how come every investment banker i know wears the same kinda spectacles? do they give a pair for free at the graduation ceremony? maybe the fraternity wont accept them without them glasses.
P.S i just noticed, there is NO radiohead at all for the first time ever on the right column of this blog! i am surprised, confused, shocked all at once.
the middle ground used to be so narrow that i had to do a tight-rope walk to balance myself. now its as wide as a football field. i had to do nothing to change my state of affairs. am quite amused with everything. I don’t want to run a race which has no finish line. thats probably one thing that i have always been certain about. i went through a couple of blogs today that showed how much humanity has deteriorated that people identified themselves so strongly with what they believed in that they were so blind and unable to see and accept, if not concur to another point of view. am going away. flying by night away from here even if its only for a short while. will be back soon. live life happily with what you have and try not to enforce on others that the way you are living is the be all, end all. going to australia for a short trip. catch you all soon.
just saw…
this has been a mindless action/thriller/gore week 
nothing but the truth - did not expect much from this but was quite a surprise. this movie is about the journalism, big brother, uncle sam et al. nice political thriller. kate beckinsale was pretty good as the journalist. good timepass 7.4/10
bullitt - watch it for the famed dodge car chase and the quiet and calm steve mcqueen playing bullitt. pretty original considering it came in the 60s and probably inspired a series of cop movies that owe a lot to this classic. 7.3/10
XIII : the conspiracy - a mini series consisting of two 90min episodes. man assassinates president, loses memory, finds out he has been set up and goes on vengeance. nothing fresh there. based on a 80s comic book called xiii. popcorn stuff. 6.5/10
house of games - movie full of con men and their cons. exciting twists. horrible theatrical acting. turns out the director is from theater background. excellent script but not done justice in direction and acting. if you have seen and liked ridley scott’s matchstick men, this is a must watch. 7.5/10
disturbia - rear window rehashed. 6.5/10
alpha dog - i thought this movie was over the top. saw it because i liked nick cassavetes’ notebook. the ending was shocking and turns out the story is a true story and a trial for the case shown in the movie is running this week as we speak. and justin timberlake can act which came as quite a surprise. he was excellent and had a pretty strong role too in the movie. 7.2/10
carlito’s way - no its not scarface part 2. this is equally good on a few aspects though. pacino’s acting and de palma’s direction are excellent. must watch if you like ganster flicks. 7.6/10
pathology - do not ask for logic. if you are looking for a lot of blood, gore and pointlessly placed nudity then maybe you will like it. i cared so less for the characters that i wanted all of them to die and to die soon. they throw human liver at each other for fun. eww 5/10
vantage point - can get irritating with the repetetion in the plot. wish there were more cars blowing up, more shots fired, more chase sequences blah blah. if i had paid to watch this, i definitely would have liked more stuff of blowing up and less of repetetion. 6.5/10
aadhi and eloise - preface
morning had broken in the small town whose name shall not be mentioned and whose whereabouts shall be a mystery. aadhi who preferred to always write his name with two a’s had had his morning cup of coffee and was headed to the research facility about a mile outside the no-name town. he preferred to walk the distance because the scent of the countryside reminded him of his childhood days from across the globe. as the mile fell behind him, the dark monstrosity of the research facility showed up ahead. he swiped his ID mechanically and walked into the huge hallway which strangely had no furniture. nobody visited the facility other than the handful that worked there. even if they had to visit, they would be the kinds that wouldn’t wait in the hallway, so it made extreme sense for not having furniture there. rick, the head of security greeted him with a smile from behind his desk. bright and bubbly eloise came running down the hallway which was still very uncharacteristic of her. “we did it. we got it. we are in it. woo hoo” she exclaimed, panting from her short excited run towards aadhi. the 5 million dollar grant had come in. it meant the next few months were going to be very busy. 10 cups of coffee a day busy. they were going to make a big impact on the world. they did make a big impact.
…. to be continued
today is maggie’s 2nd haffeee bday! its all about squeaky toys, tennis balls, tasty bones and generous flicks of tongue showing her affection.
been watching this middle-aged construction worker feeding two dogs biscuits around 7pm a few times in the last few weeks when i take my evening walks. am a creature of habit and i think his shift is such as well. was walking along yesterday and noticed he was there feeding them like all the previous times. “sandapodama saapidanum”… the familiar language made me stop. i went to the small tea shop where he was and got myself a tea. struck a conversation with him and i have no idea where the next one hour went. he has been feeding these dogs, one which is just over an year old and another which is atleast 5 years old every day for around a year now. i wanted to know what he felt, why he did it, wanted to know if he wondered about their fate during the day, if he bothered if they had their breakfast and lunch, if he worried about their safety while they crossed the road, if he wondered what they thought about him. he was not bothered about any of this, he wasnt a man who would worry. he was a man who would do his best which was to feed them with his meagre 5000 Rs a month, of which, by my calculation 150 went for these dogs. he did not even have names for his pets. from a brief talk in my broken kannada with the shopkeeper, i found that he was just as amazed. he had the power to feed them but never did by his acceptance. i found that his name was adhi and he had his family in a village in TN. i made a small prayer to my gods, that i only call to thank, for people like adhi that make my heart swell up and burst and continued to walk along.
aren’t honorary degrees mere publicity stunts? or am i missing something? and what, they become honorary alumni also? oh c’mon cut the beep. most times i think its cringeworthy for the people who spend years toiling through the academia. isnt it exactly what the successful have proved they don’t need? why bestow it on them to make yourself feel better. alright it is symbiotic, but should all symbiotic relationships exist just because its beneficial to both parties on the outset?
isn’t it ironic that churches have lightning rods?
just saw…
le mepris - maybe not one of godard’s finest. my favorite still is pierrot le fou. the contempt of a woman with everything that she is and everything that is around her. it might even seem unnatural that someone can have so much of hatred and doubt. pros for this movie are the cinematography, the rich use of bold colors, capri, fritz lang playing himself etc. there is a extremely long uncut shot taken within the confines of an apartment that will make your jaws drop as the conversation moves from the living room to the kitchen to every room and furniture as the characters move around. nice watch. 8.2/10
heima - sigur ros documentary covering almost all their good songs as they were played to the icelandic people in the villages as they toured from village to village playing unannounced concerts for their homeland. shot so beautifully that it will make you want to travel to iceland. maybe one of the most beautiful music documentaries. not in depth as in no direction home but in just sheer beauty of its locations and music. 8.5/10
zeitgeist - it will shock you enough on so many subjects that you will get googling right before the credits roll. though there are assumptions and mis-representation of facts, this documentary is very very entertaining propaganda and atleast wakes you up to get your own facts and make your own judgements. 7.5/10
confession of a shopaholic - well… what can i say? sigh. sulk. *beeeeep* more *beeeeeep* 2/10
the big lebowski - rewatched this. enjoyed it just as much as the first time while watching it and it made me buy more white russians after. coen bros. classic comedy. i like to call it the big brother of burn after reading. 8.0/10
clerks 2 - not as good as the first part. watch the first movie twice if you like. 6.5/10
star wars IV : a new hope- have a HD rip now. kicks ass on a big screen and a home theater. 8.5/10
adaptation - re-watched. just as entertaining as the first time. author who is adapting a book on orchids finds it so impossible to make it interesting that he writes himself into his book. intelligent and funny charlie kaufman script. 8.0/10
network - a news reader goes nuts and proclaims to commit suicide on television. the network uses him to improve the viewer ratings. will make you look at all the news channels in a totally totally different light. MUST WATCH for everyone who tunes into ndtv, headlines today, cnn ibn and blah everyday. so many scenes that will remain in memory from this one. 8.8/10
apocalypse now - shame that i hadnt watched this till now. saw it at last. its a shame to even compare it with any movie. even after 30 years, it stands as a pinnacle of achievement in cinematography. it will remain as a nightmare for days. 9.5/10
fanny och alexander - the original script of this one was over a thousand handwritten pages. if you see the movie, you will know why. the released version lasts a glorious 3.5 hours. you will be transported back to the 1910’s sweden. it could be seem slow if you are not ready for it. but you will feel rewarded in the end. i am planning the watch the 5.5 hr directors’ cut. its that good. 9/10
play it again sam - funny as hell. loved woody and diane keaton. this movie probably bridges the gap between movies like bananas and annie hall. it has both types of humor. i had to pause the movie in a lot of places to laugh. 7.5/10
obituary
i watched this man walk up a long
crowded road, and the further he
went, the taller he growed, until,
at the end, when he touched on the
sky, this man was so
big that he filled up my eye.
–
dorothy sargent
april 1968: In memoriam: Dr. martin luther king, jr.
check out www.dorothyprizes.org. dorothy’s poems link on the left has dorothy sargent’s poems. Each and every one of them is very beautiful. The winning entries from the last 4 years are good too.
so familiar yet very unfamiliar. a contorted smile with a tinge of tear in the corner of the eye. forcefully pursed lips, trembling hands and a deep breath suppressed the riot of emotions. was it jimmy or mani? maybe just nameless. stuck somewhere in the last few unwritten pages of the 3rd std maths homework notebook that had survived 20 years was the photo of the first dog he knew that had died on a thursday.
i read the following in isaac asimov’s autobiography. i have been pondering this exact same thought for a long time now so thought i will post it as is.
What is intelligence, anyway?
When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.
(It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)
All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too.
Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.
Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.
Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too.
In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.
My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again.
He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.
One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.
“The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.
Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.”
Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”
And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
for all the printer paper, for all the printer color pigments, for all the plastic, other unrecyclables, the 20 odd power points that are perpetually turned on, the hot-pluggable 10 terabytes for which hot-plugging makes no sense since they are anyway always plugged and always on and serve mostly useless content and the freon from the refrigerator, nature had its revenge. lightning struck my building transformer and has taken away my mac mini that had an uptime that showed how many days it had been since i moved in to this house. almost like an inside-joke, the recyclable lead-acid deep cycle batteries and the ups saved the rest of the valuables. poor mini was taken out by a surge through the ethernet cable. it exploded with a big bang right on my desk when i was working. was quite scary and i have a swollen middle finger to show (really no pun intended) from my hand which was near the mini and was seeing flashes for minutes and knew not what hit me. unfortunately it looks like others from the building have lost some stuff too.
P.S. this is the second time am losing a computer to a lightning strike. the first one was a laptop back in 2005. maybe its time to take up organic farming and give back to poor mother nature.
been learning keyboard lately along with the guitar. Here is something i recorded recently. (I dont have a pedal so there is no sustain)
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original : like spinning plates by radiohead
TO DO
the list is ready and its up under the fridge magnets all set to mock. here is hoping i feel thirsty very often from tomorrow.
short tale - 15
she was in the kitchen cutting onions for the next meal as her brother walked into the now lifeless living room that had almost no furniture. it was 2 in the afternoon and the kids were in school and she was pleasantly surprised since she wasnt expecting him. she welcomed him as she wiped her tears from cutting onions. her husband had passed away in a freak accident and she was about to know it from her brother. he was as lifeless as the room he entered and stood trembling trying to chain words into a sentence to break the news but instead came out with “we need to go somewhere, lock the house”. she could sense something was very wrong and was filled with fear and trepidation. she urged him to tell her but he could do no more than stare vacantly at her picturing her as a widow and that killed him. the neighbours were already outside their houses and were looking at her with sympathy as she walked with her brother to the waiting taxi. her two kids were being pulled off their classes meanwhile and they were told that their father was in a serious condition. the kids in the class murmered restlessly till the teacher authoritatively shushed them. the taxi rumbled on to the hospital after picking the kids from the school. she kept mumbling “they are not telling us something” even as she hoped against hope with a wooden heart. at that moment, everyone knew that her husband was dead but she was allowed the liberty of the last few minutes of hoping against hope hopen.
remember reading somewhere that music is to silence what painting is to canvas. i think some have that silence in their blood while some seek it in their surroundings. when the scream of the eternal is let out in moderation to disturb this silence, we get music. the artist leaves a signature of not only the emotions that formed the palette but also the source of that silence. i was listening to sigur ros and one thing that stands out in their music is the unique silence that this band paints on. you can feel the large vacant and beautiful spaces from which their music was made. the tempo of the music, the ample use of silence, the emphasized crescendos, the richness of the sound tell you what a beautiful place iceland must be. the place always leaves a mark in the music, be it a hammock in the garden or a terrace in the crowded city.
if you use your highest register to describe a hoick by a number 11, you better be using a falsetto when sachin hooks for maximum. it wont be surprising if all the commentators are put through a mandatory vocal training before IPL 3.
as far back as i can remember, i always wanted to be older. always wanted to be an adult to do things that i wasn’t able to or allowed to do. the things that were taboo made adulthood so mystical and desirable. and so like everyone i rushed into playing adult far too earlier than i should have. now that i can reach the cookie jar anytime i want, it has taken the piss out of the whole thing i guess. the recent times however have been very reminiscent to playing under the mango tree as a kid. it kinda feels like a second coming. the skepticism, rigidity and cynicism and other adultly things are gone/going. soon i might hardly be able to relate to the person i was in transit to this misplaced childhood. to quote dylan, ‘ah - but I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now’ seems to be somewhat apt.
imagine if the earth were cut into different horizontal slices that all revolved at different speeds and directions (some clockwise and some anti). so the length of day/night will vary between countries or even within a country as you move across slices. will be kinda cool i think. someone should make a sci-fi based on the concept.
curb the enthusiasm. we get the point. and stop using those exclamation marks like full stops. its almost like a heavy rod on top of the period threatening to squish it out of existence.
me playing a decently difficult song
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recorded with a phone in one of those sessions when everything was already a blur. turned out to be very whiny and incoherent.
Exactly how thrilled i am, cannot be expressed in these mere words that follow. i now have a collecters edition box with discs that are designed like vinyl LPs with vinyl sleeves and artwork and a full photobook and writeups and 10 amazing postcards down the dylan memory lane. the discs are playing non-stop since morn and i feel full and ebbing away on a sunday afternoon. i turned a year older too yesterday and only difference i think is that my toys are getting expensive. there is this iPod touch promo going on around the city in a lot of places. you have to play video games and if you win you progress up and you stand to win a ipod touch and a macbook. i participated yester and i WON (7-1 in touch hockey :p) and am through now to quarter-finals (one of the 40 other ppl in town actually). so i yam gonna be in the quarter finals apr 2nd at planet M, brigade road come and cheer for me i say. best part is even if i lose now i get a shuffle and a tshirt as consolation prize. so needless to say i had a blast yesterday despite all my friends being out of town thanks to the long weekend. i think i have to attribute the great day to the dearest friend who made me feel like a limited edition dylan boxset in the end. 
just saw
transporter 3 - i dont think i shud even consider this as seen. saw half of it and just cudnt stand it one bit and stopped. can put even tamil/gult action movies to shame. 5/10
lethal weapon - lovely 80s action. mel gibson was awesome portraying the quirky mainiacal cop. danny glover was so so. it was just nice to watch. 7.3/10
vicky cristina barcelona - am a woody fanatic so i will be biased. it was just awesome and hilarious. i did not know penelope could act this well (this was better than abre los ojos even). barcelona was captured so well that am tempted to visit this year :). one thing that was irritating though was the narrator who would almost always tell what is happening on screen which was anyway there for us to see. kinda sloppy. 7.5/10
clerks - probably the best of this batch of movies ive seen. i had never heard of kevin smith. this was touted to be his best so started here. a couple of clerks (one in a grocery store and other in a video rental) are pissed with their work and deal with it differently. this was soo intelligent and funny that i think i have to watch this atleast another couple of times to get ALL the jokes. did not want to rewind every scene every character is lovable and best part is these characters appear in most kevin smith movies as is so its like an introduction to the kevin smith world. very refreshing and funny. 8.1/10
matchstick men - nicholas cage can act and this movie proves it. had a good tricky story line about con men that kept me engaged till the end. ridley scott direction is awesome as always. very very very nice timepass. 7.6/10
dancer in the dark - reviewed already.. bjork mania 8.2/10
11:14 - a car crash told from 5 perspectives of interwoven story lines. one of those movies that make u grin at the intelligence of editing and storytelling (ala short cuts, pulp fiction etc.). very nice thriller. 7.7/10
dogma - might have been nice and funny if i understood christianity. just did not GET the movie. another kevin smith movie. jay and silent bob from clerks make an appearance that made this bearable for me. 6.6/10
gone baby gone - i had to recheck twice. yes indeed its directed by ben affleck. decent timepass thriller. 7.5/10
quantum of solace - mindless but very well done action. crappy 19th century story line. but was worth the time spent watching things blowing up and people being beaten to pulp. 7/10
burn after reading - loved every bit of it. the performances were too gud. if you havent seen other coen bros movies and expect another no country for old men, you will be disappointed. this is the classic coen bros. like big lebowski or barton fink. enjoyed brad pitt and clooney and ofcourse the best of it all for me, john malkovich who never fails to deliver. all his scenes were very very memorable for me. 7.8/10
the dark knight - rewatched on bluray. frilllliant. 8.5/10
plans
first there was a muscat and visit-aunty trip. then there was europe, hopping-countries trip. then a aus or nz driving trip. then a sri lanka. but finally settled for singapore (again !) for the new years. the amount of plans made these days is a little scary. following the last yrs resolution of atleast one international trip per year, the plans still are endless. now again for this year there is a nz driving trip. and to go with it an abu dhabi yas marina f1 trip. and today a macau (i swear i hadnt even heard of this place before. i am weak in history :p) weekend trip popped up and was shot down in less than 10 mins because it meant i had to get yet another singapore visa as it was cheaper that way. and if you consider the domestic trips planned and executed, the success rate is maybe around 1 in 10. yet, its just so much fun to just make plans
