Educative measures

Education has seriously become a byword... Just a remnant of the old glory that it once entailed.
I've been watching old Bollywood movies, and some are entertaining with their stereotypes of the one child in a family going 'to the city' for studies and then returning ten years later to fight off goons, corrupt landlords, tyrant thakurs et al with his sense of righteous education and propriety. Yet do we have the same definition of education today that was laid down in the minds of our grandparents... Many decades ago?

No doubt the education system has undergone major overhauling since then, but has it always been for the collective good?

Focusing on this, who decides 'the good'?

And yet we continue to falunt our private schooling and other such means of being educated, simultaneously nullifying the human spirit and the correct mode of conduct that a 'proper' education (if such a thing exists) purports to endow us with.

We are all sycophants. Cynics. And not to mention unbelievably silly.
That we have let ourselves be led to the slaughter is reason enough to bar others of our ilk from the threshold of education.

Education IMHO is the smile behind the grimace, the laughter behind the sorrow and the silver lining after every downpour that makes living, experiencing and being irrevocably, ubiquitously and stubbornly human, the most precious treasure in the entire universe.

Why does this happen to me...

I hate that song.

I'm up crap lane, shit creek, turd drive... Hasn't been a good day AT ALL.

Comparatively I'm AT PEACE... Unlike other days.

But that's just my survival system.

More later.

Intentions... Cruel and otherwise.

Intent.

What it means is basically our reason to do something. The CAUSE behind the EFFECT.

It can be positive, negative, frivolous, chivalrous, vain, selfless, selfish, secret, public...

So on and so forth.

It can be anything so long as it is an intent.

When we translate it into actions, words or basically the EFFECT... It becomes part of this world.

It gets born.

It gets serious.

We can use the corny line, then the game begins.

We can't change the effects of our intentions. That would be like hoping to change time.

However, we cook up the intentions, don't we? We can change. People can change.

That's my contention. I believe in that with all my heart.

I also believe that we live in a real world. Not a Disney inspired fantasy land with emphasis on politically correct and HAPPY ENDING stories.

It could take ages for a person to bring about a change in him/her self. Perhaps by that time it would be too late. But the intent remains, however. The intent behind change.

YES.

Our personality, soul, identity can change according to our inclinations, weaknesses, strengths, desires, fears, and ambitions.

The root cause is intent.

What do we want?

Why do we want it?

What do we need?

Why do we need it?

These questions are among the most fundamentally threatening ones in existence.

I do not believe myself wise enough to answer even one of them, not even in regard to myself.

Pure folly.

(Hey nonny-no, hey nonny-no.)

Teh Bible... (sic)

I'm a born again believer...

Of teh Ceiling Cat's Lolcat Bible kthxbai.

It's just awesome!

I've been checking it out for the past couple of days... Laughing insanely all alone in the room... At dead hours of night.

But... It's great! srsly.

All right, enough of the lolspeak.

Frankly speaking, I can think of a lotta dyed in the wool religious people who're gonna have huge problems with this... Movement. But then again, these people contributing to the LOLcat Bible aren't corrupting the word of God... Merely transliterating it into another... Dialect(?).

I respect that. I'm moved sufficiently enough to submit my own contribution by the end of this week... (Should be finished with Genesis by then!! w00t!)

Anyway... Gotta go be NOMin some stuff...

srsly.

Is

I love the word is.

It just IS.

Let me begin by describing my Sunday-so far-to myself...

Boring. Unexpectedly hot. And lousy.

How's THAT for cheerful?

Now I know that being positive really helps. But what to do when one is surrounded by things that drag and nag and... Aughh... Whatever.

I feel like an afternoon siesta. But they expired long ago. I don't know, I'm just not feeling the vibe today... Kinda like a storm brewing. The stillness, I mean. It reminds me of the ominously sultry weather right before a big mother of a blowout.

Philosophically speaking, I might as well go to sleep and perchance to dream, wake up in a different realm of the obvious.

Or I could keep pounding the crap out of my keyboard and let go of all reservations... Just kinda like... Resign myself to whatever's happening.

Hey maybe nothing at all is happening and I'm just lending existence a bit of an overrated character. Take it easy. Simplicity is the watchword.

Carnage.

Something about the day makes me want to turn inside myself and shiver deep down to my bones. Have a good dose of the shakes, as it were.

Could I have some hiccups over here please?

No I Don't!!!

When the truth is found to be lies...

And all the joy within you dies...

Don't you want somebody to love...

Don't you need somebody to love...

Naw... I don't think so.

Even if the garden flowers are DEAD!!! Anyway... Jefferson Airplane is retro but I don't really... Get them... Yeah. I don't.

I was designing a website today... And I just made a ridiculous connection!

Life is also a 'template'... Much like those boxy things you can squeeze stuff into... Text, graphics, animations... etc.

At least, mine is. I can really make each day a mirror image of the last, though I don't often do that.

Kinda dangerous, living each day the same. Groundhog Day? I better stay away from that one.

Anyway, what would a total blue day FEEL like. To someone who isn't blue, that is.

Not blue, obviously. So there we go, template!

I also realized it feels good to hear songs in foreign languages you don't understand AT ALL.

Liberating!

The souls of my shoes

My shoes are decrepit.

No other word for 'em. Except maybe:

Beat up.

Raped.

Screwed.

Abused.

But damn... I love those chucks... So comfy... So personal...

Anyway.

There's a song I like... By Death Cab For Cutie..

Starts off with...

Love of mine, one day you will die...

It's got a line that basically says we've seen the world... From Bangkok to Calgary... And the soles of our shoes... etc etc.

I love that song. I love the whole soundtrack for The Invisible.

I spent a whole lotta bandwidth on downloading it. Long live the free world!

I was reading up on the word simulacrum the other day.

It's definition is different but Baudrillard DEFINITELY said... It does NOT hide the truth.

Functionality.

Exchange.

Symbolism.

Signs.

Give me a chance to hold on... But it's really like a mental exercise to read stuff like that. I was reading essays today... Some old ones... And I was reading, An Apology For Idlers...

I really need to get a bit more corpulent(sic).

Anyway... Reviewing this whole entry tempted me to delete it and log out due to pure shame.

I'm rambling.

It was a full moon yesternight. So maybe that's why.

Sue me.

Lookin' up...

I never pray.

Neither do I have any moments where I clutch my hands to my chest and fervently mouth the words... "Oh God please...."

It's a waste of time.

I don't have His number.

Even if I did... Would be busy all the time.

I remember Gandhiji... Don't really remember the exact words but he basically said... If you're in the dumps... Take a look around you...

There's always gonna be some sore ass loser who is more fucked than you are.

And so... I never ever look up.

Damn my neck.

To sleep, perchance to sleep... YAAAWN.

I watched The Prestige today around 4.00pm and since then I've been in a state of inertia.
Emotional upheaval aside, the ramifications and the philosophical summing up aside... I cried my heart out. It wasn't quite what I was asking for, when I wanted The Green Mile etc... But this served the purpose.
Effective doppelganger.

Imagine what a great impact it had on me!!! I've been listening to Massive Attack since evening!
Black Milk, Mezzanine, Inertia Creeps et al... Whoo.

I just found out that this 22nd of April coincidentally happens to be Earth Day... Go green!
And Go (to) Chandigarh!!

We are all very curious. Yet we know so little about ourselves. The acts that others do that make us cringe in shock and mutter imprecations under our breath are the very facts that would come naturally to the most sane and civilized of us... Everyone is a monster. Its good we don't have a clue about what we can do. Most of our lives we walk right past that little unmarked door inside our heads. If, God forbid, we opened it... Who knows what would burst through?
And here comes a last question... Last, that is, before I power down my brain for tonight:-
If we suddenly unlock THE DOOR... Is what comes out what makes us who we are? Or is it what we choose to do with what comes out?

Tell you what,
I'll sleep on it.

As I lay awake in my bed last night, listening to music... I wondered if I could ever write a cohesive song. As a commercial thing. As a songwriter. I didn't think much about it before I slept, but it did occur to me that it would be easy if I put my mind into it. The song that prompted me to think this was Sing What Your Soul Sings, by Massive Attack.
I'm good at poetry. Rhymes... Verses... Whatnot.
They can just keep spouting forth on any subject as long as I have a sufficient mental incentive as to why I should be doing that... However, are songs all that different? I mean yeah 80% is the talent of the singer... but then the words can't be sub-par, can they?
Shakespeare lived in his own little world when he said 'What's in a name...'
A lot apparently... Imagine if the rose was named a stinkwort instead.
It would still smell sweet, yet I doubt it would be the most sought after flower on Valentine's Day!
(sic)
Anyway, then came the moral question about songwriting-- I'm a selfish and very self-engrossed individual... Would I get along with the poor guy who decides to sing what I wrote? Would the song-brainstorming sessions be free of bloodshed? I'd bash in anybody's head if he/she uttered anything less than a compliment about my lyrics... I mean, hey, I'm the guy writing the words... If you know better, go do it yourself...!
That kind of thing.
Anyway. I against I. Guess none would survive.

Move over Mos Def.

King Kong in Cannes on a date with Superman

Well I WAS thinking that the song 'Absurd' was... Well... For lack of a better word, ABSURD!

Once you read the lyrics, it's kinda hard to imagine it playing in a seedy strip joint... But then again, it's perfect for when it does. Kinda absurd. But a masterpiece all the same.
I'm not gonna proselytize anymore in THIS post, at least... So on to the good stuff:
I watched Proof.
Oh my god. What a great movie. And then I ended up watching Cloverfield.
Oh my god.
I am insane! What prompted me to keep the TV on after Proof, anyway?
Totally ended the mental high I'd got... Sometimes I'm just too stupid for words.
No... A quick correction, I'm NEVER too stupid for words. Not yet anyways.
I found an old diary today. Unused, except for the start page, which informed me that I bought it from Capital Book Depot in Chandigarh on mum's last birthday... Well I liked it so much that apparently I forgot all about when I came back home! Or maybe it was my stupid habit of treating my diaries as persons and strictly adhering to a code of monogamy with them.
Eugh... I know, I know.
But enough of that. I ended the tradition and turned Mormon with them. I now am the proud owner of three diaries. Actually I own more than that... But these three are the ones I'm currently ravaging... All paper shall be put to the fire and sword. I have long crossed the Rubicon with words...

Hail Caesar, Morturi Te Salutant.

P.S. In keeping with tradition of incorporating my post title with the contents... King Kong was a partial inspiration for Cloverfield... The directors wanted an ALL AMERICAN monster... Not something similar to Godzilla... But an American Monster such as King K. Rool... Uh... Kong.

Of lies and lamps!!!

Well that' s a title I'd never have thought of using!

I was typing out a test for mum's students...

A question was: What is defamation, libel and slander?

And I began to think. After a lot of thoughting, I realized I would probably answer this question with Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Then came the ethereal moment when I was reminded of Diogenes, hunting through the streets in the daytime with a lamp, looking for an honest man.
Poor guy. He'd be spinning furiously inside his barrel... Er... Grave... If he only knew how long ago he'd started looking and if he were alive today how fruitless his search would have been.
Everybody lies. Everybody lies without realizing it. Hey it's just another drop in the ocean, hey what's the difference, hey so what's a little white lie... Oh?... Racism!!! I object!
Anyway.
In one of my favorite books the guy gets executed for being too honest.
In one of my favorite books the guy gets executed for not knowing anything.

So I guess that puts paid to the sayings that Honesty is the best policy, and ignorance is bliss, respectively.

Cheers!

I just made you up to hurt myself.

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself.
You know, after watching the Machinist I was seriously tempted to test the experiment of sleep deprivation on myself...
But Christian Bale's bod was just too much of a negative incentive for me to go through with my scheme... Eugh... I'm no superman, but that guy would cease to exist if he got any thinner(sic).
So I stayed content with memories of just the one time I got to watch Jacob's Ladder... I wonder what kind of narrative style they call when the entire movie is going on inside a character's head?
No, no similarities... Don't even bring out your pitchforks you kind people... The two movies are poles apart. Just saying.
So here I am, braying electronically about such hi-flying issues whereas I should go for a Bohemian outlook... But I guess that would seem too needy.
Or desperate, for that matter.

But its all right, to each his own, and to me... EVERYTHING!!!
Man I love being mean. One so deserves it sometime.

OH! A P.S.

Continuing the previous post's mention of NIN... The protagonist in The Machinist is named Reznik... WOOO.

Fly away now, thou meddlesome bird of doom!

You know... I was listening to Only by NIN and I was forced to think.
The line,
Less concerned about fitting into the world,
Your world, that is, 'cos it doesn't really matter anymore...
is quite all right, at first... Then if you start peeling away at it you're gonna end up ruining your grooving session and end up with a book instead!

Yeah, my experience exactly.

Anyway... Blogger's got a scheduled outage sometime soon and I don't want my posts to be collateral damage.
I was reading one of Huxley's works and he was writing something about The Whole Truth.
He argued that The Whole Truth does not necessarily seek to personify the characters in a narrative as heroes or supermen... It is the whole truth that (sic) caused Homer's Odysseus to expertly cook a meal and eat it with his sailing fellows, then after the meal they remembered their six companions that had been snatched from the ship and devoured... And they began to weep and howl... And thus their tears brought upon them soft sleep.

Well I'm sure I'm the kinda writer who'd dedicate an entire CHAPTER to just the lamentation of those poor guys and how the sailing of the ship, the subsequent landing and meal, etc etc was put in jeopardy because of the loss of those six men... However, since Homer is embellishing his narrative with only The Whole Truth, the events after their loss are not just superficial, but practical... Men know that even after having to witness such a horrific end of their comrades, they still have to eat... To sleep... To rest...

Then came the question of five relatively modern literary artists... Lawrence, Gide, Kafka, Hemingway and Proust... Five writers as different from each other as the various hues in the primary color wheel... Each with his own sensibilities, convictions, way of putting things across (sic) and so on.

Yet they all utilize The Whole Truth. That is what binds them together. And that is what makes their work instantly click with our own mind because, The Whole Truth has a nasty habit of making itself felt in our OWN mentality... because we can infer that this is definitely true, or would be true, in such and such a situation... For example... If I were one of the fortunate crew sailing with Odysseus... I would be damned hungry, regardless of my partners dying or not.

Leave the Truth to people who think they know it best.

And Ekta Kapoor of course (HEE HEE HEE)

Snoopy would definitely beat me hands down in this.

It was a dark and stormy night...
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
Blew the wind...
Exposing the fragile layers of his mind to the riffling fingers of his furtive subconscious.
He woke with a start.
He started to rise.
He rose to his feet.
His feet were cold and felt prickly.
Needles were coursing through his veins... He wanted to peel his skin off as if he were afraid something else had crawled in there with him that night.

Eyes staring wide rotated in their sockets and focused on the drapes.

"Damned weather... Screw this @!$#*^*!! window...!"

He went back to sleep.

(Hey thats ME!!!)

LOOK MA, I'M ON A BLOG!!

Nelly Furtado, amongst other things...

Blogs are the BEST.
Because you don't get digital tomatoes slung at you... Not yet anyways, would trust the liberal minded people to come up with something like that sometime or the other...
Ugh.

Anyway.

If I kinda rephrase Nelly Furtado... I'm Gonna Say What I Want... What Are YOU Gonna Do? So Powerless...

Cheeky, eh?

I LOVE THIS!

Recompensation.

Today after a hiatus of about 10 days... I'm well.
It's such a great blessing to be in complete health and in control of your senses.
Not that I ever lose control of my senses, but just in case... He he he.

It all started on the 6th of this month.

A birthday party.
(Overeating at around midnight is seriously NOT RECOMMENDED.)
That too with heavy special emphasis on the meat and chicken section of the menu.

Then some time later came the glorious 8th.
Me and one of my friends went somewhere...
The ride, plus the food, plus the ride back, plus the food we ate when we came back (GLUTTONS!)
plus a special dinner with bhai at Mcllo in McLeod really helped... Plus I ate some food when I reached home.
(x_x)
Yeah I know.
(Please don't even count.)
It was the least I could do to keep myself from revulsion at the sight of food. I kept relying on home-remedies such
as hot water with lemon, ajwain, herbal tea, even antacid and homoeopathic tablets!!!

Then on the 14th, mum took me to the clinic.
Dr. Chakra--that's our GP here--prescribed me a shitload of antibiotics which I would have accepted even if he told
me they were laced with cyanide... Well not to say the least about the side effects (Grogginess, dizziness and a BIG DEAL
of water loss/dehydration) the pills worked!
I can announce with shamefaced pride that I am a cured man.
(Mentally as well.)

Since I have now decided not to waste my life anymore and literally WAKE UP.
Rouse myself from my wasteful slumber each morn and be fresh and alert before the sun comes up.
Ah what a wonderful morning.
Yeah I know, sounds cliched yeah?
(It is!)
But its DAMN true.
(Well it wouldn't be a cliche if it wasn't true but hey who cares?!)
But I have a confession... Wonderful day and all that... But I'm in the mood for some internal cleansing today.
(EWWW.)
Okay, gross... Now I didn't mean the digestive tract related type... I'm actually mentioning

C A T H A R S I S.

(Such a BIG word ooooooooooh!)
Yeah I've been feelin' such an immense desire to watch The Green Mile/The Shawshank Redemption/Road To Perdition...
Yeah I know their music is what binds these three together in a list sorting, but that's exactly what I did... I'm getting the
OST of each movie and I'm LISTENING to it instead.

I close my eyes and visualize the scenes with each track.

Mental exercise, yeah?

(o_O)

Shut up.

My Happy Everything

Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year.
Lohri.

V-Day. (!)

And now... My independence.

I never thought getting out of a bad relationship would teach me so much. It gave me a figurative kick up the backside... But did the job nonetheless. And very well indeed, if I may say so myself.

Its been around a month (heck I don't even remember the date!) since I broke up. An end to a bad year. I got my own back.
Life is funny! Just when I was in the doldrums somebody popped up out of the blue and rescued me. It was Abhay Deol with Oye Lucky Lucky Oye!
The masterpiece nobody noticed.

I've watched it 5 times at home already and I am still amazed each time.

I do take care not to watch the movie in quick succession because that's the only way to completely alienate a film from your mind.
And again, the upcoming Dev.D...
A crazy movie!!! I haven't seen it yet, but judging by the soundtrack, its another piece of work that can easily fall prey to libels and labels... But in the end, if I can say anything, it is that my previous experience of Anurag Kashyap has been mind blowing (BLACK FRIDAY).

Saawan barse...

I guess.

And one more thing as a parting shot... Can a boy and girl remain good friends? If everything about them is so well matched that it seems they were made for each other?
And if you throw in the fact that the girl is the boy's ex-girlfriend's friend... Then?

You get my drift.