Loving The Alien (Sometimes)

(-Francis Bacon [1909-1992])



Sometimes I think I'm scared
Sometimes I know
I feel like making love
Sometimes I don't
I feel like letting go
Maybe not
I feel like giving up
Is all we got

Sometimes is all the time
And never means maybe
Sometimes is all the time
Maybe

And I'm moving on
And I'm moving on (Sometimes I feel alone)
And I'm moving on
And I'm moving on

Sometimes I make believe
When we're alone
Machines have taken hold
Can you get me to a telephone
It's just the little things
You used to see
Am I still that man who makes you who you want to be

I never noticed
How lovely were the aliens
Lovely were the aliens
I never noticed
Lovely were the aliens
Lovely were the aliens

-Velvet Revolver

A boring day and I turn on iTunes half asleep as I have a faint tune running in my head and I want to listen to the full song. But then it choses this Velvet Revolver number for me I had on my hard disk but I had never listened to. And it was love on the first listen.

The song is both hauntingly melodious and very beautifully written.
--------------

Thinking about nothing in silence makes the the uncertainty and the inherent helplessness with which we live our lives overly apparent. The beauty of the mind lies in disguising the true facts with 'intellect' and 'issues' which demand careful thought and study. The world at large exists in chaos and the order needs to be decoded. Nations which are shining are somehow whining. But isn't it the people who make up the nation? Isn't the individual chaos responsible for generating the chaos of the world?

Decoding the me is something that comes naturally only when the immenseness of nothingness is carefully and fully felt. And the picture that comes forth is that of confusion and uncertainty coupled with a lot of helplessness. How every day is an unrealized fight for hope and reason.

It seems like times of failure are the only times when we are true to ourselves. When all the pseudo intellectual crap falls away to reveal the truest feelings. And then you decide to finally move on and fight again and dose yourself with the drug called rationality. The Neo dies down and you enter the Matrix again.

In all this rationality the smell of the wind, the taste of tears and the feeling of a breaking heart become alienated. The true self is lost in the shadow which becomes a mute puppet and an alien following us around as we judge, compartmentalize and then justify. It is neglected into becoming a schizophrenic sociopath responsible for the dark dreams that reflect an unexplored and part of our persona.

Maybe the truth of the sociopath needs to be listened to?

Maybe, just maybe, the grammar of the chaos lies in the shadow? Maybe it needs to be embraced before we are to gain even a faint sense of the 'issues at large'.

Censorship and Truth

Censorship is defined as the removal and withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. ( Wikipedia is my best friend :P )

In a diverse country like India, censorship can be painful, I mean everything is being censored the films, the books, the internet ( well at least trying to), dramas. Government wants everything censored and the best reason they can come up with is Religious Issues, Oh! comon'! Religious issues? Political parties want Orkut banned cause of Religious Issues? Half of the truth about things like the Gujarat riots cannot be revealed because the government "has its apprehensions". Movies like Parzania were taken off the air and schools and colleges are indirectly forbidden from even privately airing these movies."What will the kids learn?"

Everybody knows what is happening around them, so banning anything wont really prevent people from getting hold of the information via other media or by using simple bypasses. You cannot really prohibit a child from eating chocolates and then claim he doesn't even know what chocolates are. But then, as long as everyone's happy and a majority of lame people, who haven't used the net for more than secret sex chats on super lame chat groups, gather to nod their heads in unison we can all ban things and feel patriotic and democratic.

But the bottom line is and will always be that truth is something that never bears consensus. So even if everyone agrees that the riots, the tribal displacement, the Patan rape or countless other things are simply too gruesome to be given any attention and the junta (people) need to be "saved" from such things, it doesn't really mean that is how it really should be.

A line from the movie Network comes to mind, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

PS. This post was initially started by my friend and an ex-co author of this blog, Jayesh.

Holocaust and Us

Typically, every noun and every verb in our personal vocabularies has some reflexive effect on at least one of our senses. The mind and the senses correlate brilliantly to generate a personal sense of relation with the language that we use. This personalization, for the most part, is an extension of experience and fantasy.

The Holocaust-

A simplistic and clichéd feeling brought on as a result of the juxtaposition of the images of the dead and the starved with the stench of the burning and rotting body; usually followed by feelings of pity and compassion and some amount of loathing towards the evil Nazi and concluded by a feeling of gratefulness that the onetime aberration from the civil world, the Nazi, were contained by the powers that be. A malicious worm, squashed for good.

These images and smells are all too powerful and moving in themselves but the fact remains that the Holocaust was much more than a small set of emotional reactions coupled with some visual and olfactory stimulus. Bauman points out in his text that overwhelming proof amassed by the historians shows that ‘the Holocaust was a window, rather than a picture on the wall. Looking through that window, one can catch a rare glimpse of many things, otherwise invisible.’ The reflexive reaction that categorizes the Holocaust as an ominous deviation from the normal, civil flow of events; a barbaric act involving, primarily, the Jews and the anti-Semitic forces, needs to be questioned and re-questioned. Bauman asserts that The Holocaust was not a Jewish problem and an event in the Jewish history alone. It is a problem of the society, civilization and culture. Moreover, the all too familiar notion of absolutes, which features the Jews as absolutely good and the Nazis and their collaborators as perfectly evil, is also flawed.

‘When I visited the Museum at AUSCHWITZ, I stood in front of the display cases. What I saw there were images from contemporary art and I found that absolutely terrifying. Looking at the exhibits of suitcases, prosthetics, children’s toys . . .

I suddenly had the impression I was in a museum of contemporary art. I took the train back, telling myself that they had won!’ -Paul Virilio (Art and fear)

This processing and packaging of the Holocaust is brought on by the self-healing tendencies of the modern society. The Holocaust has been delegated a specialist shelf and department wherein the research and development that take place are impressive albeit invisible to the common eye. The Holocaust in general terms, consists of countless memorials and commemorative ceremonies. The responsibility of the in-depth analysis is left safely in the hands of the ‘experts’. The general thought process behind the understanding and analysis of the Holocaust doesn’t involve a lot of effort. Clichéd and time tested methods of analysis, like blaming the morally corrupt Nazi and attempting to understand the causes of Hitler’s obsession are employed without any thought or attempt at reason. But, these methods invariably focus on the ‘Germanness of the crime’ which results in the exoneration of everyone and everything else. By making it into a deviation in the German society, having little to do with the way modern societies function, the Enlightenment beliefs of humanity and freedom are carefully safeguarded.

The code of the Holocaust is far too complex to be understood with such simplistic notions and to be unraveled, needs to be de-emotionalized and assimilated into the general history. The Holocaust, even though written in a specialist code, needs to be understood and accepted generally by the commons. It has essential information about the way society functions and it needs to be interpreted keeping in mind that it was the outcome of unique encounters between ordinary and common factors.

PS: The post is the "Introduction" of a course project report I wrote on Modernity and the Holocaust. It derives heavily from Zygmunt Bauman's book by the same name.

Why F rocks and People Dont.

There are just some days where you just want to shout F**K (Censorship sucks. Anyways this is to keep things family friendly.) really really REALLY loudly.

And then there are 2 things. Why and Why.

Part 1:

But then you can't.

Why?

What will Joe Somebody think? Surely Jane Holier Than Thou would sneer at me. Nevermind the fact that Joe and Jane have secret net identities where Joe plays Hanna and Jane plays Tom. Nevermind what lies hidden deep in their closets.

As long as its not in the open its all good.

Is it?

Anyways, what bothers me is people judging and nudging everyone around them day in and day out. Doesn't a man deserve atleast some amount of breathing space? Or is a closet and a fake net identity is all one has left in this age of taboos, networking and connectivity?

part 2:

Why, in this particular case, did you feel the urge?

This one is simple. Because things really suck for me right now. And I want to lash out. Peacefully and Alone.

Bah.

Arrrgh

Hey all! Long time no see. I see a little change in the writing style around here. Looks like evilution is a part of the Ubuntu movement now. Good for him. (Ubuntu is really cool btw.)

Okay. Quick revision. Who am I? Regular readers of the blog might remember me as an author of a very politically incorrect "About Me". You hated it. I hated it. Never thought I'd write a "blog" again. But then I realized something really awesome.

This can serve as a platform where I can express my opinions (read rant) about things that I usually wouldn't be able to do in real life; without getting into a pseudo intellectual conversation with one/more people.

So the topic for today:
How badly does your girlfriend's teenage brother hitting puberty suck?
Answer:
OMG (Oh My God) A LOT (not an abbreviation. Those are actual words there. Caps on the net implies you are shouting it seems. And I SO WANT TO SHOUT.)

"Why?" the brothers might ask.

First of all you are teenagers just hitting puberty. Ergo, you neither sound mature nor sweet but rather very close to a frog.

Second, you simply ask too many questions. By virtue of not being the hot girl that I'm dating, or any other hot girl in general, that does not make you remotely appealing to me.

Third, you always need to do "work on the internet" when your sister is using the computer to converse with yours truly. Wanting it "for just 5 minutes", every 10 minutes can be my fourth reason.

Fourth, you simply never leave. Now what is that all about? Some compulsive need to protect your sister? You should always keep in mind that you are a skinny freckle faced scumbag who sounds like a frog. You are the one who needs protecting. Not her.

Fifth, for some reason you feel your sister has no IQ at all and you, on the other hand, are related to some kind of genius rocket scientist. Ergo, you feel the need to butt in whenever you want, start croaking about what you feel without knowing what your sister was talking about in the first place and subsequently start fighting for the same. My God, punk. you are like 3 women in PMS. (No offense to the 3 women. You rock!)

I could go on and on but I guess I've proved things beyond reasonable doubt now :).

Seriously, brothers facing puberty, Grow Up. People need privacy, let them have it.

ps. err. "Blogger saves all your drafts automatically now" a balloon said. Yay for Blogger :|.

Dreams, Reconfigured.

“Sir, why does man need society? How did the whole concept come into being?”

“Man is a social animal”.

Ever since man was a hunter, men hunted in groups to make up for the lack of size and strength. Each man covered for the others weaknesses. Such was the power of groups that probably we hunted even the Mammoth to extinction.

And thus the foundation of society as we know it was laid.

Then man burnt down forests and settled down. Crops were sown and civilizations spawned. The concept of society grew and consequently its meaning also varied. But at heart it was still a group of men making up for the lack of particular skills in each other. Things were all good.

“Sir whats a Social Stereotype then?”

With man, growth is not linear and limited. Like population and civilization, popular concepts grow exponentially. Until they grow out of control. Like religion. The concept of the all powerful church which lead to the dark ages. And the common factor fueling this growth is always society. Without social support nothing survives.

Any force or organism has the habit of following the path of least resistance. The same holds for man. Most men blindly follow the path of consensus; ‘The democratic way’. Society, or a group of men, decide what is to be considered right. More often than not, it is the path of least resistance.

And so we have a well defined set of rights and wrongs. We might feel otherwise, but we are forced to follow this set. Configured to behave in a set manner. Learn to eat with a fork and spoon even though it hardly matters as long as you have clean hands. Some give in very early on in life and some later, but sooner or later we all do it; for fear of being labled ‘Antisocial’ and ‘Mannerless’. We all have a single color paint coating over our real selves. What differs is the amount of paint we have on.

Society even defines cultural expectations about what a mother is supposed to be. “On the whole in our culture, housewife-mothers are taken as better examples of mothers than nonhousewife-mothers.”

The question is are dreams, feelings and truth subject to consensus? Except in courts, again a social setup, truth is beyond consensus. Why these petty rules to define what a man wants to do in life? Why is the wisdom of others failiures shoved upon someone who has no feelings whatsoever about that path? Why do we want our kids to become what we couldn’t or now a days, what every other person is trying to be? Why are we taught to seek the approval of society for every dream we dream? Wasn’t society supposed to help an individual overcome his shortcomings and come up at whatever he dreamt of? Why have we become victims of the stereotype-revolution dogma? Why do we need a revolution everytime we need a change?

What happens when the paint starts to wear off and leaves behind a man in possession of the shadows of the dreams and hopes he once had?

“A tired man they see, no longer cares.”

Note: This post first appeared on the blog: Blissfully Paranoid. I am the author of the same and since I don't have enough time to update both blogs, I have decided to stick to this one and transfer my posts here. Cheers!

We Are Sorry. lol

" Expect an update (maybe) sometime at night/tomorrow."

"The blog now will be updated every other day, or even everyday, depends."

The bloddy authors dont deliver here :@. What promises and no posts :S

Okay okay. So on behalf of the "team 0rganis3d Ka0s (LOL)", I apologise. [ As if you actually read all this. :| ]

A lot has been going on and except my labs, I really havn't gotten around to writing/reading stuff.
But to keep anyone who cares updated, all the points I mentioned in the last entry, excepting the vmware one, have been successfully completed. There were a few issues along the way. But those are past now. Ill post some screenshots soon :).

I plan to setup the vmware thing in some days. Tomorrows a holiday, so I guess tomorrow would be the lucky day.

Logged into Windows after many days. Looks and functionality wise it has begun to suck even more. But I have really begun to appreciate the Plug and Play support and the sucky default drivers that Microsoft ships with XP. Plug something in and itll work. Agreed giving less than 10% of its fullest capacity, but still. atleast all hell doesnt break loose.

Still I still feel, Ubuntu Rocks!

ps.: The sweet picture above is Jay on his last birthday :)

My Lesson

So i am watching Scrubs in the middle of the night, on my iPod, the next thing i know, there is a rubber kinda thing stuck in my left ear, blocking the whole damn thing, the cool 'in-bass' earphones which i bought for 150, does this to me, was it a sign from Apple saying buy original products only?
or was it 'karma', i so do not believe in Karma, but what the heck, anything can happen, so finally my mom plucked the thing out, with that plucker thing,. sad, funny? NO.
I learnt my lesson, which was never watch Scrubs at 4 a.m :| and also that i need a new pair of earphones, anything but in-bass people!

T-Search, X-Factor, K-Factor.. Aaaarrrgghh T_T

TV channels had a better idea of exploiting the sms revolution n the controversy magnetism. T- Search; the hot shot channels call it TALENT SEARCH. (But when one watches the whole setup you get the point T symbolizes the directly proportional relation between TAMASHA ->TEARS->TRP.)

Watching a few episodes, its easy to figure out, you’ll find everything in show except the real stuff of which the show boasts abou, you find verbal duel between the esteemed judges, with the tone of gods (“main ye dekhuga ki tere ghar mey roti aaye" courtesy - himesh reshammiya, the noisy or may be nosy god, to one of the contestants). You’ll go into the contestants house learning how much the family , neighboring family, colony street dogs, drain pipe’s bacteria, love them .the real challenge they face seems to be the number of different looks that can be given to the contestants.

What feels real bad is the way these contestants, the common aspirants looking for a platform, are told how much they suck in the most dramatically humiliating way the judges can think of , on national TV. I wonder, what would be the scenario if these judge’s (with bizarre titles and slogans “panch parmeshwar” being one of the many) own struggling time, with their share of humiliation, was broadcasted, bet TRP would be high enough to give K factor lady sleepless nights) .You can actually find the k factor background music n special effects in here!

Idea of providing an accessible stage to common people was great, if only the focus was on purpose and the judges more dignified. As far as the TRP rating is concerned, a real talent hunt would have attracted masses. But these daily soap inspired talent search shows are not doing what they claim in theory. It’s easily evident that the real purpose has been lost somewhere amidst all the searching being done on TV. Switch it off…. please.

Window (does not) Own!

Microsoft's is one of the most successive companies in the world today Below is a comprehensive list of all versions of Windows released by Microsoft.

Release date	Version	Analysis
June 1985	Windows 1.01	Horrible.
August 1986	Windows 1.03	What a piece of crap.
Dec. 1987	Windows 2.03	See above.
June 1988	Windows 2.1	Lame.
May 1990	Windows 3.0	WTF
April 1992	Windows 3.1	3.1, new and still crappy!
October 1992	Windows For Workgroups 3.1	Yawn.
Feb. 1993	Microsoft Bob	Cool name, but it eats tits.
August 1993	Windows NT 3.1	Meh.
Nov. 1993	Windows For Workgroups 3.11	What the hell is a "workgroup"?
Sept. 1994	Windows NT 3.5	BULLSHIT! Sucks.
Nov. 1994	Windows NT 3.51	Windows 3.5 for the 1337.
August 1995	Windows 95	Finally, something good.
Sept. 1996	Windows NT 4.0	Whatever.
June 1998	Windows 98	Yay for memory leaks!
Feb. 2000	Windows 2000	Blue screen of death in a box.
July 2000	Windows Me	See above.
October 2001	Windows XP (SP2 Prof.)	Pwns.
April 2003	Windows Server 2003	K.
Nov. 2006	Windows Vista	More like Windows Gaysta, lol.

If you don't agree with me, well I can't do anything about it, cause i don't wanna waste my time over some crap thing like Windows, if u love windows or hate windows the fact remains they own the market share (not for long)....
peace \m/

Table taken from Here

The Thump _|_ !

I have been in one of those moods again lately. You know the mood when anger takes over everything and nothing else matters.. i needed to hear noise lots of it to keep my mind sedated. The traffic honking outside did not make a difference and the rickshaw trying to hustle their way out of morning traffic jam seemed mute. The freaking silence was killing me. Even my iPod wasn't helping. I switched on the telly in an attempt to add to my commotion. It's strange actually that how sometimes useless babble of the T.V helps. The mind was just beginning to settle down when I saw for the 100th time the Thump ad! Hrithik Roshan putting Micheal Jackson to shame!...wtf? I saw the whole ad and just blinked that was my only reaction.. did that make any sense? he just kept dancing..wad does even that have to do with a mobile phone ad? I then hacked into the highly confidential marketing plan and here's what I found ...
.) Audiences between the age of 19-24 look up to Hrithik as an Icon!
.)Hrithik's cheesy dance steps will get them inspired to buy the product .
.)The youth seems to like the word "Hump" so let's call this "Thump".
.)Put him in a kurta and people will think it's fashionable.


WTF???

Note to self - If Hrithik is truly a youth icon, we need a thump on our heads

P.S - The commercial is down there.. if it makes sense to you..please let me know
Also I am working on my spellings and grammatical errors cause of the admin :P...(and also he doesn't let me use abuses.. :S )




Peace \m/

Blank.

"Damn this pain!"
"Dear Lord! Can someone turn off the sun?"
"I wish I could just turn this sweating off somehow."

Most of us have, at some point in our lives, have said one or more of these things. Most of us have gotten hurt so bad that we wished for some way to turn off the pain. And we have. By medication, cursing, shouting.. the means are irrelevant. Most of us hate being in pain. We always wonder if "everything has a reason"; where pain fits in the grand scheme of things. The obvious reason would be to appreciate not being in pain. Yeah well, this reason applies to almost anything that humans don't like. Why do we need pain, seriously?

This is one question, I had never thought of, ever. I didn't care for pain much and that was that. Pain is bad. period. We don't need pain and mosquitoes.

And then I saw a medical drama I watch every week (Not quite as dramatic as one would have hoped for, but anyway). And it seriously forced me to think. The results?

We need pain. We need it to survive. We might even call ourselves lucky we feel pain.

Instead of going into too much detail regarding the whys and the hows, I'll let the readers decide for themselves.

http://www.smm.org/buzz/blog/she_feels_no_pain
http://basicindia.typepad.com/basicindia/2005/08/a_brief_look_at.html

Waiting For The World To Change.

The past year has been one of the most difficult of my life

Of tears and pain, despair and frustration, of defeat n more tears..

But as the pain subsides and one looks back..

It has mostly been about people & relationships.

People you called family acting worse than your deadliest enemies and strangers you just got acquainted with supporting you to unimaginable levels.

And it’s been about hope.

As the storm subsides, hope like a seed in hibernation slowly awakens and starts spreading its roots.. this time deeper than before so as to take on a much stronger storm this time.

And last but not the least it’s been about Patience.

So as I patiently wait for the world to change..

Chances are so do the ones I HOPE will change. :D

And so we keep on waiting.. waiting for the world to change. ;)