Hands up, all you reading types.

It's been too long since I read anything in specific; while I acknowledge that the study (or whatever passes for it) of the law (or whatever passes for it :-D )sometimes allows drifting into land that can only be described as 'academic' by the most optimistic, I don't want to drift into it this time. I want to read...non-fiction is ok too, as long as it sounds interesting. I have some ebooks with me, and some ideas on what I want to read; if anyone thinks they have a better idea, would they please raise hand and give me a shout?

Here's what I have with me:

Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions (reading already)

Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman

George Bernard Shaw - Collected Plays

I also want the following:

Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere

Anything by Terry Pratchett and G.K. Chesterton.

If anyone has Neverwhere, or any Pratchett or Chesterton in ebook form or knows where to find it, please leave a comment. I will be yours for life. In the detached, long-distance way. :-D

May I make clear here that I am on a student budget. This means a total of 0.00 in cash of any denomination has been set aside to fund this reading. For the simpler of intellect - I am talking free ebooks here. Yeah I know that probably means piracy. Morality is the luxury of the rich, or something like that* said Goebbels, and my senile grand-uncle. I am aware it does not do much for my argument to rely on a Fascist war criminal and a senile geriatric, but an opinion is an opinion, yesno? I firmly believe in the democracy of bullshit. This is why I don't think idiots should be shot**.

Anyway, I digress. People, please find me books! Of course, if you love me truly you will buy me the book and have it hand-delivered with a hundred orchids wrapped in the finest Central European tissue, by a Hugh Jackman lookalike, preferably announcing his arrival and your eternal devotion to me in a Hugh Jackman accent, but yeah - 

I'm a cynic ya. I know true love is a lie perpetrated by the filthy capitalist pigs in Hollywood offices. I'm only asking for some online suga ;-) Cooperate, no. Please.

Please?

----

*He didn’t say ‘something like that’. I did. It doesn’t matter, the rest is misquoted too anyway. None of you is likely to catch it and I’m too lazy to make the effort. Cheers :-)

 

**I believe they should be laughed at till death***. More fun.

 

***I meant that we laugh and they die. You got it, no? No?****

 

****Yeah I know I should quit the pointless footnotes. Blame the mood and law school…they just make it that much easier :-D

Fuggoff : A Sonata in B Whine-or ;)

When pigeons flap (and screw and crap)
on my grill and window sill
When the wind beings the desert in
I'm tired of sand, I cannot win:

I say fuggoff.

When my project is a futile dream
I have a directionless team
Deadlines come and deadlines leave
I whine, and then I fail - I grieve:

I say fuggoff.

When September gets in line,
The sun gets bigger and ups the shine
My clothes are limp, my mind is dead,
I sweat, I tan, my feet are lead

I say fuggoff.

And then I sleep.

-zzz-

Mridula.

I did not know as well as I could have, when I could have. I messed up pretty substantially. I've been sorry for very long...I should have spoken sooner; it's amazing how easily youth believes itself to be immortal.

I know your passing was not easy, but I'm sure you were as spunky as I've always known you to be.

Here's to your rescuing many kittens, eating many puchkas and generally being your chatterbox-type four-foot-eleven brand of fabulousness in heaven (or its midget equivalent) :-)

Cheers..

-Peace-

...so they were Indian.

Two interesting blogposts on Sepiamutiny were the genesis for this post. Also read Deep_Thought for a similar take.

The first is on Atul Vyas, an Indian who died in the recent train crash in the Los Angeles area of the United States, and the second is on Minal, who was one of the 32 victims of the shootout at Virginia Tech. Both articles are essentially eulogies, by people who did not know them when they were alive.

While the general idea of the posts is as far as I can gather, to remember those who passed away in tragic accidents - the specificities and general tone of the articles I find objectionable.

The article on Atul Vyas, a bright med-school aspirant is essentially the AP article on him supplemented by the blogger's own jarringly disproportionate emotional reaction to those details. For someone who came to know of Atul's existence only after his death, the "my heart turned to mush" reaction is a bit much.

Yes, Atul Vyas was an Indian twenty year old boy who loved waking up late and weird dancing, and was well-loved in general. He was bright and smart and while it is generally acknowledged that his passing was a loss to the world, I believe that as long as we did not know him, this whole "he was an Indian victim, and we are all Indian so, of course, we will all behave like we all knew him in person" reaction is extremely patronising, and by virtue of such, certainly disrespectful to the deceased himself, whose identity was certainly more than the cloyingly cutesy stereotyped-twenty-year old image that is being projected to generate mass emotion in all his "brother Indian expats". Not to mention how annoying this must be for all his friends and family, the people who genuinely knew him and miss him for the person he was.

This farce is taken about a couple hundred steps further in the article on Meenal, who the blogger has adopted as her - wait for it -"Choti Behan". Meenal's love for earrings and icecream have been lovingly culled from, of all things, her orkut profile, and all her scraps have been carefully examined and appropriately sobbed over by the blogger. The whole article has the approach of a hastily researched 'Human Interest' project (1 orkut profile, 1 newspaper article, 3 blogposts) tossed with as much overdramatic breast-beating as discretion will allow.
The only motive appears to be the generation of large-scale sympathy for one of the very few brown victims of the tragedy.

While the general idea of remembrance of people who have passed away in tragedies such as these is no doubt commendable, the whole tone of the article is more than annoying. It is cliched, syrupy and cringe-worthily teary for someone who didn't even know the victim personally. While I would certainly like blogposts written on me I die, I'm damned if I want to be adopted as a "choti behan" and cried for purely because I was Indian and brown. That's just insulting.

Posts of this kind have one main problem, namely the disproportionate focus on the brownness in anything. The tragedy and the other victims are mentioned and then summarily ignored while the blogger labours in his endeavour to "humanise" the sole brown victim for the benefit of the collective tear-glands of the entire expat Indian community. There is nothing that distinguishes the brown victim from the other victims except the brownness. In a world where racial profiling is legitimised and all guys in beards are Osama Bin Laden, this sort of passionately ethnocentric mourning is disturbing. If loss of life has transcended colour and ethnicity, so should remembrance and mourning.

Sympathy is fine, but sympathy dumbed down for the Lowest Common Denominator transcends funny, and cannonballs right into pathetic-land.

The bottomline is - leave the eulogies to the people who are qualified to write them. Anything more is patronising and disrespectful. The only exception to this rule is available to The Hindu, which will inevitably, when you die, inform the world that you have "attained the Lotus Feet of Rama." :-)

But then, that is The Hindu. And really, how can you not love The Hindu. :-)

Opinions?

Much of a Muchness..

So it is the morning of a September Saturday, which is the only time in September that I oversleep without guilt. Other times, I feel a vague guilt somewhere in the depths of my stomach and then I roll over and sleep anyway. At least, I think that may be guilt. It could also be indigestion. Or my cellphone vibrating under my stomach with my mom calling me to get the hell up, have I gone into hibernation or what?

In any case, I'm pretty sure a cellphone vibrating on a full stomach can cause indigestion too.

1. Why is Sunday morning mess breakfast always aloo paratha or chola bhatura? What is so special about either? I am getting rapidly turned off by both. Not good.


2. I like my (okay, Aloo's ) big Eeyore tee shirt. So what if it looks like a nightshirt. It's a Saturday morning (9am...as far as I am concerned, that is still predawn) and if i want to wear an Eeyore tee shirt to cheer myself up when the University expects me to walk half a kilometre to the acad block to fill in a sudoku grid, I will.

Aside: all of you who don't like Winnie-the-Pooh or don't know who Eeyore is, I hope the Heffalump gets you tonight.

3. There are three people on my google talk list right now who's status messages read " is bringing sexy back!" I see I'm going to have to choose my friends better.

To all of you: One day I will be rich, and then one day I will be old and rich. And sometime around then I will make a will. And I will not forget that one dark day of my youth, you all quoted Justin Timberlake. And not secretly and furtively, either, but in PUBLIC VIEW. Next you will bead your hair and read Sweet Valley High.

Ok I think I just grossed myself out. ><

4. I don't like rats. I'm sure they don't like me either, but that is neither here nor there. I am indifferent to rats when they remain in their territory (read: Universal Set (Everywhere) less Set (my room) ) and I'm sure they are quite the well-bred charmers on their homeground, but what they are in my territory is UGLY, FAT, NOSE-WIGGLING, BUTT-JIGGLING, TREMBLY FREAKS.
I want them out, and I want them dead. The next bhaiyyaji who benignly watches while the rat is calmly climbing out of my room and I am shitting my pants in fear/annoyance/revulsion/shock (HOW CAN YOU JUST STAND THERE, YOU LOSER BHAIYAJI??!! ) at the same, and informs me that they are "bhagwaan" gets my Agnostic foot up the business end of his God-fearing ass.


5. I am not ever going to any Yahoo or MSN related site again. All they can talk about is fall fashions. I have much to say about fall-fashions too. They consist of worn out floaters, limp dupattas, crumpled, limp cotton, feet so tanned that they are stripy (If you like me, I look like a zebra, and if you don't, I look like a leper.), and the all-pervading odour of perspiration and depression. And damned if I can decide which odour is the worse.

But, you say, these are SUMMER fashions!!

I nod meaningfully.

I think I have made my point. *Smugness*

6. I am suddenly philosophical. I ponder on several deep and fundamental questions but I find no answer.

Will Cute Giggler ever give me marks?

Will 3 spoonfuls of Vanish Shakti O2 burn a hole in my shirt?

Overpriced milky cold coffee or sickly-sweet milky cold coffee? (Yeah we have 2 competing mess caterers...who was the smug b---- who said competition increases product quality?)

Decisions. Questions.

I exhaust myself.

I think I will sleep now.

See y'all soon, me homies. Or maybe not. I have a vague feeling that I will sleep right into Sunday evening. Again, this feeling could merely be indigestion. Have I mentioned this before?


----


PS: Sindhu - I haven't forgotten about your tag. I just dont like the loser pics google is coming up with in the search results. Will post as soon as nice pics are found.

Bitch-brand pontification.

Actually Bitch-brand, Soapbox-style pontification, but hehe, it never does well to advertise one's weaknesses, does it... and I have a terrible weakness for alliteration! :-D

Anyway. I digress.

Okay, so it makes sense to say here that ordinarily I would never blog on something like this, but a decent-sized group of friends has been going through shit in recent times, and some of them have, against their better judgment, decided to compound their unhappiness by asking me for advice (note subtly introduced, classy self deprecation! note, note!! :-D).

But seriously. I am complying not because I love giving advice but because I have a suspicion this will sound (and be) more cogent if I write it down, rather than if I say it. I don't mind giving advice, but I really don't do love advice. I suck at it...so if you find me being insufficiently sensitive/sentimental, live with it. This stuff works fine for me, and should for you too, even if you aren't a paranoid pessimist narcissist.

There are some things that should be obvious to the mushiest of minds, the lowest of intellects, the hopeless-est of romantics, but since you tend to lose sight of the obvious when otherwise amorously occupied, let me state the obvious for you:

The Great and Superior and So-Obvious-that-it-is-Duh! Love Theorem :

Never EVER love anyone more than you love yourself.

All that follows from here is purely corollary. If you're smart, this is all you need to remember.

If you're slow or have recently fallen in love (same difference)...

Corollaries:

1. Never assume the best in anyone...always begin with worst-case scenario and move upwards if reason sees fit. Every guy who shows interest in you begins at Level 10 - Psycho/Rapist, and the burden of proof is on him to show he isn't and move upwards. Eventually he should prove himself to be sufficiently normal/entertainingly abnormal for you to date him. Now do so.

2. Never EVER trust blindly. Trust isn't 'just trust'. Trust is all you have. Sacred. It should be won, not gifted. If you trust blindly, you will attract scum, and if you are so starry-eyed as to trust so easily, you deserve it. Stop whining and fix it.

3. You never look for anyone to 'complete' you. You are as complete as you're ever going to be. You merely look for a complement. Preferably, the complement comes looking for you.

4. Don't date anyone you just 'kinda sorta like'. You're going to be 'kinda sorta disillusioned' three breakups into your love-life, give or take one depending on how romantic a person you are.

5. If you are in it for the lust, kindly remind yourself of such every so often, and do not confuse it with love when you eventually break up (which you will). Love and lust are optimally overlapping, but essentially greatly different. One has its roots in the head, and the other....well...a good deal more southwards.

Ooh yes, and if you ever break up: kindly do everyone a favour and DO NOT involve your friends or have them 'intervene' in any manner whatsoever. Your break-up is yours. This is not transnational arbitration. Making it a public free-for-all is not just immature, it is obscene. And will wholly eat up any chance of getting back together, if at all.

If you break up amicably, good for you. Everything'll be the same as always, 'cept you'll have to go dutch. Darn.

Alternatively if he was mean to you, of course, arson is justified. You will need your friends for this... go right ahead. :-D


Just kidding.


I think.


Hmm...


;-)

Chipps, Conspiracy, Creepy Giggler.

Uncle Chipps (plain salted kind) are getting thicker!! Not one or two, gentlemen, but packs and packs! And packs and packs and packs!

My survey, completely objective and wholly in the interest of the Uncle Chipps-eating-fraction-of-the-population (larger than you think, you Lays-eating snob), has led to my being absolutely convinced that someone, somewhere, in Village Channo (Punjab), Ranjangaon (Pune) or Kendua Panchayat (West Bengal) - depending on how far you trust the back flap of an Uncle Chipps packet and your personal regionalistic preferences- is sleeping on their job.

I demand my rights as a consumer. (Sindhu will no doubt elucidate the nature of these rights on her highly lawyerly and intelligent blog, adequately supported/opposed/i'm-not-sure-exactly-what-he-does, by Markiv. You will, no, Sindhu? :-D )

Anyway. Uncle Chipps. Someone call Quality Control and sue their asses. How can I work when my primary nourishment is substandard.

If my mom is reading this: not that this is my nourishment, you understand...that's just to kid with the masses....I drink milk twice a day and also eat fruit. I sleep from 10pm to 6.45am. I also braid my hair to class, and remember to pour the oil film out of the oily dal tadka in the mess before I eat it.

PS: Big Daddy exits stage Left, enter Creepy Giggler. It is to be noted that Creepy Giggler is in a relationship of (sufficient cordiality to reasonably infer) friendship, with Facepack. For this criminal lack of taste/judgment alone she should be beaten across the head, slowly, with a Pollock and Mulla on the Law of Contracts, until she begs for mercy in three languages.

Yes, I have not had much sleep recently. Your point being?