonda's opinions on the subject as "Vetti Irrunon Da" (not exactly ethical reportage, but still). The entire 2 kms of Tuthukudi is on Red Alert, as the police attempt to prevent the situation from escalating into fullscale warfare.

And somehow, the World keeps turning. Wow.

Postmodernist I am (apparently)

2006-04-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I did this sort of thing, but here's my World View. Found this excellent quiz on my cousin's blog (which incidentally, is hilarious, though young, as opposed to tiresome and old [mine]).

I be a Postmodernist. Why didn't someone tell me earlier? Could have saved me a lot of trouble...

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist

94%

Cultural Creative

88%

Modernist

69%

Existentialist

56%

Materialist

50%

Idealist

50%

Romanticist

31%

Fundamentalist

25%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

Find YOUR groove on the net. A case study of Dr. McNinja !!!!!!

2006-03-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

Dr.
Mc
Ninja
!!!!!!

As an illegal wanderer on the frontiers of the net (hah! Nerd Glorification Alert!!!) one comes across many strange things. In a medium where one's creative potential is limited only by one's capacity to set up a web page (or find some willing sap to do it for you) you come across some pretty interestingly twisted minds. Very often, these guys provide art, literature and entertainment of a far higher quality than your average LCD inspired media publishing industries. To be fair to mass media, the morons who try to sell you Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo and rattrap pseudohighbrow DaVinci Code paperbacks (not to mention Pavitra Parker, what is that?) are just plain playing it safe. They're not going to print a million paperbacks, or sink 50 million into a movie to find out not enough people want to see it. So they go for the shotgun approach to publishing: just spray the masses with whatever crappy sentiment is going to stick to the largest number of them. The natural assumption made by most people after seeing something like Terminator 3 make it to the top ten box office hits for 2003 is this: Most people are stupid and will watch anything you throw at them.
Personally, I don't think this is true. I think everyone finds something in art that rings true to them. Or at least, they're capable of finding such a thing.

Which is where the net comes in. Its trite to say this now, but the net is still the single biggest potential threat to mass media in this day and age. Todays internet is created by and for individuals. Maybe there aren't too many of them, and maybe this particular bunch tends to talk about ninjas, star wars and RPGs a tad more than the rest of the populace, but its them who're keeping the internet alive.

And there's creation out there. Which is what I want to talk about. Witness the multiplicity of aspiring writers out there who're suddenly getting eyeballed (even if its only 4 or 5 pairs, at least someone's reading this). Witness the number of aspiring moviemakers out there who finally have a way to show someone the cool things they've made. Graphic novelists, radio jockeys, comedians, artists, designers, everyone can have a place here.

This is where Dr. Mc Ninja comes in. First off, what is Dr. McNinja? Extremely simple. He is. a ninja. doctor. An irish ninja doctor, so it seems (where does this fit into the 'Mc' angle, I have no idea, could someone please educate me?). The guy who created the free webcomic (Chris Hastings, inked by Kent.Archer.) decided to spin a story around his name on the SomethingAwful forum and ended up churning out this incredibly fun, tongue in cheek tale of a man reared by his parents to be a ninja (psychotic killer) and faced with the angst of being a doctor (compassionate healer). On the way you've got 10 year old 60 foot lumberjacks, animated hallucination-induced thanksgiving (katanakka) turkeys, megalomaniac Ronald McDonalds and Pirates (Arrrrrr). Its pretty freaky stuff. (all this in 3 issues!!)

Ok, is this too much information to fit into the average DC/Marvel potboiler? I'm sorry, did'nt mean to overheat your brain.

The point is, the net makes it possible for people like this to make their own incredibly strange contributions to the world of art/entertainment/whatever. And it makes it possible for randomisers like me to read weirder stuff everytime I hit the net (never get tired of it). And to write long rambling reviews about it.

Dr. McNinja guys, wherever you are, I hope you keep on katanakking.

Opniyama - Review in dialogue

2006-03-02T22:21:00.000-08:00

I told someone to try Opniyama the other day.

She said, what is it?

I said, it's a game.

Doubtful look, I'm not very good at games.

You don't have to be good at it, there's nothing to win.

I don't do too well at the keyboard either. Or at the mouse, and I hate all the squishing little creatures and stuff.

Manic gleam, You don't have to do any of those, you just wander around.

Wander around? And do what?

Plant trees.

More doubtful look.

Ok, just give it a shot. I promise you'll like it.

Random entering of keywords and fiddling with mouse, waiting for loadscreen, tadah

Ooh, look, its all drawn like in a sketch, and its beautiful. There are trees, and strange little things, and look, there's a shower plant. I'm going to take a shower, and woo, i have a grapple hook, and I can fly around the place and, whats that, the tree dropped something, its a seed. I'm going to pick it up, and oh, look at those little caterpillar things, its like alice in wonderland. i'll just drop the seed here and, wow, a lion tree. How big is this place? It's huge. There's even a little map here, and I can see myself, hello, and i want to find more seeds, look, there's one, what sort of tree do you get? This is so much fun!

Told you you'd like it.

Install Wikipedia on your iPod

2006-03-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

Its finally here! The future of information in your pocket! Take that Brittanica! Up yours Encarta!! Wikipedia on your ipod. only...

I don't have an ipod.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Install Wikipedia on your iPod: "Cory Doctorow: Encyclopodia is a snapshot of Wikipedia as an 800MB ebook for your iPod. Link (Thanks, Ted!) "

Alien Abduction Questionnaire

2006-01-04T05:57:00.000-08:00

So...

Have you ever been abducted by aliens? Please read this simple questionnaire and answer truthfully. If you have answered positively to two or more, or if you have a large glowing object sticking out of your butt, you may have been abducted by aliens. If you have answered positively to two or more than two of these questions, please call

UFOBGONE

At UFOBGONE, we have a commitment to servicing your every alien paranoiac-delusional need. We provide the following facilities:

1. Thorough and compassionate counselling services, including soothing brain relaxation techniques adopted from the former USSR, China and North Korea. Removes all urges to build strange mound shaped objects out of mashed potato, psychotic impulses upon encountering mathematical/musical combinations, or any other Alien Abduction inducted psychoses/neuroses.

2. Detailed physical examinations, with facilities for deep rectal/urethral/general orficial penetration and extraction, maceration, vivisection and other deep surgical alien abduction investigative techniques.*

3. Advanced alien parasite identification and extraction methods, to get even the peskiest xenomorph/critter/ET/Marvin the Martian out of your system.**

4. Long term care and therapy for severely traumatised victims of alien abduction, with advanced medical therapy methods including trepanning, neurojolt therapy and other effective methods for the removal of all memories/scars/parasites/lovechildren which may tend to be the residue of an alien abduction .

All services are provided free of monetary charge.***

So, if you suspect that you have been abducted by an alien at any time in the past/present or near future please do not hesitate to contact us.

Phone: +919911090286****

Email: Post your comments to the most recent post on www.thekirk.blogspot.com . Dont worry, we'll get in touch with you.

Our lines are always open. Call anytime.

* May cause temporary headaches, nausea, disorientation, desire to eat own innards, irresistable urge to impale oneself on a pizza and other NON ALIEN ABDUCTION related psychoses/neuroses

** Due to the risk of chest cavity rupture/disintegration, all applicants for this program will have to sign our special UFOBGONE disclaimer, drafted in accordance with the laws of the Code of Hammurabi.

*** We reserve all rights to retain any bodypart that we find necessary in order to proceed with our examinations, including kidneys, liver, stomach lining and retinal walls.

**** Please be understanding about our operators as we provide the worst affected victims of alien abduction atrocities with employment in the hope that they may someday find a better life.