Hamster people

That we are mortals. All people are, some (the ones in America, L.A.) more than the others. Every scene depcits racial tension, real life stereotypes, and scared, tightly wound people. The movie is set in L.A. And its disturbing. Even more so, because the movie is well made, with neat performances. Is this the land of oppurtunities ? I dont know. But its a land, as depicted in this movie, full of hamsters. Every soul in America who runs and works hard and cries and just cant seem to leave the circle thingy in the cage that is America. Hamster people.

whim

life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

heh. so much for the dantes and the miltons.

spiral

i try to stay away,
to let go,
to fly away.

but i come back,
this sling wont let go,
the string wont snap.
faster, faster
round and round.

i spiral inwards,
the world reeling,
i look away,
and look back,
look in.

and spot a single clarity,
in a universe of blur.
succumbing,i come
spiralling inward,
crashing toward you.

heh, houston's got nothing on this orbit trajectory.

pandora's

here's something you'll dig, i think. if not the music it picks, the idea behind it at the least. its like a radio that knows stuff about the music you like.

http://pandora.com/

here's a snippet, from http://pandora.com/mgp.shtml , of that idea.

~~ snip ~~

the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

~~ snip ~~

neat huh ? so what you have is a database of over 300000 songs analysed, and all broken up into a genome of sorts. the genetic makeup of songs if you will. so you put in a song that you like and this looks up other songs with similar a musical gene makeup and plays them for you.

i have thus far tried it with a couple of my favourites and the result is suprisingly, um, for the lack of a better word, nice. the music that is played is very definitely interesting, and while the specifics of the song you are listening to will, as always on the first hearing of any song, elude you, you will come out with a ' hey, that was not bad ', and you will go back. heh, you didnt know what just happened in there but it was good.

the things people do. just neat.

inevitable ?

sweat pours out your body ...
later in the evening,
you lie awake in bed.

spoke the day,
and all in it,
its for you,
all for you, we know
whats best for you.

and you run.
run.

365 tomorrows

~~

365 tomorrows is a collaborative project designed to present readers with one new piece of short speculative fiction each day for one year. Utilizing the broad palate of science fiction, our vision of the future creates a diverse pool of stories with something for everyone to enjoy.

365 launched August 1, 2005 and will continue until July 31, 2006

~~

contentment

paratas, greased
onions, pickled
chicken, do-pyaza-ed.
the self,defeated.

burp !

dialogue

plateaus of ordinary existence,
surround me.
O juliet, wherefore went thou ?
O passion, whither ?

passion ?
i am jaded.

why these words ?
passion felt,
doesnt need expression.

a pretender then,
at being a better man.

eternal sunshine

how happy is the blameless vestal's lot
the world forgetting, by the world forgot
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
- alexander pope

jim carrey, kate winslet and charlie kaufman. what a mix. splendid.
michel gondry (ze director) deals with an uncommon and a surreal topic - our memories. though the movie does not stick to a sequential time line, it never feels forced, in fact it'd be an effort to rise above whats happening in the movie to apply rational thought. you are swept along into this gloamy world of joel and clementine, but the movie ends in sunshine. kaufman makes a choice to not have the movie end bleakly and rather leaves us feeling all mellow and sunny. the transistion between carrey's memories, carrey reliving them and then reacting to them, is just sweet. it clicks.both carrey and winslet have delivered remarkable performances.
carrey plays joel, who is shy, quiet and understated. it fits carrey so like a glove, that you begin to be glad. carrey is not just somone who can stretch his face to akward proportions. he can act too, and very well at that. winslet is amazing and cute, wrenchingly so. she plays the part of clementine, ( so alive, yet needing assurance and security ) so well that you cant help liking clementine more than you would your regular woman in a movie.

a sunday two odd hours well spent. i was an idiot to have missed this movie for so long. i just got another movie in my favourites list.

A petition.

At the behest of a friend, I am posting this as it appears on his blog. He is trying to get as many people to read this as he can. And I am glad to be able to help him out.

Horrors of War ...
Close your eyes and think of someone very close to you. Now imagine someone:

- Piercing this person's ears with hot rods
- Puncturing this person's eyes, gouging them out
- Inflicting burns on his body using cigarettes
- Breaking his bones and teeth
- And after torturing him in this brutal fashion for over 22 days, shooting him dead.

This is what the Pakistani army did to Lt. Saurabh Kalia of the 4th JAT Regiment of the Indian Army during the Kargil war. Imagine the plight of the old parents of this young man who received his body in such a state, imagine their rage and helplessness.

We talk so much about the power of the blogosphere. What use is that power if we can not help these parents by raising this issue so that it is heard by International Human Rights Organisations? We have seen instances of main stream media in the US championing issues that were raised by bloggers. Why not in India?

I am making this post with a very clear intent. I want all those who read this post to please raise this issue on their blogs. I realize, making a general appeal like that and expecting others to post will not work. Very specifically, I would like you Chandroo and you Sambhar Mafia to raise it on your blog and make two of your friends responsible for publishing it on their blogs. If everyone does that, geometric progression will take care of spreading it to all blogs in the Indian Blogosphere.

If nothing else, just sign the online petition of Lt. Saurabh Kalia's father.

Links:
Online Petition by Lt. Saurabh Kalia's father
Geocities Page on Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Rediff Article on Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Dilip D'Souza's Post