The WhacksteR's Lair

This is the blog of Achilles

2011-02-11T00:41:00.003+05:30

We keep recording and we keep writing, are we recording for posterity? I mean, what did Achilles get out of that arrow in his heel? did he get to fornicate with the woman he lusted after? no.

Did he get to go back home and chill in his original Greek island and knock back a fine toddy? no.

Did he get to do all the other things on his 'list' like skydive, bungee jump and saw off the head of a roaring lion? i think not.

Achilles sacrificed his life for an idea of glory so that some beat up poet could 'immortalize' his name on paper. He wanted to be immortal, so he embraced death. Kind of ironic.

He was a sentimental nincompoop beneath all the warrior like gruffness. That whole 'you're a lion, take it, its yours' thing. I think the only guys who made any use of the legend of Achilles were the people who portrayed him in art. Homer, Brad Pitt take a bow.

A good story, but ultimately bad lesson. What good will a good story do to Achilles now? What good will this blog do to me if it gets famous after i'm dead? Its not like i could use the Google ad money then.

This is a celebratory post

2011-02-09T10:52:00.000+05:30

My inhibitions tell me to keep away from this blog. it is dark and full of secrets that you rather not dig up. Not in a too embarrassing and slightly sexually deviant way of course. But more along the lines of old pictures of you with your braces in suddenly falling out of your almirah when u have friends over kind of thing.

I haven't been here in ages and Google seems to have upped their game. The stats page is much friendlier, the interface is smoother and looks less like something out an eighties sci-fi flick. The blogging scene as a whole has somewhat died down, or is it just me? There doesn't seem to be the same level of give and take. The same robust link and comment economies that helped bloggers feed off of each other. I scratch your back you scratch mine, but i think a lot us have lost interest in back scratching? or is it that our backs don't itch any longer?

Hmmm, it is a philosophical puzzle. But recently i did venture into David Blacker's blog and London Lanka by chance and they seem to be going fine. I haven't really been reading a lot of blogs actually. Sorry i don't mean to offend. But most of the people i used to read have slowed down as well.

Enough gloomy talk. A part of me misses the old days. Where your narcissism had enough and more fuel to burn off in the blogosphere. But here i could go into lines of yawny prose about the purpose of writing, but who cares?

Who really cares? oh shit, looks like im on the verge of ending this on an emo note. Quick! think happy thoughts!

A Brother Wright

2010-08-04T15:32:00.002+05:30

Boy, some day you'll be a man
Girl, one day you'll be a gran
unless you do not marry
so a spinster you will tarry
But in the long term we are all dead
so what if i have a price on my head?
I will just keep running
And you will just keep running after me
Wasting your life
Fullfiling mine
For what more did i ever need but attention?

Look at that bird flying high
I looked and i wondered
one day might i, oh might i?
So then i made an aeroplane
But its not the same
is it?
The thrill seems subdued so i'll dive off of it
I fell like a stone for a while
But still, i couldn't fly!
Sigh

The clouds on up high
And the stars beyond
Encased in metaphor too frippy to pen down
But take it from me
We must suppose they are beautiful
For it cannot be anything else; the unknown
Mystery mud deep in similie
They may show me the folly of my existence
If i listen
One day i may fly

Einstein

2010-05-25T00:14:00.001+05:30

can't sleep.

the world is round and it keeps it's secrets, strongly away from those who cannot handle them
science will speak and describe what it knows but we humans
we best remain silent

can't sleep

the pizzaria spoke of a blessing; anchovies, they said. eat
they are good for you, for insomnia
they are good for patients who can't cope with their mind's own side effects
the side effects of thought
that beat your eyelids open, awake, alert and then run away before you can see who knocked on your door

can't sleep

a nightmare is welcome to knock me unconscious with it's deadly hooves
a nightmare is welcome to freeze me silly in fear and so that i shall lose sense and consciousness
a nightmare is welcome
anything is welcome but this

can't sleep

God is one. only one is God, he said
If reality is controlled then why do my eyes not see
my heart sees but then disbelieves
must i live in terror of this impending blackness
or in gladness of the light, the grey dawn that arrives

but i can't sleep

the night is both dreaded and loved
dreaded for its presence and loved lest it flies before i rest
i must rest
for has it not been said
'the night is for rest'?

this business
this not knowing
works only if you are patient
this business
this burrowing
into wrath and necromancy
serves only the purpose
of killing your instinct
of freezing your facts
in the cold ice of General Relativity

When We Escape

2010-05-05T14:10:00.000+05:30

so my muse
shall we take a cruise?
into the blinding sunlight
on an empty sea
with no horizon?
shall we take the pain and abuse?
self inflicted
(for if not what is the use)
and create a thing of beauty?

you and me
united
leaving behind what is useless to us
and embracing the unknown
wanderers, they will call us
lost, they will say
be we know
this is our way

springing free from a mundane existence
our dreams held sway
but are we sailing towards mundanity
towards and not away?
questions that we seek answers to will remain
doubts will seize us by the testicles
and they will not easily go away

but death is our promise
and for its cold embrace we await
but until then a bit of sun, wind, sand
and adventure
wouldn’t kill us as they say

so my muse
my friend of abuse
what say?

she was as the earth
and I, as the moon
to her darkened face
I shone my light
with no restraint
with selfless abandon
but she revelled not in my silvery gloom
and as I watched that cold lonely dawn
how she greeted the sun
with longing in her eyes
I realized
that i
could never become so bright.
for it was not my nature
I was one of a gloomier stature

shadows
loom bright
friendlier than light
for where is the warmth
in hot blinding light?
not for me the days of brightness
not for me the shiny bright
give me gloom and give me sight
for I wish to see
in the darkness

so what say you?
my shadowy clue
my signal in the dark
my direction In the night?
what say you?
to you and me
on a cruise?
exploring lost islands
wading in lagoons
sleeping in the open
with only the stars watching us
what say you?

The Upraised Fist

2010-05-03T17:32:00.002+05:30

A scab on a wound
false skin
false reality
underneath; blood flows
red and rich.

a scarred body
full of bullet holes
the rubber bullets
were coated with lead
activism was dead

a power hungry
monarch
an arch criminal;
the henchman
and you
the lone tree hugger
standing alone in front of the digger
arms outstretched

Faith

2010-04-27T10:34:00.001+05:30

the truth is not as simple as it sounds.
simplistic rounds
shooting from a 9mm
ripping through flesh
how many babies dead?
how many retards completed the test?
how many fools repented their flesh?
how many intellectuals
let down their people?
how many leaders failed?
how many theories abounded?
how many houses burned?
how many heroes fell?
questions have no answers
questions just have more questions
and ultimately; faith
the truth is faith

Relapse

2010-04-21T17:40:00.001+05:30

Kareem looked on as the pills fell down from the sky, pouring like rain. He'd been staying away from them for a long time now. He'd even walked away from a dealer once; it had taken a considerable effort of will.

Things were alright after that initial incident. He'd managed to have almost a normal life for a few weeks. The urge rarely gripped him, and even when it did it was only in minor easily shakeable doses. He'd got a job as a butcher's apprentice with Saleem, a friend of his father's.

Thats when the hallucinations had started.

He'd been a good student and did well in his O/Levels. After his exams, his parents- usually very strict, had given him some leeway as a reward for his studiousness. They no doubt expected great things from him. Kareem, however tooks this as a reward for all the hardwork he'd put in.

He initially started off hanging around with the boys around the neighborhood after an afternoon game of cricket. They'd pass around cigarettes and Kareem took his first tentative drag. Soon he'd tried a joint. Before the year was out, he was roving the streets of Maradana in the nights, searching for his next hit, like a starving hyena.

The first night he saw them was when he had just completed a break-in at Saleem's beef shop. Saleem was crafty and hid his cash when he closed shop. So the haul was not that great. Kareem was cursing his bad luck as he walked out and he looked up and saw them. They were lounging about on the other side of the road, They were green in skin and long in limb. Their antennae waved and green sparks came out of them when they spoke.

They spoke to him in mathematics. The numbers flowed from their mumbling voices right into understanding. Bypassing his brain, as far as he could tell, The numbers told him the logic of going home and quitting the dope.

So he went. And after a long struggle finally managed to clean up his act and gain his family's acceptance. But the numbers stayed with him. They didnt speak to him as much as before but he still felt their presence.

Corporate Blues

2010-04-19T15:06:00.000+05:30

waking up on a monday afternoon to the lull of the ocean,
inside my head.
A dream takes over as the music trips.
I am a corporate dreamer
dreaming of the demise of the corporation.

Im a sleepwalker
waking up on a hammock in the kitchen garden.
the grass meanders down
and mingles with the sand,
the sand meanders down
to the water, gentle, lapping, lazy.
Just like me.

wiki how 2 tweet

2010-04-05T12:55:00.000+05:30

Go to twitter dot com

start twitter account!!!

find friends (its no fun if you don't have any, and if you dont your a lozer anyway and shouldnt be tweeting in the first place)

Tweet

start with something simple like telling people what you are doing right now

e.g. I am feeling sleepy

progress to relplying to your friend's tweets

e.g. @samanthi awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwz @rameez LOLMAO ROFLCOPTER etc

(a knowledge of l33tsp33k will definitely come in handy here)

As you progress, you can try Re Tweeting.

e.g. RT @deshan lewis hamiltun is soo kewl!!!
like totally! (note, any comments in the RT can be expressed after inserting a '
' sign after the RT'd T)

As you become more mature and used to the novelty of tweeting, express your superiority to all the lesser twits by being innovative with your spelling.

note; such innovashun should be eksecuted with much care. with a lot of referense to reliable sources like LOL CATS. Also use exclamashun marks whenever you can

Good Luck !! NAO GET TO TWEETING!!! FULZ!!!!!!

plzzz dont kil meh..

Powerslave

2010-04-02T15:22:00.001+05:30

These are the last words of Imhotep
half man half God but now on his death bed
it came for all of us and it came for him
Imhotep the half God but now he's dead

He bawled and he pleaded
his majestic eyes they bled
he screamed for their worship
as if, from it he could be saved

But his life had whittled
now his bone was brittle
and Imhotep
was on the way to death

The doorsteps
the face repelled
the eyes screwed shut
but nought helped

Imhotep
said nothing
in the end.

Instead his silent eyes
saw inside themselves
and he wept
as the tears fell down inside his head.

Ahoy! There.. captain.. sahib

2010-03-15T17:25:00.003+05:30

It must be nice to pick up the pen and just start writing again. I was naive enough to think i'd outgrown it; this unstoppable urge to write. it didnt matter what i wrote, the point was that i wrote. But i was too naive to think that i was no longer naive. And now im back to being naive.

Nothing much has changed.

Oh but it has. But has it? I don't know. I think i have matured in certain ways don'tyouthink? But i also think i have unwittingly carved out this pretentious air of maturity for myself which has run out the course of its illusion. I have bared myself to myself again. But i dont think i've been fooling a lot of other people.

But maybe this is the illusion. And this apparent expose of myself to myself is intself a trick brought about by stress. Look there! yes there; that way lies paranoia.

Well, whatever. I have been busy. At least my level of activity has been steadily increasing. I am trying to cope but intensity levels are still rising, Captain! permission to focus on riding the wave until it reaches its peak! Permission granted.

Am i getting any less cryptic here? I can't tell

Wastepost

2010-03-12T12:05:00.003+05:30

In the desert there existed a grain of sand. It was just an ordinary grain of sand, although it may have been slightly priviledged because it had the luck to be situated on the top layer of the ground; enjoying the assorted benefits of being able to roll around the endless expanse of the desert both in the gentle evening breeze and in the wild desert sandstorm; something hugely enjoyable.

It considered itself a grain of sand of the world. An intellectual grain of sand, but its peers often thought it was slightly presumtuous in this regard. A grain of sand was a grain of sand. And in the desert all you saw was other grains of sand or the stars anyway. The latter depended on whether you were on the top layer or not. But eventually, arguably, every grain of said got a chance to stay on top.

Its elders thought it naive, and quietly listened to its boasting without saying much. They considered themselves wiser, of course. And the young grain of sand resented this. But it pretended it didn't care, bacause that's how it rolled.

It saw in its elders a reflection of itself as seen by its peers. And it saw in its peers a reflection of itself as seen by its elders. It chilled out a bit on top of a freshly formed dune. Thinking about this.

Analogy and Feathers

2010-03-11T11:04:00.001+05:30

Green sparks! greaan sparks revolted in the red fire. they amulgamated and formed little flames of their own. They had been hiding in the tiny metal substrate the secret ingredient; the exotic dense substance that had missed the attention of the destroyer class disposal unit sent from the Establishment.

Kangaroos flew into the mind in billowing cloaks liened with regard into the flaming pew stickers in the renaissance of the decaprio saga. The giselle bunchens and other assorted lingerie models not withstanding the gossip of the amazonian pshycopaths, the egyptian druglords and american jailbirds.

but reclaiming land has always been a reconnoitering mission of serious psokage that has embittered the masses against the would be devils of the landlords. liberalist ideals have formulated the basis for the spawn of animated cartoons to disintergrate into remorseless interpretations of Sexual Man.

B ol cols trembling old a controlled attempt a ontrolled shally wally bang bang bang of dispropotionate. A metaphor released into a vacuum that was the test. an analogy released into a singular universe it ceased to exist but what is an analogy but something dependent on something else?

I am an analogy an analogy of you him them. You are an analogy an analogy of me her him. We are analogies floating on each others whim, we will not survive in vacuums.

we will not survive we are dependent i am dependent on you ? on you? it pisses me off but i am forced to admit i am dependent on you are dependent on me? it may piss you off but force to admit that you are are are depended on me. convolution be damned this is a scenario a problem of perception we must solve this.

Self Censorship

2010-03-07T19:54:00.003+05:30

Here i come into the next phase

Propelled by hope and an expectant look

on my face

Here i come running a different race

one in which only winners run

oh what fun

Here i am self censored

here i am mentored

by fearful people

Yet i am grateful

and my sacrifice is powerful

but not as powerful as their love

For their sake, i must fold?

Sway

2010-03-07T19:09:00.000+05:30

A reek of sweat
it may or may not be the doom
of impending death

The waves have met
and ricocheted
the boat didn't collapse
but it swayed.

And my heart swayed with it
on the blue waves
and it almost jerked free of its moorings.

A monstrosity then
rose up and bled
turned my insides on a whim
like the roiling shore bed

But the patience of encounter
by then long practiced
saved me from a flounder
and another night
I sleep free

In every man's life there comes a time when...

2010-01-21T18:01:00.004+05:30

The nameless landscape of the enemy boat betook Smarkand like a magic carpet. the drifts of lazy wind swept him up and took him to the upper reaches of golden sails that spanned the horizon. He couldn't even see the sea, it having slunk away to the area normally occupied by Outer Space; the vast atmosphere betwixt him and the sea clouded the vision.

The captian called something from the deck AND THUNDER RUMBLED IN THE AIR. Destruction seemed about to break loose, but Smarkand hung on. His Golden Journey had yet to begin. The fevered dreams of the previous night, the various insects that had tried to have him as an after dinner snack etc seemed to be from a different universe. As they most probably were but we digress.

The balls of steel were clutched to his chest, The pick of destiny on DVD. Moving to the edge of the mainsail after a journey of many days of clinging to weavings of cloth and nights of tying oneself often precariously to the material, he found his surfboard banked where he'd left it.

The waves were what skyscrapers are to ants. Which is pretty damn huge. But a surfers fear diminishes as a wave gets bigger. And since no surfer afraid of a big wave will ever be afraid of a smaller one, it goes without mention that logically surfers, as a whole were unfraid of waves, even hyperbolic tsunamis like the ones in 2012.

He leapt on to the board even as it slipped off its moorings and started to fall. It flew in the updrafts and swept forever downwards. Hopefully he wouldn't hit the deck by some ill luck. Destiny here he came.

Riding a Bicycle Downhill

2009-12-17T14:59:00.002+05:30

The metal is on and we are ready for our journey through time. Women should keep shut when men talk. How fundamental is that truth? Or is that simply a mark of respect? Even men should keep quiet when men talk. Other men that is. One should not interrupt, one should allow people to dig themselves into holes. Or dig themselves out.

Black Sabbath wrote Iron Man not to talk about some Superhero. That was probably only a manifestation of an illusion born in Robert Downey Jrs leather stoned mind. Iron Man is a subtle song about a man about which the only iron part was his mind. He was sad and he had his regrets for the way he treated people. He chased them away and they ran away as fast as they could; and in those glorious moments of furious retribution against those who meant him no harm, indeed, they may even have only felt love for him, he lived.

When men talk sometimes solo's rip through the air. These solos will have to then be listened to. For they are the essense of the conversation, the zeniths of passion provoked by the subjects under discussion. A true solo will command respect. A true solo will demand to be heard. A good solo will rip like lightning over a storm covered open field, it will strike down upon the tree of intellect and ignite it. Setting it on fire.

Can you hear your babies crying now? We have burnt bridges to get here. They lie as fragments of wood over vast chasms that cannot be recrossed. Some things in life will have to be left behind. Some things in life will never be the same again. Those bits of yourself left behind across deep chasms will never be reached again. You are minus what you were. And plus what you discovered here.

You have steeled yourself. And in the process you have exposed new areas of which you are unaware of, ready to be pierced by the spears of inadvertant opponents. You are walking steeled, steeled against the enemity that your exposure invites. And you are fighting a compulsion to hide.

You are riding a bicycle downhill.

Blood and Dust, 3: Omdulgence

2009-11-20T16:06:00.003+05:30

Continued from here

Welikala stretched luxuriously. The langur had been and gone in the night and his room was spotless. The golden light was shining in and was forming a mottled pattern on the Persian rug. The Cori was steaming in a mug on the bedside table. He took a sip.

Immediately the world went white, the flash of brilliance took him by surprise; it had been a couple of days since he'd had this particular blend, the Molten Universes of Om opened up before him and he was confronted with his choices. He briefly considered his options; the Vertu Palace would be interesting if Padmini and the girls were there. Although Padmini was beginning to bore him now, she was a bit too slutty. The Blistkreig was always great when you had a surge of blood lust to expend, but he needed something a bit more relaxing this morning, but nothing too quiet. He opted for the Blooming Landscapes.

He concentrated on the Gate to bring it closer, his mind sharpened by the influence of the Cori. Subconsciously, he took another long draft of the stuff. He wanted this hit to be a long one. Long and satisfying. He sighed in contentment as the blubbery gate resisted and then gave way beneath his advancing mind.

***
Back in his room in the 'real world', it must be noted here that the definition between real and virtual had blurred to a great extent due to recent developments, Glimmerang crept out from underneath Welikala's bed silently. He stretched, cautiously. Bribing that langur had paid off. 'Bribing a langur!' he grinned ruefully, 'if anyone had told me i'd be bribing langurs three years ago i'd have told my mom they were crazy!' at this he turned nostalgic and his eyes watered despite himself. Memories of his mother always brought about this affect.

He shook himself and set his jaw. He was thirteen now. And the only person old enough or close enough to undo the torment and evil that Welikala had unleashed upon the world. He must not falter now. Somehow, by any means possible, he must figure out a way to kill Welikala and absorb his powers, and use them to undo the spell that world had been cast beneath.

He was aware that simply killing him might make matters worse for everyone concerned; he must figure out how to take his powers first. Coming to his room to do this while he was fired out was something he'd thought of instinctively; Glimmering was a simple boy. And he'd felt that deep down, he had to see his opponent's face before he could figure out what to do. He slowly approached Welikala's prone form.

Welikala, in the meanwhile, had become aware of a presense in his er, presence. He always took care not to lose contact with the world of his physical body completely when he was firing up anywhere except in his Safe House. He slowly removed himself from the rowan haired, violet eyed forest nymph he'd been occupied with and gently extricated himself from the Omverse back underneath his closed eyelids. He waited.

Glimmerang was now standing next to the bed. He looked down at his opponent. An opponent who didn't even know his name. Indeed, Welikala, as far as he was aware, didnt even know of Glimmerang's existence. This realization brought upon a strange feeling of power and detachment, and he began to smile. Suddenly his eyes bulged out of their sockets for a brief moment and he dropped backwards to the floor, dead.

Welikala grunted in disgust and put away the beamer back under the sheets. 'Amateurs' he mutterred, he took another sip of the Cori and made ready to take up from where he'd left off. He hadn't survived to the grand old age of sixteen just by playing with barbie dolls.

living without the internet

2009-10-24T16:52:00.001+05:30

is bloody peaceful...

Chapter One: Blood and Dust

2009-10-15T13:33:00.002+05:30

Jamiraquai looked up. The playground was empty. there were empty chocolate wrappers being blown around in the dusty noontime air. The wind made slightly howling noises and everything was so still and poised that the very air spoke of impending violent movement.

Now was the time when Nercoprofanity would make his move. Jamiraquai tucked his lollipop into its holder, he pulled out his six gun and waited. Suddenly he saw a flash of movement to his left.

He turned, but there was no one there. Then he thought he heard a rustling behind him. But this time he didn't turn, he'd managed to come to his senses. ' Always remember to wait for the music' he told himself, repeating a lesson he'd learned many years ago. So he waited, body tense.

Suddenly there was a keening noise. And the strains of a violin played in a very screeching note penetrated the air. Jamiroquai frowned, he hated the drawn out stealthy suspense, he'd much rathar have heard the deep drum and bass of sudden confrontation.

He knew that Necroprofanity would be sneaking up like a snake in the dust now. The keening pitched higher, his enemy was closer. He reached for his belt knife but too late! the dust at his feet flew into the air blinding him and causing him to riase his arm to protect his face. Knife in hand, he staggered back.

Something then struck him in the stomach. his breath rushed out of him and he crashed into the dust. And Necroprofanity proceeded to claw the flesh of his stomach with his sharp beak while he pinned his arms to the ground. It all happaned in the space of a second.

Jamiroquai screamed like he was in the middle of a Slipknot track. Then he screamed like he was in the throes of the end of an Aerosmith song. He could feel the beak ripping through his flesh and into his guts. He could feel this vile manifestation of evil tear his bowels out in a feral rage.

He ripped his left arm free. And he plunged the dagger into the shadowy black shape eating into him.

To be continued....

Anyone want to?

what a strange long trip its been

2009-09-26T09:32:00.002+05:30

Retrospective introspection. When i look back things seem strangely empty. So much more i could've done. So much more adventure to have had. I look back and wish i'd joined the army, wish i'd become a deep sea diver anything but this. Anything but to be stuck behind a desk.

All pipe dreams in pipe seams. lost in a metal atom's electron surge. Quantum physics pulls me in the diretion of the normal. Responsibility, safety, obligation, duty, they exist even though we may think it cool to diss them, these inherent characteristics of life. But one has duty on cannot escape from; and 'duty is as heavy as a mountain, death as light as a feather' as Robert Jordan would say.

But there is no need to be depressed. Inside me there is this surging torrent of unrest, some trapped energy that wont stop churing that keeps me going. Energy is everything, hope is nothing without energy, dreams are nothing without energy, plans are nothing, nothing exists without energy.

Beat

2009-09-15T21:04:00.003+05:30

Amid the brouhaha and the pain there comes a realisation that once, i too was a man. Once i too felt a woman between my hips, once i too felt blood trickle from cuts in my flesh. once i too fought; for ideals now become nought. Once i too remembered the loss of losing a loved one, all too well.

Once i did swell, with pride and my head full of achievement did tell; a tale of a proud man, right before he fell. once i too gave in to all desire, good and bad. Once i too was corrupt. Oh what a life I’ve had!

But now my gums have rotted and my speech once so golden reeks of death. Now my limbs fail me and my sense barely avail me. Now i too will pass like the loved ones i have lost and i find myself thinking of my legacy. Of the will that is but ink on paper, so empty. So lost. Now death greets me grinning. I never knew he exsited! But I lie. I knew in my heart of hearts, that he would find me, in the end he did.

now the guns have faded, there is no one to fight my last fight for me. And i, an old man, will not know the truth of life and its meaning, even though ive completed its fullest, most gruelling training. i will be let free to gallop the last paths of an ending but then what? will i even know?

but deep down once again, from that place which is in every man, comes a drumbeat of truth. It nags you so much and soon you resort to simply ignoring it. I too drowned it out with sound, sound from anything and everything my hands found; but now my hands have given up on me. and my ears lie listless; i cannot control what they listen to.

But that beat has now faded. the truth that i never knew has never become jaded, because it has escaped me. And such truth as was in the world that i sought, only turned out to be lies in the end.

JERK? A beyond Borders Forum Theater performance

2009-08-21T12:03:00.004+05:30

BB is doing a Forum theater performance on the 29th of August

FT is an audience interactive mode of theater that lets the people watching stop, modify and redirect the story. It is loads of fun. And if you are the sadistic kind who likes to see actors suffer while they try to bring to life scenarios that are inside your head then this is right up your dark, dimly lit alley. Although in some cases you may be asked to come up on stage to perform a certain critical role yourself.

FT is great when it comes to dissecting complex social issues because of the myriad opinions involved. As such, a proactive, intelligent and participative audience is usually a key element.

JERK? focuses on ADHD, often a misunderstood condition in Sri Lanka. In fact, it is hardy known. Barely a thought is usually given to how sufferers cope up in a society that doesn't even recognize what they are suffering from. To illustrate, JERK? takes you through the rollercoaster ride of Rajeev; disturbed, distracted, a teenage rebel cum mathematical genius. The issues will be discussed as the story develops, through the various twists and turns of the plot.

It is for invitees only, so if you'd like to come please leave a comment, drop a mail, or even better text or call one of these numbers; 0777 335 320, 0777 491 718. Invites are limited, so you may want to make a little ha(-y while the sunshines)ste.

Views, reviews etc of previous Beyond Borders Forum theater can be found here

A SERIES OF TWEETS

2009-08-19T10:53:00.006+05:30

I sometimes tweet a poem or two when im in the mood. The verses flow out one by one as i walk down the street or sit in a bus or before i sleep. Here are two recent ones.

THE SWEETNESS

The only complaint men have when they are free is that there is nothing to tie them down;
So into the realm of vice he frowned looking for reasons to stay on the ground.
Into the eyes of gollum; green bubbling fear and angry intent; so solemn,
On to the back of a renegade beast he leapt; to feast upon madness too morbid to mention.
Off down his street looking for danger; to the corner shop to buy him a Benson.
'Its just u and me my little white friend, i'll burn with you until you see the end,
Then i will stamp you upon the ground; my face no longer darkened with a frown,
and go home.'; the sweetness of friendship lies in its parting...

AT SLUMBER'S DOOR

Waiting for the last queen to fall,
Waiting for that siren call;
That tells the end of battle

Waiting for the rush to ebb away,
Waiting for the calmness to take away,
The seething musth inside;
Denying me paradise

Oh fair temptress please deny me,
Please turn away my silent plea,
For heartbreak is a trifle;
To the pain of possessing thee

We are but figures in a big paradigm,
We are but diggers in a grave of time,
We are certainly not complete;
But we loath to become free

We are paupers, ourselves, on mountains of gold,
We are but beggars but we have no bowl,
We expect the impossible;
And delude ourselves..

Now as my mind takes yet another leap,
And silence calls me to the solitude of sleep,
My escape route is here;
Slumber makes things clear

But before i go let me silently weep,
For a great love lost; beauty i won't get to keep,
But some things are bigger;
And beauty sometimes is a perilous trigger

11 of the Worst Pickup Lines Ever Heard

2009-08-14T09:30:00.011+05:30

Adding credibility to my claim to being the blogospheres pick-up line expert, and blindly stealing off the internet (its got a lot of information you should check it out) i bring to you;

11 of the Worst Pickup Lines Ever Heard

1. Insulting Libraries Everywhere

"Do you have a library card? Because I'm checking you out."

2. The Ticking Clock Ultimatum

"I'll give you five seconds to give me your number or you can forget about going out with me forever."

3. The Self-Congratulatory Approach

"I'm a hot commodity. You're a hot commodity. We should go out."

4. The Old "Space Pants" Line …

"Are you wearing space pants? Because your rear is out of this world."

5. Random Anatomical Reference

"You have nice child-bearing hips."

7. Extra Cheese, Please

"Was your dad a robber? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes."

8. P.U. or I.O.U.?

"You owe me money."
"Why?"
"You've been living in my heart and you haven't paid rent."

9. Misplaced Ardor

"Your mom is hot! I bet you will look just like her when you are older."

10. Hair-Raising Comments

"How long did it take to shave those looong legs?"

11. Schooled in Geography

"Are you from Tennessee?"
"No."
"Are you sure? 'Cause you're the only 10 I see."

Yes, i have sadly been reduced to copy pasting off the internet. But what works for Rehani should techinically work for me. And here's how i boost my search engine stats; sex! anal! anarkali!

The Adventures of Super Bottle

2009-08-12T23:39:00.001+05:30

The bottle screamed
No Don't stopper me!!
i'll be a good bottle i swear
but they threw him in the sea

The man dreamed
oh i need some release
2 years stuck on this island
I AM DYING TO BE FREE

But in death he will be free
If he did in his life an appropriate good
but at this juncture thats not quite what he meant
I'm sure that can be understood

Release is release enough
when a man is confronted by a demon at dusk
he popped out a bottle and provided him
With three outlets to his lust

I will have whatever it takes
for a man to be ultimately free
i need to apply the disk brakes
to this life's endless misery

Well the demon he thought
(for he was kind about his head
and was good and wise...)
and at long last he said;

What you seek is written
from the very day you were born
what you seek is a promise
a promise you already own

What you seek will come to you
eventually; in dusk or morn
and what you reap will rely on
the oaths that you have sworn

If this life is misery
then hope you have not left
its contentment you need to be finally free
for what you seek is death.

And with that the demon puffed into air
and an empty bottle stood
the man, for a while, looked everywhere
then went on with life the best he could.

Still, he should have asked for sandwiches before getting all philosophical.

TWORDLE

2009-08-12T13:16:00.004+05:30

That’s my wordle. Apparently i say 'man' and 'ur' and 'good' and 'time’ a lot.

'Man ur in deep shit so you better come up with a good one on time'

women is a word iv never used there. You know why? Cos women are the ones who hunt your balls by night.

now occasionally, I harbor fears of being reduced to a stuttering mass of man blubber again so I’m strongly averse to relationships

but that don't mean that they don't make me fall oh no.

But enough about the depressing stuff.

I am constantly surprised by the amount of people willing to call up public radio and practically worship the leader of this country

It scares the shit out of me that there can be such fanatics in a country. They are blind to the fact that everything has negatives.

And some things more than others.

It strikes me as absurd that people harp about 'defeating the LTTE' when their international funding network is still wholly intact.

The blind truth is truly blind to the truth

I find it absurd that we still have a media in this country that has the audacity to call itself the media.

A racehorse crippled doesn’t serve anyone’s purpose.

The half caste media we have serves only to delude the public into false senses of security, into complacency.

Where are the investigations?

How can the truth be the truth when you decide which truth to make public?

I find it absurd.

Democracy died a long time ago

It surprises the shit out of me every time i realize that a lot of people choose to ignore this fact.

In the future

2009-08-07T16:14:00.006+05:30

In the future kids will be traumatized by illegal chartrooms. don’t chat with anyone you don’t know! will be the most common advice given to kids by their parents.

Sleeping pills will have massive demand and people will rely on them to get some rest after staying up bleary eyed in front of PCs chatting idly away.

Zombies will be commonplace as people wave their hands about in front of their face in a 'touch screen delusion' where they try to move the real world around like they move objects around on a pc.

A few generations later...

Aliens will land on earth and find an empty planet. All the people will be in sealed compartments that they will be put into as soon as they are old enough to leave the family pod. Which is a temporary social institution formed to honor a genetic obligation.

Goods will be transported via holographic molecular displacement. Atomization will require only commands from individuals in pods who will operate Earth’s complex infrastructure.

The more progressive thinkers would have already outsourced their thoughts and brains to twitter.

Sexual stimulation will exclusively happen through the art of cyberdildonomics.

The aliens will destroy the planet, thinking it’s empty, to make way for an intergallactic superhighway and yes they will be known as Vulcans, if you like.

When Twitter is down

2009-08-07T12:03:00.002+05:30

- the @ reply seems like a stupid concept.

- good luck getting the cat to laugh at your dick jokes.

- your followers forget you ever existed.

- the last breath caresses the muse's lips as she falls slowly to the marble floor, and a thousand doves fly skyward in panic that soon turns to sorrow. o, the day art died!

- something is technically fucked up.

- the world is a sad and lonely place.

- pass it around; 98 twitters of beer on the wall.

- a single-serving site seems like a good idea.

- grab the shortest guy you can find and pummel him.

- three of these on a loop will entertain you for hours.

- clouds robot sperm bird.

- use your words to share your feelings.

- your droll observation on testicles will lose most of its social relevance.

- it's probably because you used it wrong.

http://whentwitterisdown.com/

Yesterday..

2009-08-06T17:09:00.003+05:30

Wasn't half as dramatic as Fallen and Jarry made it out to be.

Me, Unsilent and Fallen agreed to meet at 4.45 a.m and then head over to Fort. Unsilent, having only slept an hour after a night of insane partying, arrived there exactly on time. I am shamed to say i was five minutes late. But fallen, having slept peacefully like a baby no doubt, ambled along about 20 minutes later, becoming the chief reason that Jerry spent a lonely few minutes in line for the tickets carrying our sandwiches.

Kandy

After a brief moment of panic at the railway station when papareboy started screaming 'wheres my ticket, wheres my ticket' before putting his hand into his pocket and finding it, the first thing we saw when entering Kandy was thousands upon thousands of people sitting on the pavements. eating bumbai mutai. which of course made fallen immediately purchase some for himself, and we all gorged on it while wearing sunglasses and talking in foreign accents.

Gehan came over smartly dressed and wearing shoes. We felt honored of course. and slightly ashamed that we'd come all this distance in just shorts and rubbers. I also took the opportunity to clarify a certain trait of Kandy society that Realskull and me had heard about, but i'll leave that lengthy and productive discussion to a post on my sociology blog.

We went to buy peanuts. 20 peanut shells cost twenty rupees in kandy. they like things all lined up. Apparently they do it to help them deal with numbers more efficiently in the cold weather. Which was probably what had effected me during that unfortunate brawl with the vadey seller that left him and me ultimately arguing about algorithms so complex that everyone else convinced me to give in and pay the extra 25 rupees he was demanding to spare them having to think so hard to keep up.

But that was later, and many things happened in the intervening time.

There is broad consensus on HisPs capacity to give (and take) directions. But here i must step in and intervene and explain how he probably saved us from a useless and near 90 degree trek up a mountain and took us up a even rockier stream which was slippery to boot. but the point is that we ended up at the 'bathing spot'. Though this particular bathing spot required so many feats of athleticism and sheer luck to reach that it can't be very popular. Which was probably characterized by the many undiscoved species of leech we saw. Especially the variety that caused Papare Boy's indegestion which is awaiting approval from the National Science Council to be called leechus papareguts.

'Scotland' will only be Scotland in a few hundred years. When global warming has progressed far enough to make it look like a lush green place in Sri Lanka. but it was lush and it was green. and the view of the Mahaweli river snaking along the distance was breathtaking. Full points to Monte Fano. You should go and see it. massive trees, beautiful forests, cool buildings, eagles and did i mention the view?

And no people.

There were no people!

You would be amazed at the percentage of time we spent yesterday during which we could have easily deluded ourselves into thinking we had stepped into a different universe frozen in time. 'Scotland' was empty. The monks having gone on leave, and our elderly guide was too weak to trek up the mountain with us.

The bathing spot was deserted, only sign of human life being some aricle of clothing or the other strewn haphazardly among the shrubs further upwards from the waterfall. This made the more imaginative of us (like Jerry) imagine things like rape and look lustily at certain others (like papareboy) and stalk them with cameras while they changed innocently behind bushes.

The best kimbula bunis ever tasted was real. It was crispy, the sugar just melted, it was one of the highlights of the whole trip.

This sunday we may mosey down to Mirissa, just to chill like, having had a stressfully adventurous day yesterday and all. Some tap rugger, fishing, snorkeling (HisP tells me about this great rock pool), and surfing if we can manage it.

all are welcome.

pics will be up and about soon i bet. And different aspects and events have been left out, otherwise this post would have been pages long.

Travel blog also opened. Must see how that will take off. HisP's idea.

Update: pics can be found here. The undoctored variety.

short haircuts futewuh!

2009-07-30T15:19:00.000+05:30

at least for me. we all have an image we are comfortable with and nothing seems to work as well for me as crew cuts do.

conductors (the bus variety) refer to me as 'aiya' now and gone are the days when they used to rudely shove me aside and snap at me to move up the aisle.

like just the night before last i was being a real annoying bastard in the bus cos i was hogging the footboard and the conda (as he is fondly known) found his movements vastly restricted. but not a word of protest did he utter. he bore me - the pain in his ass, patiently for a long time before respectfully asking; aiya kohenda bahinne? big brother, pray tell, where doth will you get off my bus?

so i told him.

and he most politely told me; 'waadiwenna'. please, why don't you take a seat?

so i did.

and just last evening i was ambling down Rudra Mawatha in Wella and this three wheel brother hailed me and said;

'Aiya, podi support ekak denna puluwanda?' Big brother, how about some help here?

his back tyre had a flat and he was missing a jack. so he needed me to help him lift the tuk and hold it in the air while he changed the tyre. and no, of course im not talking about lifting the tuk bodily right off the ground, i meant raise it so its back wheel was off the ground you dufus.

so i help him out and while we're at it i question him;

didnt you have a jack?

didnt have a jack no! he says

then he says 'sorry ah, almost done'

i say 'ah shape shape no problem'

then hes done and he utters a thanks and i say ok and walk off.

Just as if i do that sort of thing everyday!

You know what else rhymes with 'everyday'? Lingerie or lawnjeray.

i need some advice, preferably from discerning young ladies, with regard to this product. why does wearing sexy underwear under drab office clothes make a woman feel more confident? its not like your clothes getting ripped off near the photocopier is an everyday occurence is it? i understand about the lift and shape factor but really, is that all there is to it?

Please, help a brother out. its for an assignment i swear.

the love-lust connundrum

2009-07-29T21:41:00.001+05:30

lust - i want to bang you

love - i want to bang you forever

there. see? simple.

Lingerie Beach

2009-07-25T23:00:00.003+05:30

If there was ever a story that competed for the prize of most amount of idiotic characters it would be Troy. Or the Illiad. Now don't get me wrong, im a greek mythology buff just like you, or unlike you, but you've gotta admit the fact.

And Priam was the biggest fool of them all.

I had forgotten how great a run and a dip in the sea felt like since i left Wadduwa. The last time it was around 11 in the morning. On weekeds i'd run till i couldn't run anymore down the southern stretch of beach. then it was my habit to find a log in front of some still under construction hotel or deserted coconut estate and play the Michaelangelo.

That day i was just gazing at the water and i saw some chap in there waist deep just lounging, and it hit me like a wild coconut; how come i never thought of that before? So there was i, in the water for about half an hour, practically deserted beach, blue sea under a sun in an even bluer sky. Damn, the waves were so cool, the sand...

Ah best memories album, this one belongs in that.

Today it was at Mount beach, around 7pm. it was crowded. but i still spent some time in the water. ah the city aint got nothing on Wadduwa. But i'll tell you about one interesting place on Mount beach; once you pass all the restaurants on the nothern side, and keep going, you come to a deserted area which restaurants and tourists have failed to infiltrate. there are a few slums i think. You keep going and you soon come upto this potrusion of rock.

Its quite wide and there's some sort of building on top of it. and you cant reach it unless the tide is low. its a cool place. to the north you can see the whole shoreline of Colombo, with the lights glittering in the dark, and to the south its mount beach.

parking is a bitch though. a word of advice, its absolutely hopeless driving down beach road past the last turn off on weekend evenings or any other crowded time. You wont be able to find any parking one, and even if you do; two you'll have to bend in five different directions at the same time on the way back.

Once you're done running, you can grab a juice. theres a good place on Galle road somewhere opposite Lion Pub. Affordable and it'd prolly be a safe bet to say that they can and have made a juice out of any fruit in season at the moment. you can even get em with ice cream..

mmm.. ice cream.

Today's post courtesy; The Lingerie Industry; because you know your man deserves it..I guess you have to do a project on it to realize that thong swimwear comes in male versions as well.

where is your mind?

2009-07-21T23:32:00.006+05:30

no actually that is a very legitimate question

where is your mind? the 'is' is in italics. you think thoughts that take you to the mediterranian sailing with a topless model to the breakers of hawai on a king size surfborad riding a huge ass wave.

then you are in space, you are captain spliff. not the comic book dammit. you are the_Captain_Spliff.

you take off like a rocket your tail lighted up and streaming smoke across the vast vast galaxy. you are a discoverer of alien races. you are the harbinger of news from Outside. They thought they were alone. Then they met you. Then they wished they were alone again.

the mind the mind. have we ever realized the vast power of the mind? we can span the entire universe and then rush back to focus on that little ant running up your arm to get at that speck of honey you dribbled onto your stomach while eating your toast.

mmmm... honey and toast.

the mystery that is inside our own heads is the biggest mystery we'll ever know. a moment of deja vu when you innocently walk in the door and a friend greets you with a good natured insult; 'Hey asshole hope your day turns out worse than mine!' at that moment you see that girl you've been lusting after walk out the ladies washroom giving you that backward glance and smile with a fling of her hair while you're lauging good naturedly but slowly experiencing that melting feeling thats at the same time sweet as it is bitter.

yes, there's a word for it i know.

That moment was in your mind. you knew about it before. it was created by your mind so that you could make it your own reality. you glance bemusedly, you shake your head, mutter deja frikkin vu man and walk off to get your tea.

you're a spoonbender. and while everyone else calls you a freak and a fake. you still have the satisfaction of shutting their gobs up when you bend metal from ten feet away.
]#]==

you close your eyes, you write. and you dont know the person who just took over your body.

psychologists do psyche not because they're good at the mechanics of the mind. they are merely curious. curious about what goes on inside their own heads. in a way, they are possibly the most mentally obsessed human beings among us, they are true adventurers in the realms of mystery; perhaps one of the last great mysteries alive on earth.

but they rationalize. they belittle. culture doesnt like mystery. the species abhors not knowing. the human ego will not allow it. we know everything.

but i say bullshit. we know something, but it is nothing compared to everything there is to know. and as long as we keep denying that there is nothing more to know than what we already know, we know nothing.

so, where is your mind?

and yes, im going thru a fight club revival

I am Jack's cold sweat

2009-07-21T10:15:00.005+05:30

He made me do it. i am now crumbling before the forces. they are slowly but steadily bringing me down to my knees. i feel the dream slipping away so carefully sustained oh so carefully, for twenty five years..

Whats with society and its tendency to bring you down when you want glory?

i mean you want to be an astronaut when you are a kid and then you realize that the closest you will ever get to it is smoking up at Lannys on a Sunday evening.

there are three things you need.

Chance and Choice

ok thats two things

But you also need some willpower

and you need to stop rambling.

psychotic psychosis.

the moon. You wanted to be an astronaut then you discovered the moon landing was a hoax.

if it wasnt a hoax then where are the celebrations? why do we not see the glory of American scientific achievement plastered all over the media?

Why don't we see intervews and pictures of Armstrong and the other guys. Incidentally, didn't one of these other guys die recently? i don't know, it wasnt really reported in the media

are we crackpots? if we are, are we cracked for believing in the moon landing or disbelieving in it?

NASA wants to go back. Neil Armstrong is happy cos he thinks he may have dropped his pencil there the last time he went.

He was particularly attached to that pencil..

Ted X Colombo!

2009-07-15T11:57:00.002+05:30

Taking place at Punchi Theater this Sunday. Tedx Colombo will be exploring themes like post war development, the language barrier and the future of technology in Sri Lanka. It will feature some great speakers and also some landmark TED speeches from global TED conferences.

It's at 9.00 am. you can register to ensure a place for the whole event. See the BeyondBorders blog for more details.

For a taste of what it's going to be like visit the official TED site. If you haven't seen a single TED talk in your life then i am laughing in your face and patting you on the shoulder sympathetically ;) no seriously, they're great. Check em out. I recommend this to start with.

100 words

2009-07-13T16:17:00.004+05:30

100 words?

do you even know how small a write up of one hundred words is?

i was a squrrel, running on the trees in the upper Ramtops when Nanny Ogg converted me into a lovely damsel that seduced the king and is now queen of Lancre

I am the beast inside HAL that morphed into physical form when my last passenger left me and now i roam in search of those that installed the monoliths on my home moon

i am the last spark of mordor within which the ring buried its evil power and now i float on, ever burning seeking a cool flower to embed my spark in.

I am the avenger of Torts that struck wonderland and killed the queen (off with her head! i said) and i am at this very moment seeking a way in through your looking glass

i am the ghost of the past. that sells you the absense of fake turkeys and bathes you in false ideals to invoke guilty consciences in the name of a dread demon.

i am poverty personified i am the reason you asked for more and got nothing. i am the cause of your Twisted life; through all the dust, grease and grime of London

I am the seaman tht killed the whale that got immortalized because i killed him. That Dick.

I am the prick. that caused Man Friday to leave only a single footprint on the beach cos he was too busy hopping. he hopped on a tree and waited for his master to come bend over below him

i am steel. steel beneath skin that made the greatest of them all from nothing to rule the world in the heavyweight championship ring.

i am the beast that proweled the misty nights and gave the poor Count a bad name; and gave your girlfriends shivers and frights

i am no one. nothing if i cannot describe myself so that i can be seen. if i do not scream you do not see, you are blind and i am compelled to boast and reveal myself naked beneath spotlights to make you see me.

blasted job application forms.

Nilkamal Philosophy

2009-07-12T21:20:00.002+05:30

the clock ticked in space. surrounded by the obsolete white bull that was now in for it because it disobeyed its master and went into that china shop. and destroyed the chinese economy.
this prehistoric rampage of the chinese economy left its worker base completely unable to cope with modern day requirements from workers. so they went to live inside the wall.
there disguised as statues of skeletons they lived through the dynasties that folowed that went from history to prehistory against the drift of time because even though the clock ticked forward, the world ticked back.
then the Mings and the Chins and the ChinChings and the Kochins all passed through decadence into primeval caveman like dwellings of amber mountains within diamond spyglasses like they were seen from afar, but amounted to nothing much save dwellings in their minds eye. all value gone. no materialism existed then.
no peace in their minds because animals do not desire peace they desire they desire they desire they desire they desire....
what do they desire?
what do they desire if not peace if not to be left alone when the hyena cries and that lonely lion walks the night during the great periods of migration east when the weather thaws and they are going back home?
when will the candle burn and finish but then, when will the darkness end afterwards? especially since we have now run out of candles and the last one now burns. and all we can do is wonder when it will finish.
will it finish will it end? and what will come of us later?
when philosophy becomes a trend, then the human race is on a rafter
floating on to land that doesn't exist and never did
not since the clock ticked

The messed up cases

2009-07-10T10:24:00.005+05:30

She didnt tell me that she liked her little boys. I wasn't angry cos i didn't hav a choice. Had i had a choice; it was too armorous, her voice.

She seduced me with a tiny little gleam; deep inside her dark brown eyes, but to me it passed unseen. Had i had a choice; i would have saved myself, had i wondered; wondered...

Never before had the waterfall stopped falling, never in history was the cliff top so unseen. And as the sea went on from horizon to horizon; i passed by in my black ship with sails torn and mast destroyed.

Disguised, protected beneath a veneer of broken flesh; Lest the siren see me once again and tempt me to her warm cold lonely breasts.

The Coast Guard Department

2009-07-09T15:38:00.003+05:30

Tsk!

this is not a knife! whats wrong with you?!

hahahah!

this is a specialized cleaving instrument. meant to aid in tasks too complex for the common human fingernail!

oh no he's not going to KILL you! he's just going to to temporarly seperate your life force from physical constraints! thats not KILLING someone. its just temporary! its fun!

nooooo ur not fat! ur just big boned, in a generously proportioned sort of way! its nice! VERY COMFORTABLE ON THE EYES!

no way this is not expensive at all! buy it! the economic benefits you will get from long term use will far outweigh ANY short term discofort you may feel financially! look it comes in red!

Noooo! this is not an attempt to control the population by calling the Navy by another name and having them patrol the coasts just to remind you that WE ARE WATCHING YOU ALL THE TIME!! dont be daft! this is the Coast Guard Department!

!!!!

Nation Of Andorra Not In Africa, Shocked U.S. State Dept. Reports

2009-07-08T15:44:00.008+05:30

more funny stuff at The Onion

Obama Trashed. Optimus Prime for President; Transformers 2

2009-07-05T22:30:00.011+05:30

Before you read any further; mild spoiler alert!

so we went and watched a movie again, and this time it was pretty obvious what it was; a movie. and a rather good one at that, except that Obama gets completely trashed in it.

the whole planet is under threat of complete destruction at the hands of the evil Decepticons and what does the president of the United States do? he runs away leaving his people to suffer and hides in his er, secret hideout. As if the sun going nova will leave anything but an atomic dust particle or two of the solar system behind. But i suppose one can always rely on the audacity of hope.

to make matters worse, he installs one of his cronies from the White House special operations team to take over eveything in his absense. Demonstrating his skill for choosing the 'right people'. This special ops agent must have been the chief toilet block investigator or something because if he'd had his way, Earth would have been flushed down a black hole before you can say 'yes we can!' and wave a flag in an optimistic manner.

To save the day, the army takes command of the military operations like their supposed to, and chucks the last remaining representative of the president of the United States rudely out of an airborne plane. You can almost hear it screaming out; if the US left its dirty work to the military like it was supposed to, they'd overrun pretty much anyone who stood in their way of 'saving the world from evil'. They even partially trash Shanghai, yes Shanghai, the stronghold of the worlds biggest army; in the very beginning of the film. leaving to no doubt as to who holds whom by the balls, at least in the mythical constructs of Hollywood. Im sorry but was George Bush named somewhere as Executive Producer? i missed the credits.

The incompetency of the President aside, the US is portrayed as the world's foremost political and economic superpower, in spite of all real life evidence to the contrary. They decide everything from when to attack to where; infiltrating foreign airspace and carrying out terrible battles in middle eastern villages at a whim. But hey its all good, civillians have to die if the world (read; the US) is to be saved from evil alien threats, especially insignificant poor people in far off countries. the further off the better. Life is only a movie if its outside your boundries of reality afterall.

It doesn't help that the chief of the Decepticons looks like some robotic version of a Pharoah. leading to no doubt as to which rough geographic location evil threats usually originate from, give or take a few hundred clicks to the South or East.

Aside from all that, Megan Fox was hot. Fullstop. And if there was any socio politcal symbolism at all associated with her i missed it as my mind was going 'mwaaa!' weakly, over and over again whenever she came on. Theres gotta be a law against people that hot.

Theres more. One would think that after the total collapse of the US car giants the Autobots would get with the times and start being Toyotas and Hondas when driving around. Instead we see out of production General Motors trucks and gas guzzling Camaros, which try a bit too had to seem cool. Im sorry sir, but im buying a Maruti, as soon as i can afford one.

But they don't appear to have completely lost touch with the current car maket as the 'newly designed' autobots (yeah theres a host of em) prance around in the guises of what can only be CBRs and Kawasakis with all branding removed.

They probably couldn't find any US cars to make the rest cos every single other new robot i could see was either a toaster or a vacuum cleaner when they were not out being badass and cutting other robots to pieces with futuristic chainsaws and laser beams.

All in all, a good watch, great entertainment. Did i mention Megan fox was hot? and humourous. Not Megan Fox, the movie. the movie was humourous. Maybe not as coolly subtle as the first one's sparse scattering of funnies but it still had the audience hooting wth laughter. They also probably needed the jokes to make up for a weak plot, not too great directing and dollop of corny hindi movie moments.

I'd rate it a little bit below Wolverine in terms of pure entertainment value but way below Transformers 1 if you're looking for a real quality watch. But watch it, its better than Night of the Museum 2 and leaves the shitpile i was tortured through last week, in the galactic dust. It'll have you glued to your seat, which is more than what a lot of other movies seem to be capable of doing lately.

Boozing water

2009-06-30T13:20:00.002+05:30

Camera, slightly going on the blink. office mates with fetish for using the remains of drinking sessions as water bottles for daily consumption. Probably takes away the dreariness of work; every time you sip you're briefly taken back to drunken nights of excess and glory and all that. Or there is also the possibility that people were just looking for a water bottle and heard that plastic bottles were unhealthy..

Watchmen

2009-06-29T11:50:00.013+05:30

We went to watch a movie yesterday. At least i thought it was a movie. If i wasn't constricted to the norms of reality i would call it something between a lullaby and a sleeping pill. Except for the occasional violent bits consisting of child molestation, falling off of buildings, vetically excecuted cleaving-knife chops to skulls, rape and Jerry trying to descreetly grope people it was pretty uneventful.

There was a huge blue chap. body like Adonis. Thoroughly naked but with a blurry bit where his pelvis should have been. I mean, if you're gonna get electricuted or get caught in the middle of a fusion reactor and get superpowers and all that junk, the least that could be asked for is to have all your organs intact, to take advantage of the perks of the job, so to speak.

But he didnt seem to be totally deprived. There was this latex clad bombshell whom he used to satisfy while also looking at the advanced schematics of a nutron bomb diffuser at the same time, a fact which she didnt seem to appreciate, not that i think it felt any different; she just resented the fact that he could actually think of saving the world from nuclear holocaust when he was 'supposed' to focus his complete attention on her (This type of behavior comes standard with the package when it comes to women, even in movies).

Disaster was averted when she dumped him for a geek with a Batman fetish, who flies around in a crazy contraption that looks like a bulemic bee. He ends up crying like a baby in the end, when his boyfriend dies.

There were snaps of political rhetoric that were obviously meant to be some sort of subtle and darkly witty neo-Marxist critique of the existing social order. There was, to end with, a noble 'message' where the bad guy walks free and the good guy (the blue guy) takes the fall and goes back to Mars to build merrygorounds so that people can live in peace and achieve the much dreamed of status of a 'global hippie community'* for the rest of survival.

*Meaning they would start smoking marijuana and living in the open and permanently give up on baths because they are a call back to 'civilization' which is symbolized by 'industrialization' which harks back to 'competition' which reminds them of 'competing for resources' which obviously means war and if there is one thing a hippie hates it is war.

So they shunned technology and took to idyllic foresty villages and gave up on space exploration (because 'technology' is 'civilization' and so on and so forth) and they all died a few millennia later when the sun went nova. And the Blue guy banged his head repeatedly against Sirius because it was all his fault they turned into hippies and missed out on the chance of colonizing the Milky Way and saving themselves.

That last bit will probably show up on the sequel. Oh wait, crappy movies don't get sequels; that last bit will probably be buried in some unread script in the dusty corridoors of Universal Studios 'til some 'creative type' picks it up fifty years down the line and my grandson later writes a post about it on his blog which would be similar to this one if he had any taste to speak of in entertainment.

When reality bites on Mondays

2009-06-29T10:18:00.005+05:30

Mondays are a symptom of corporate dominance; they are the wiliest instrument of fate they are obvious days; where your desperate ways are revealed to you in the harsh morning light.

The relief however brief felt on a sunday night gives away to a weary sort of fright as the alarm peals out in a death knell of doom your peace vanishes as your mind is consumed with realities that are normally concealed.

The feelings so free; on a friday, one night of glee fade away and dark thoughts of the fates of human beings in the grey dawn arise

thoughts, unwelcome, thoughts; chase away greed; thoughts of fate, death and the purpose of life assail you as you go about your daily routine, anything to escape

from this monstrous landscape.

So as the morning gives away to sunlight, and the demons of everyday dreariness and worldly delights take over; you are once again externally focussed and once again a short termist;

in the short term of life.

FrankenMarketing

2009-06-24T22:57:00.011+05:30

Management. Man if there was ever a science that dealt with pure common sense it would be management. I mean you go for years of classes and slave through exams only to come up with what a five year old would say is the the most obviously logical solution to a problem and three years down the line you don't really feel like you've learned anything. You just feel like a coconut. Husk removed, oil extracted, and distributed across several locations ranging from five star hotels to slums to the Everest of garbage that is sitting in Maligawatte; the same coconut, but 'diversified'.

Ok that analogy looks and sounds a bit off doesnt it? No matter. The blunders that big firms make is what actually brought me to write this random one. The story of McDonalds entering India with a beefburgher is probably a folk tale by now to any person who sat through a marketing or management course at any point in their lives over the last fifteen years. I mean here you have a global firm, very experienced, entering a massive market famed for their reverence of cows and how do they go about making their entry? by making a big hullaballoo about how great their beefburgher is. im sick of it.

Im sick of hearing about this chicken entrepreneur who translated their slogan 'it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken' into spanish and ended up with 'it takes a virile man to make a chicken affectionate' or something along those lines. im sick of hearing of this airline who went into Hong Kong and decided to be all innovative and give out free flowers to first time passengers. Great idea right? Wrong. They chose carnations and guess what, Hong Kongese or however you may call them associate carnations with death; the big D word, the one that everyone tries to ignore. How would you feel if someone handed you a miniature coffin or a free voucher to a funeral parlour when you board a plane? Dumbasses.

So what management students and lecturers all over the world do is, they look at these chaps who made these blunders and they snigger at them in a superior manner. They laugh over them during drinks. They use them as examples to describe common everyday events, leaving those not in the loop contemplating dialing the sanatorium. it makes these chaps feel good to think that even global corporate giants can make stupid mistakes like these. it helps counter the constant sense of inferiority that drives them to take up jobs in the world of corporate bum slavery. for evey guy who climbs the corporate ladder, there is another one fumbling and falling down to the endless depths of no return, or simply retiring.

And then we have countries like China that are driving the rest of them up the wall. How can you beat a place where there is enough labor to fill several factories that costs you only about 2 dollars a month to maintain? and that is per-factory. Salaries all over the world are being cut because of the inexhaustible rate at which people seem to be crawling out to work out of the nooks and crannies of China. I think they've got some kinda people producing plant hidden in there somewhere. Either that or they've been planning this for centuries. And perfecting their own brand of top secret Kama Sutra, with modifications designed to focus on the end result and not the actual process of the thing. So if Bill Gates starts driving a Toyota and that hotshot fast rising executive at your Rotaract club pulls into the next meeting on a BMX, you know who to blame. Or thank.

And its all about money. Oh no, don't be fooled by the altruistic overtones. Even CSR is simply alturism furnished with a pair of binoculars (to modify a Helvetius quote). Its all about driving profit. I was initially disillusioned with the whole concept of marketing because i simply saw it as a way of bullshitting, tricking, manipulating and convincing some poor chap to forego six months of his mortgage payments to buy a pair of Pradas to finally feel like a man. Now i know that if that chap was stupid enough to actually gobble it up, he deserves the cardboard box he is living in and he deserved to be tricked and bullshitted and brainwashed. You're just dealing out justice. 'No worries mate, it's all good down under' says the eskimo who just bought the latest LG 'ice machine' three door 'super door cooling' Made in Australia freezer cum kitchenette, and who sold his father's only whaling boat to afford it; plunging his family into a doomed state of polar bear fodder.

It teaches you dog eat dog ness. It teaches you to kill or be killed. If the corporate world is the jungle, then management is the art of survival. Quick on your feet, running before you even leap out of bed, running in your sleep. Stalking your prey day and night. You call him a customer and claim he's always right. But when it comes to the most important things in life, he's only right if he agrees with you. You can hear the thunder before the storm but you can't hear the marketer as he stalks you while you innocently watch Prison Break, or foolishly read hit-ad while sitting on an empty wallet and a soon to be declined credit card.

Its sick, its disgusting, yet i am almost triple qualified in it. Im a disgrace. But im out to get your money, I won't warn you again. Or i will if you buy these Pradas, go on treat yourself, you're a man that needs them. Your family deserves them. Your career depends on them. Your daughter's marriage prospects depend on them. Buy them! You're feeling sleepy, when i snap my fingers you will wake up and pay me and go home and ignore the repossessors and love the cardboard box that you end up in because you're a loser and im the king and the world is a moneymaking jungle. I'm too classy for an evil laugh.

Pseudo-Anonymous

2009-06-16T11:14:00.002+05:30

How many of us who blog these days are actually anonymous? If I had any anonymity, it was reduced to a state of pseudo-anonymity after open mike. Not that i regret it. It felt kind of good to come out into the open and then realize that you don't really feel like deleting all those posts with possibly embarrassing details of your life embedded in them, contrary to what you thought.

So now I’m just pseudo-anonymous. I simply say pseudo because TheWhacksteR is now simply a pseudonym. If you want to know my real name just click on the link to my twitter account that’s on this blog somewhere.

I have no idea why i chose the name TheWhacksteR. Its definitely a painful ask to type. It all started as a prank. I somehow convinced someone i was SMSing that i was the offspring of the Armenian ambassador and that my name was Wackinnaborgeouseworsoski ('my friends call me Whacko'). Revealing this to a couple of friends who actually knew the person in question brought about a hilarious reaction and the joke went on for quite some time. The name kind of stuck afterwards and 'Whacko' seemed to have kind of a ring with the state of my mentality so when i started blogging i guess i improvised on it to come up with TW.

On an unrelated note to blogging, but on a related note to Armenians, I once went on this ITN TV show (Fan Club i think) pretending to be this Armenian (Serge Mihailovitch) working for an NGO specifically involved in eradicating cholera in the North and West. The lady handling the show was kind of miffed that a 'Russian' was calling her and commented on how alike my accent was to Indians. At which point i objected to being called Russian and stressed on the ethnic characteristics of Armenians. I also pointed out the fact that i was heavily loaded with work these days due to many of my co-workers being unfortunately afflicted with the deadly disease they were supposed to be combating.

I also made a suggestion that the host should move around a little bit more and look a bit more alive, which didn’t go down too well with her i think. At the end though, the promised Metallica video did not materialize and some worn out 10 year old MC Hammer type love song was going to be played in its stead. I raised my objections which turned into a bit of an argument at the end of which i enjoyed telling her that in fact, i was Sri Lankan and thank you very much for the entertainment, at which point i was cut off.

I was heavily into System of a Down those days which may explain the Armenian connection, yeah i know.

So yes, anonymous blogging, what made you guys pick your own names? I’m sure there’s got to be a good story or two lurking around somewhere...?

Crude Awakening

2009-06-10T17:27:00.003+05:30

Neophytes in black
threatening murder for treason
we always knew you'd be back
claiming for the sides of reason

Now, this may be the wrong season
but desire still dictates
and in the deeper reaches of my soul
a slow monster awakes

He wants to get you out of his head
he wants to lustily tear you apart
but he also wants, he also needs
to love you with all his heart

He wants to bathe you in tenderness,
while inside he's aflush
he wants to live the life of an ease:
a lust in which, he wants to trust

But he must not be freed!
for he may do harm with this, indeed;
He may feed upon himself
before he plants this seed.

(...)

2009-06-08T17:28:00.004+05:30

renephobe
whats that word mean?
i don't know
but then again
what does anything?

xenophobe
ah now that word means something
but then again
why should you fear me?

confusionoscope
thats what my eyes are
the word presents itself
like that kaleidoscope
that broke

i spoke
there, i said what was on my mind
now forgive me my bated breath
as i try to figure out
if the truths i spoke
were sufficiently described as artistic lies

tricks of the mind
i play and im played blind
until stumbling, a blind man
i turned back to the same door
from where i came in

there is a way back in (i think)
if i try hard again
if i was to be a different man
if i were to
re-wire my brain

but the room im trying to get into
is a bit untidyt
im not proud of it
but a lot of effort
if i want to live in it

or take my chances
in the dark
hearing geckos fart
and listening to shadows creak
as stumbling, another door
i seek.

if i were a troll

2009-06-04T10:20:00.000+05:30

I also want to troll. but i don't think i have the random sense of hate towards the rest of society right now to fuel me. Which is a pity though, cos i think i'd have made one hell of a troll.

But lets spare a thought for them cos it takes a lot of effort to read through the whole of the blogodrome and nitpick through various posts to come up with a detailed analysis of things that can be used to poke fun at people with. Its probably a full time job even.

And if you're having a bad day with humor generation. There is always the option of inserting various profane words to spice it up a bit. Always covers up a lack of anything funny to say, a dirty word here and there.

Also, fresh material for posts is all around you. Other people think of topics to write about and all you have to do is take their posts apart and make fun of them.. Which, if you are sufficiently alienated from the rest of society, should'nt be too hard.

Your inverted sense of inadequacy will transform into a false sense of superiority that will completely misinterpret your actions as 'constrcutive' and your criticisms 'positive'. Being a troll is not as easy as it may seem though, any good troll probably needs to keep the anger alive to keep going. Probably Padashow, possibly listens to a lot of Slipknot and flips the bird to himself everytime he/she/they see a reflective surface.

Thats conditioning man, we all need to keep our shit locked down yeah.

Also, it seems the people you make fun of will actually comment on your posts with glad tidings of joy that they have been worthy of your attention. And they will also sadly, mostly be the only commenters on these posts. Unless you are a bit more commercial. But no matter, that shows you hit your mark yes. And any good critic needs attention.

Tagamolilah (to Dennis)

2009-05-31T02:51:00.009+05:30

Five words that came into my mind when this whole 'situation' befell our home land. Thank you for the tags.

1. hmmm (thoughtful..)
2. Hmmmm..(skeptical)
3. Hmm..(cynical)
4. Humh (acceptance..)
5. Hmmmm lets wait and see what happens now...

hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm.. reminds me of this Crash Test Dummies song.

P.S Dennis was an old boss of mine. Big guy, Filipino. Hair long and braided down to his waist. He's walking down Galle Face at night with one of his girlfriends. The hangers on at Galle face approach him (''cos you know that Chinese girls have a bad reputation..').

'Hey Brother!' they say

'Naaah, i dont think we share the same mother'..

'Hey Pal!' they try again..

'Naaah i don't think you and me are friends'

Dennis walks into dine-mor with a bunch of guys. They convince him that the appropriate way of addressing a waiter in Sri Lanka is to say 'ponnaya'. Dennis gets hungry and tired of the late service. It's the busy lunch hour and he has to yell and so yes the rest is obvious...

Dennis in the training room. His always calm disposition is awry today because a new top guy, self proclaimed nigga from the Projects (a Mr. Herb 'Chop-from-the-top' Kimble), is getting on everyones nerves.

Reza is sitting next to me. He is concentrating hard as Dennis lets loose his tirade. His chin is resting on his fist as his index finger taps on his lips. then suddenly

'Yeah Reza, f*** you too!'

Reza is dumbstruck. He's confused, realizes what may have gone wrong and manages a shaky..

'But Dennis, i was holding this finger' while holding up the offending article for all to see.

Dennis = non-plussed.

So What? in the Philipines THIS means f*** off!

i am yet to figure out the truth of this.

Pick up fine

2009-05-26T10:00:00.003+05:30

We travel back in time a decade or so and...

There i am, a confused teenager wondering how the whole guy girl thing works. Slowly, pop culture exposes me to the phenomenon of pick up lines and i confront the holy grail of sexual pursuit; this is what i had been waiting for, this was the secret!

I put my newfound knowledge into practice. I started off with the lame 'have i seen you somewhere before?' line at an Interact event. A series of bemused girls say mixtures of things like 'er. i dont know hmm let me think about it', 'er, have you? where?' until, jackpot! one goes 'oh yeah at drama comp right?!' (i had never been to a drama comp in my life) i say 'yeaaah, i think you could be right!'.

So this one is really pretty and im all excited and manage to carry through a conversation and get her number and promise to call her sometime. Only i was so excited to have pulled it off i had to ask her three or four times afterwards for confirmation. Just to make sure it had really taken place outside the confines of my mind.

This other time, im at a rock concert and im walking up the stairs at MKOP. There are these two girls and one of 'em, as far as i could discern, was checking me (or possibly my friend, assuming she was slightly squint eyed) out while we were going up the stairs, so i go upto them and ask the one who was looking;

'Have you been feeling kinda tired lately?'

What can only be retrospectivey described as confusion, but disguised to my eyes in the heat of that moment as charmingly aroused curiousity, passes across her face.

'Uh tired? No?'

A pause, she was obviously not wondering which lunatic asylum i escaped from; Angoda or Mulleriyawa, and then she drops the question i've been waiting for...

'Why?'

So let her have the punchline.

And lean against the bannister and look into her eyes, not a lot unlike Elvis, expecting to see that brief moment when she would melt as her walls of restraint collapse beneath a river of uncontrollable adoration.

Instead I see horror. And indignation. And she blurts out;

'Excuse me but my mom is here!'

That was probably the only thing she could think of, but she was refferring to the 'chick' standing next to her, and the scary part is that I think that really was her mom, who was leaning on the banister like some rocker chick and giving me a look as if to say; where did you get the balls??

So i followed the first instinct of wisdom, I flirted with the mom. No, not really, I walked away before any fathers or brothers could materialize. See the thing with instinct is you gotta make sure its not too influenced by the latest installment of American Pie, or you'll find yourself getting into a sticky situation, rather like that unfortunate pie in the movie.

one line errs

2009-05-25T14:26:00.002+05:30

it only hurts when im breathing.

have you got some sort of lung disease?

ah nononononono just some some lovey dovey stuff, some lovey dovey stuff

Creating Superman

2009-05-23T21:00:00.015+05:30

Nietzsche by jdgomezmo

Reading the work of Friedrich Nietzsche we are welcomed into an armchair of volatility, comfortably immersed in insane thought. I think this guy invented superman, though I haven't actually followed the lore of the caped one.

Now the superman emerges from what was Nietzsche’s greatest work. Thus spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche, already established as a profound German philosopher, racked by illness, almost on the verge of death, speaks his last will and prepares to succumb. He is in his mid thirties. But by a miraculous as-luck-would-have-it stroke of fate, he is cured and then is overcome with the 'joys' of life. This sadly, does not last and in a few more years he is up in the Alps somewhere, in solitude, contemplating (you may be tempted to ask what exactly he was 'contemplating', I’m getting there, I’m getting there).

He writes,

I sat there waiting - waiting for nothing
Enjoying beyond good and evil now
The light, now the shade; there was only
The day, the lake, the noon, time without end.
Then my friend, suddenly one became two,
And Zarathustra passed by me.

He discovers a new religion, a new philosophy; he discovers the answers to his lifelong unrest with humanity, the human condition and destiny.

And he invents Superman.

Through the words and wisdom of Zarathustra, a close parody of the Persian prophet who spawned the religion of Zoroastrianism, he extolls the virtue of what is conventionally known as 'evil'. He exposes altruism, sympathy and every other 'good' sentiment held noble by the world's religions as 'weak'. He curses them to be the cause of dragging humanity to the dredges of mediocrity, of encouraging the great to become like the insignificant and helpless; the 'herd' or the masses.

He argues that for the human race to develop there should arise from among us a class of people stronger, braver, fiercer and more violent. A class of man that lives dangerously takes risks and explores new frontiers. A people not held back by sympathy to the weak, a people who exult in the glory of war; who conquer all before them, who will set the platform for the creation of the ultimate human; the Superman.

But the natural order of things is against the creation of this Superman. Nature favours the weak. It seeks to sustain the herd. It does not encourage individual human greatness. Democracy is the bane of mankind, for it only enforces the will of the herd, the will of the masses, thus preventing the rise of an elite class of human, preventing the progress of the species to a higher level.

What he advocates is simple. It is also kinda bizarre. We are weak. There is poverty and destitution. So instead of sympathizing and languishing along with the greater part of humanity we must individually shun the weak and only associate with the powerful. Breeding must only take place with other powerful people. Love should not be allowed to result in childbirth, because love knows no rationality. Children so born out of the powerful should in turn be groomed through education and conditioning to even greater heights, thus becoming more noble than the preceding generation. The goal of Superman is a dream, a dream that should be fixed in the eyes and minds of everybody, excluding anything else.

A socially engineered path to creating an uber-human is what his religion is about. Yes he created a religion, out of thin air, the thin air of the Swiss Alps. ‘He conceived of man as something that man must surpass’ – Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

Nietzsche went mad in his mid forties, and died at fifty six. His work was largely disconnected and invited a lot of criticism, yet he succeeded in bringing a fresh perspective into established institutions and thought that had gone unquestioned for centuries.

And after the Superman? After the superman comes Eternal Recurrence. When everything will fall apart all over again and the whole progress of human thought will have to start once more form the primitive ages. This according to him is the ultimate and terrible truth.

Insane or what? And I ask that in all objectivity. And also, what a difficult name to spell eh..

Media Hogwash

2009-05-22T11:13:00.004+05:30

Lost. That is what I am. Lost for words, lost in my dreams that render everything else insignificant, there is a despicable atmosphere of over marketed victory in the country. People individually are not the problem. But people collectively are.

The media is equally to blame. The nationalistic commentary on some media is positively vomit inducing. The government has obviously got to be behind it. Such corny fervor would not arise from any human brain other than one hell bent on control and a bullshit whitewash.

The new definitions of ‘race’; that of lovers of the nation and those that hate, are ambiguous and smell to me a like a harbinger of more oppression. Someone once said ‘dissent is the greatest form of patriotism’ and if not the greatest form, it is still a part and parcel of being a good patriot.

The greatest need for a ‘free nation’ is a free media. But the media here are cowed. They bow down to the will of the government; they are too scared to do their duty. There are rules and regulations preventing the broadcasting of certain events. That should actually be unconstitutional, these should actually be condemned, yet nothing is done. The justice system must be incapable of ensuring the rights of a free media movement, so does that mean the problem lies there?

These restrictions, whether spoken or unspoken, covert or otherwise, defy the essential values of the media movement, and therefore the media in the nation sadly does not amount to much.

Better to be deaf, than to have to listen to the hogwash in the media.

Dee's Peece Zeitgeist

2009-05-21T12:16:00.011+05:30

So DeeCee is planning on putting her production skillz to good use and is calling for all you blog narcissists and not so narcissists to submit your video's in for a 'capture the vibe of the moment' project.

There are right now easily around a million bemused twenty somethings awkwardly blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight of peace in this country and this is probably one of those things that only happen when a thirty year old war finishes really abruptly, which is not often.

So help her out with your video submissions and if you're shy you don't have to show your face. Just express your righteous love for the flower of power by showing a pair of rubber slipper clad feet and jean clad legs walking over a massive map of Sri Lanka and dabbling in the cool lagoon waters of Batti :D

Im gonna start working on mine right away.. hunting for ideas hmmm...

Go check out her blog post here. for the nitty gritties..

Peace!

Come to Sri Lanka, see our war crimes.

2009-05-18T11:15:00.005+05:30

So the EU wants to organize a tribunal thingamajig to investigate civilian deaths not only by the hands of the tigers but also by the hands of the government. Well, here's a thing or two for you to consider Mr. EU bigwig. We never claimed the LTTE posessed nukes, and we never used falsities like that as an excuse to indiscriminately kill people. We never bombed no wedding parties and killed whole families just because we suspected the bride's fifth cousin by marriage to have a nephew who once was possibly in the same building as Osama Bin Laden. Sure we don't have a lot of clout in the international arena, unlike some people, but we are human beings too, and therefore equipped with brains capable of intelligence to a certain degree, and your self righteous hypocrisy and cowardice is painfully obvious, even to us.

Why don't you bring down Bush to the Hague and try him for war crimes instead of letting him peacefully sit in his ranch watching his cows piss into the drying desert sand? Why don't you investigate all the accusations of torture and disappearing tourists instead of trying to poke your nose in places you are not wanted? Why don't you investigate the atrocities on the Gaza strip and the audacity of the Israeli's claim of being able to use precision bombing with the ability to target a single insurgent within one million civillians right before they demolish the UN office in an aerial attack (oops)? Come Mr. EU bigwig, we all know who lubes your ass every night.

But you know what we also know? we know your threats are empty. Oh yes Mr. Bigwig, we know the game you play. Its been played for a long long time and we are familiar with the rules. The first rule is there are no rules. Here's how it goes, you will use your clout to make us submit and you will proceed to own our asses. Yes you will secure the national resources and you will secure an 'open' economy and you will 'integrate us into the global arena'. And thank you very much we will too, 'cos maybe thats exactly what we need. Oh yes, you will try to bribe our leaders and if you cannot reach a compromise, you will roll us in the dirt and call us terrorists and rogues.

But you also know that this is not as easy as it used to be, oh no. You have competition now. And we have Iran on our side, and the Russians. Who aren't exactly on pally terms with you we notice. Also our geographical location puts us in an ideal position to take advantage of the regional economic boom, we only need to hope like hell our leaders will see these opportunities and grab them. Oh yes, we may eventually have to be owned by someone but at least now we've got options.

So come to Sri Lanka, try your luck. Here's the famous hospitable smile also =)

Defense report

2009-05-15T11:41:00.007+05:30

May as well try an excercise to pull off a bit of a mental thread of meaning from my teeming head
As people die we wax lyrical on blogs but do we even try to stop the killing?
People are DYING and all we do is wax lyrical
lyrics so spherical you cant find an edge to grasp a bit of meaning

why write about things when you writing about it is not going to stop it
why not just ignore the deranged war of blood and flesh flying around faster than shrapnel
for writing about it devoids you of reason and accuses you of treason
woe be tide anyone who is against it

the dead are piling and no one who is on either side can stop it
we are in a place where people dying is a natural phenomenon of the ending of a conflict
they are bombed and they are ripped to shreds as propaganda attempts to weakly restore order
we over here are so eager for peace we don't really give a shit, if there is some 'mild' blood loss and disorder

The UN screams but they dont really seem to want to step in, lest they bury the sovereignity of this island
the EELAMIST bastards they just want a ceasefire to regroup, rethink and restore their battling order
the GOVERNMENT of tricksters, they are money twisters and yes im a critic
the morality we lived by is dead and in this carnage we are losing our soul to the devil, the devil, the devil.

the devil.

Nobody cares about the dead
not us not them not the UN, not really.
they are shelled and lost and struck a terrible revenge
for being at the wrong where, during the wrong when

Nobody really cares about stopping the dying
we are all utopians looking for a future of peace and loving
lets cast a grimace upon our healthy face
so that we can eventually have a hope of peace

Lets all go blogging and lets all write about politicking
the paining the gaining of winning
lets all take the topic and lets grind it and and wind it
now i dont mean to be a cynic but in this blood covered landscape, can we find it?

can we find it in a widow's dream?
can we find it in a mothers scream?
can we find it in the eyes of an orphan boy?
can we find it in the mournful songs of the days gone by?

where can we find it?
how can we find it?
what is peace?
where is it?

*yeah a little angst there.. call it a part of that license you're supposed to have when you write, and no offence to anyone writing about the war btw, writing about it is important, you should keep it up. This is mainly about the desperation of the IDPs. When it comes down to it, the situation right now is such that most parties/interest groups involved want it all to somehow finish. The plight of the dying seems to be a secondary concern. These are my sentiments, and i admit to feeling the same myself, which is sort of despicable isnt it?

Gangsta Rippin'

2009-05-12T10:45:00.014+05:30

Many people have called me a 'poet'. And by many i mean about five. Many others have dismissed my 'poetry' as meaningless and many have meaninglessly referred to it as 'deep'. Still, many have speculated on the origins of my lyrical brilliance. Truth is it could be any one of the following.

1. Aliens implanting test chip in brain.
2. Accident involving Milton's Paradise Lost and a slippery floor. book ending up embedding itself in brain as a pshychological snapshot that morphed into a life of its own.

But i actually started off my 'career' writing gangsta rap when i was fourteen. And probably owe most of my poetic brilliance slash lameness to Eminem. That boisterous white boy who showed me how to be black and proud of it biatch! I wrote:

yo!
yo yo yo!
my words are like a death toll
i make the nay saying bastards' heads roll
an apostrophy lost
my grammer is like pus
seeping through the wounds of my broken english
but i dont let it stop me i get stronger with it
yeah im a wordsmith, with a mcahine gun
i scare your pants off and i make you run
i make you scream and want to find your mum
i'll make your m**** F***in bleed from your ears son

Im a gangsta rapper
with the shock treatment unit
its me agianst the world baby

I ain got no regrets
this is a battlefield
and i slip and slide like James Bond on speed

Yeah..Uh huh..

Or Something similar..

Pretty soon, my gangsta walk and gangsta talk garnered me a lot of attention. And nick names. And there was that unfortunate incident where i was adding a bit of color to the national anthem during assembly and this guy laughed his head off and gave me away to a prefect, who then proceeded to yell at me very loudly. for a long time afterwards.

never liked them, prefects.

But not everybody was a playa hater. I had a few fellow artistes in my crew see. Although only one of them was a fellow rapper (most of the others used to sing Westlife) and him and me eventually formed this band called the Shock Treatment Unit.

A few performances on stage are also to my credit, as are a few audiences of bemused people. Although i never got a chance to actually really get down to some cold hard gangsta rap on stage. A pity.

Anyways, my gangsta rappin days are behind me, i hear you breath a sigh of relief, and an era of rhymes simply followed. Followed by a few kind people who felt my work was worthy a compliment or two. I kept writing more because of them and have found that a lot of interesting things that mostly take place in my head and would be inexplicable in plain everyday descriptive language can be expressed quite accurately in the throes of a few jumbled words.

And when i write stuff like;

A dead poem breathed new life into a vacuum with its last breaths
it created pulses in the air with its dying heartbeats
the pulses became butterflies and created storms in far off places
changing many landscapes and changing many faces
the dying cries of the poem lost itself in the screaming wind
for now the storm of his heartbeats had come back to him
and he passed in peace within the matters of his own doing.
What more can a poem ask but immortality in the act of dying?

Sometimes even i can't figure out exactly what i mean.

Unresponse

2009-05-09T17:12:00.004+05:30

Not long ago there was a time where i could write uninhibited by anything. By opinions, by the need to be recognized, by wants and desires, everything would just slip away in front of my verbal onslaught taking the sword to anything and everything that got in my way. But that time has slipped away from me now, this blog has changed me.

You know when your ideas are flowing right? and when you require next to no effort for them to come onto virtual paper? when you dont have to put pressure on yourself to come up with some witty remarks and keep pumping the joke machine like an emptily hissing bicycle pump?

Typing while trying to watch the screen is hard man, Iv always been a chap who'd look at the keyboard while typing. My imagination is dead man.

Or is my imagination a dead man?

My life just keeps flowing; ebb and flow ebb and flow. These are my darkest thoughts but i think i am a born pessimist, simply that self realization makes me want to stop all this and go back bed and sob into my pillow. Nothing happens to me that is interesting nothing happens that is worthwhile. I am a depressed worthless creature. And those who are foolish enough to love me, to follow me, there is nothing worse you can do. I suggest you fly away from this senseless pursuit now.

This is transmagoric, meaning it transports me somewhere on the mental plain but it only seems like i am on top of a cold ridge looking down on the blank depression that once was me, looking down on that seething mass of black monsters innocently playing around in a cleft in the hills. I am on the ridge now due to my thoughts having transported me. I am waiting on this ridge i am sitting on my haunches watching the cleft in the hill.

But there is nowhere for me to go. I will live on that ridge for a while and enjoy the cool breeze that ruffles through my hair but then i will just get bored and want to go back into that subclavian open air cave that is the mind that i am used to. A negative mind, a pessimstic self loathing mind. I have nowhere else to go and no other option but to live in my mind.

And in these dark confines, i reject all human contact and throw pity parties in which i ravage and bleed to my hearts content 'til the dawn breaks.

And as the cold morning air heralds the sunshine i forsee a new day, a new way. Absolved of all the bullshit of yesterday. Absolved of the negativity and the pain. Of the self induced delusion and the magnification of someone else's influence on you. Why fall prey to some worthless relief from the honesty of your soul? why be afraid to accept the uncoventional light that shines upon your insides? Why be afraid to accept the truth on which that light shines?

And why be afraid to let a part of you forever remain underground? you need that. you need that positive self delusion. delusion is not a bad thing, it is simply an interpretation of what is. What is can only be one thing. But our presence behind our eyes changes that one thing, and it is transformed as its glow permeats the backs of our eyes and its light is changed as it shines in on the inner chambers of our minds.

Therefore, the world is different to each of us. Subtly and radically.

Chinese Wake-up Call

2009-05-09T12:57:00.001+05:30

Recently the chinese held a massive naval arms display and called it 'harmonious oceans'. Maybe the chinese people are genetically immune to the concept of Irony or something. Or maybe they really think the irony is lost on the rest of us. That somewhow we'd believe that a military display of such massive proportions could actually be 'harmonious'.

The Chinese are strong. And they know how to capitalize. They shifted whole factories from Europe to the riverbanks of China during the boom of the steel industry. Their burgeouning demand for recyclable steel was so great that cities like New York and Manhattan found that manhole covers were disappearing, going off in Chinese trading vessels, stolen and sold for scrap metal to feed the growling bellies of Chinese steel plants.

They have entered almost every single industry in the world. And are doing well. Their only problem is that most of their companies arent yet as upto the global standard as may be liked. India has far surpassed them in this regard though.

But unlike the Indians. The Chinese are hungry, they have a want and a need to conquor. Napoleon said some thing along the lines of leaving China alone beause she was a sleeping giant that could cause a lot of havoc if woken up.

They have already made empiricist style inroads into a lot of countries. Forming political alliances, and power brokering to secure diplomatic support, as well as natural resources. As a matter of fact 'harmonious oceans' was built around the idea of securing their global supply chains. To protect the ships that bring their shipments of oil and other imports. And here i was like a dufus thinkin that pirates were only around in the Horn of Africa. Theres an international coalition of Navies working at controlling the situation there, im sure the Chinese dont really need nuclear submarines for that.

And on the note of irony, i got asked by a friend if i was interested in attending this chillies lecture that was about 'creativity during tough times' and i said hey yeah, that sounds interesting. and so i made some inquiries and it turned out it costed around 7.5k for a two hour session. Geez man. Now im trying to imagine what kind of a target audience THAT was aimed at. Probably people trying to find out how to sell more by spending less, creativity be damned. I declined cos i could think of much more creative ways of spending that money. Considering these were tough times and all that.

Elephant Apocalypse

2009-05-07T11:40:00.000+05:30

wake up and smell the coffee it turned into garbage in the night

wake up and look at your children they are zombies instilled with fright

school taught them to be robots and you encouraged their plight.

slavery is the norm, and you let your brains be mined

by the greedy and the power-blind.

you laze and muck about, your universe is small

it circles around inside the radius of your skull.

so wake up! and smell the garbage,

it is seething under your window

its is festering and mustering a truly terrible blow.

wake up and feel the heat

as the earth prepares you a complete defeat.

wake up and hear the distant boom

as the war drums are beat.

You hold the candle to the elephant's butt

and you are idling around not knowing

that when it farts it will send you, your kith and kin

blowing.

Trollonomics

2009-05-06T14:00:00.029+05:30

Kottu has seen an increase in 'trolls' of late. At least, iv not seen as many trolls as we seem to have around right now. And by trolls i mean those whose main activity is to take the piss out of other people. First there was the Maharajah, then the tweets of YourBlogSucks and now apparently the self-proclaimed 'infamous' Padashow seems to have made a reappearance.

Style wise they differ. The Maharajah is more laid back and tries to project an air of bored indifference, probably hard to keep up and has something to do with the low volume of his output. YourBlogSucks and Padashow follow a similar pattern of direct insults and mass writings trashing things left right and center. YBS is on twitter exclusively, while Padashow seems to have revived his trolldom on twitter and re-embraced his old blog on wordpress. Even the Maharajah seems to have diversified his portfolio and is tweeting away, albeit at a rather slower pace. Also worth a mention is Podipada, probably a groupie off-shoot of Padashow trying to capitalize on the brand. Or maybe Padashow is also diversifying.

Some bloggers just blog for the fuck of it, others just want to get their views across to whoever might be interested, but trolls are specifically in it for the buzz. They need the thrill of controversy, they revel in being the centre of attention and will continue trolling until attention wanes and people drift away or until a conscience materializes and they feels sorry for thieir sins so to speak, given the unlikely prospect of the latter though, we can safely conclude that the chief motivator of a troll is 'attention' and that attention will figure higher on a trolls list of motivators than it will on other bloggers'. It doesn't have to be 'good' attention. 'Good' and 'bad' are merely subjective terms and no one knows this better than a troll who revels in unscrupulousness.

Therefore we can conclude that there is a reason for the existence of trolls in the 'lankanosphere' (term again coined by RD I think) and that is attention. There must be a 'need' for their existence, and that 'need' is the need of the rest of the blogsphere for whatever services a troll may offer, which are highly speculative, but interesting to mull over.

Disclaimer - deductions arrived solely based on reasoning based on observation and the general principle of supply and demand.

Bum-Napoleon (The One)

2009-05-05T10:05:00.004+05:30

Yikes! he cried. As the goofy gondola crashed inside, it crashed in through the back wall and destroyed his slumber, the wonder and the illusion of his dream shattered amidst showers of fresh soil and manure, not the most pleasant awakening.

Snap! his bed cracked. and before he could say 'oh shat!' (after O Shah't the great general who'd once had a similar experience) he bruised his little bottom. oh what a connundrum.

Tomorrow was bottom inspection! oh no! he had meant it to look so good. he had meant it to shine and shame every other bottom worth its silly alien name, but now he'd fail.

Ah! the despair. Oh! woe is me. WHY the GReat Light in The sky! HEy! yeh im talking to you! Why!??

BECAUSE.

came the answer.

THE WORLD IS CIRCULAR AND YET IT IS ROUND. SO IS YOUR BOTTOM WHEN TAKEN INDIVUDUALLY, AND ITS PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS TURNED AROUND. YOU WILL NOT SUFFER LITTLE ONE DO NOT WORRY, THERE WILL BE A DAY WHEN YOUR BUM WILL ROCK THE VERY SCRUMS OF THE EARTH. AND THE HUMANS WILL BEND TO ITS WILL.

Earth what is that? said the little bottom fighter. The warrior, at least he thought he was. He was going to join the campaign tomorrow! everyone had said he could! his bum laser was strong now! He was crying, he thought about all the dreams he'd been having. He was going to destroy the stupid aliens. He was going to kill and fell their meta meta blitzer ships with his dehomonized advanced infraspectral bum ray, a special addition being the new ultra light ammunition reload dimension intesifeier, a birthday present.

And now he couldn't.

GHUT SBGGQWNX Q)()&*)*())*!!!

they let him wail.

The first Great Light in the sky looked at the other Great Light in the sky;

'nice work James!' he said. 'i almost flickered myself when you made that bed snap!'

'thanks Mac, a little bit of extra skill for the look of the thing' winked James.

They turned to the other Great Lights floating around in the vastnes of space.

'Nice work Boys!' they chorused. And laughed.

But the first Great Light only nodded gravely.

'He is young' he said. 'He must wait'.

Then they all fell silent. Thinking.

Freedom, Hypocrisy & Kottu

2009-05-04T16:03:00.007+05:30

What is freedom of speech and how does society temper it? On the one hand you have laws and regulations on the other you have ethics, values and beliefs. The current prevailing ethos of 'freedom of speech', indeed, the very idea of freedom of speech, is utter bullshit.

First about the rules and regulations bit. I hate to harp about something so wasted already but take Nibras Bawa for instance, he was thrown out of kottu because he broke the rules and revealed personal details about a blogger, thus breaking codes of basic ethics expected of bloggers in Kottu right? That is all good and well, but what about the outing of Nibras Bawa's himself afterwards by other bloggers? why weren't they kicked out of kottu for going against the rules? or looked down upon with scorn or disdain. Effectively, what they were doing was taking the 'law' into their own hands, thieving from the thieves or murdering the murderers. This may seem justified in the light of the former's actions, but hardly seems right given the 'code of ethics' we adhere to.

I'd hate to see this place turn into some biased hell hole. Where there is a status quo controlled by the 'elite' bloggers whom everyone in turn feels like following and emulating. This destroys original thought and restricts the airing of diverse opinions and will turn kottu into just another pseudo intellectual frog in the well social group the like of which i was under the impression i was escaping through blogging. And lately, events have been giving me a slight feeling of distaste on the edge of my tongue.

Remember the Black Tigers

2009-05-02T23:20:00.001+05:30

better than you
i am. i will be
seeing black
screaming in this silence
of a world gone quiet
quiet to me.

nothing but revenge
of an ancestral creed
an outlet of hate
an outlet of righteousness
to me. you will be.

the pain i unleash
the same. pain you suffer.
you will do no honour
in dying for the sins
of you and your kind

die my darlings
die. as i.
your torture is an instant
in return for an eternity
of mine.

pain, retribution
washing away in an instant
nothingness awaits
with its warm embrace
i am righteous.

underground smoke and sheet

2009-04-30T14:38:00.005+05:30

When you are a blunt guy living in a not so blunt world, you usually find it hard to see through the smoke. Or rather, you don't see the smoke at all. Social situations disintegrate under the unsubtle slash of the knife of direct statements that need to be buttered up, baked and served in a plate with blueberry pie instead.

Romantic options dwindle as you usually don't say what is 'expected' and skip the foreplay because you just know where your gonna end up anyway. Chicks are so shallow. Reminds me of russel crowe's little spat at the bar in 'a beautiful mind'. i can relate to the way he feels. does that make me a schizophrenic genius then? i dont know about the genius, but shizophrenia is not an unfamiliar sensation. lets hope the genius turns up soon. theres gotta be some upside to a chronic inability to get laid.

Casual conversations with new acquaintances turn into hurt and uncomfortable silences as you inadvertantly say something that was dancing around in your mind. So he stuttered, and so you just came out with it and made fun of him hey you was only jooking! no need for the uncomfortable silence and for people to walk away. Would've been much better for everyone to have a guffaw and put it behind, would even have made the stutterer more comfortable with the company in question. Like saying 'okay you chaps so i stutter, have a laugh and lets move on kids'. It builds relationships to have a quiet laugh about our differences now and then. hell if you were ever a schoolboy, you'd know this.

We know these things when we are kids, we are born with the knowledge. Adulthood just takes it all away. It instils this artificial smokescreen of properness that distorts everything honest and good and encourages all sorts of intricacies built up of 'white' lies and underground guerilla communication that is a downright pain in the rectum spectrum to behold.

Kids are honest, they are direct they are blunt. there is nothing wrong with that. Oh yeah you'll look at them with a sweet smile while your eyes bore into them and you grit your teeth and think 'geez wasn't this tiny pandithaya (know-it-all) ever properly slapped by his parents?' and imagine ways of teaching the bugger a lesson while all the while knowing that the only reason you got so worked up in the first place was cus the kid was right. Thats right, the five year old just told you how it was.

As we grow up, we learn a lot. Ooh now thats impressive isnt it? but we become dumbasses and complicate the single thing that we should never have forgotten, our first lesson in life, smoke free bluntness and openness. And you know whats worse? whats worse is we come to regard the very practice of it as crass and avoid it like the plague, or the swine flu.

First, a bit about 'blogstitution'

2009-04-29T14:57:00.003+05:30

You know how your brain gets this itching feeling as if it wants to spurt out something intellectual but can't actually put a single certain neuron onto it? So there are varous little ideas and thoughts running like random preschoolers during lunch break around the insides of your mind, and you're like a kidnnapper waiting with the chloroform and the getaway vehicle trying to decide which kid looks rich enough to make you an easy coupla million. Or in this case get you some interested readers.

Fuck it, we are all blogstitutes, its your fault for coming and reading this blog anyways. You have corrupted my pure soul. Having your blog exposed to readers automatically makes you a blogstitute. People just go holier-than-thou on the more crass attempts at it. Society is fucked up, but as long as its subtle then everything is cool.

Aren't we all just prostittutes for attention? I mean take blogging aside, all we do is sell ourselves man. By working, i am essentially selling my capabilities for money but ok, lets give this term a bit of street cred and take it in terms of what is usually defined as prostitution that is, selling your body for sex.

So we're essentially talking blogging without morals, without scruples with the intention of purely generating hits, like putting up a title that reads 'Anarkali and Duminda sex tape' with a link to a video of soft core porn or something. Nothing sells like sex by the way. Im sure viceunversa would agree with me on that one. I was looking through my search engine hits today and almost 90% of the searches came thru sex related keywords. Some surprising ones in there too hyok hyok.

But i DYgress, getting back to the point of blogstitution. What IS blogstitution? i believe Mr. RD coined the term, but what does it MEAN?

Put away those tranquilizers

2009-04-28T12:49:00.004+05:30

What? is that a little too garish? i think so. Just hope it doesnt take away any sleep for your sake. Anyways iv been thinking how mad the world has been getting lately, iv always known that March was a month that heralded madness. The Cheshire cat led me a to a tea party when i was dating this chick Alice and that mad goat chap sorta told me about it, right before he stole my girlfriend and i woke up. Hell i was only five and i didnt even know what a girlfriend was, but in all truthfullness i did. i was one of those star struck kids, i remember asking a girl to marry me when i was four, of course she died a few years ago. i see no connection between these two totally unrelated incidents.

So yeah March, insane month isnt it? Nibras Bawa and Passionately Patient both entered the blogosphere in March, and together with a lot of input from the usually dormant and 'proper' individuals in the sphere, created mayhem and carnage and had to be forcibly taken down and put out for their own good and the collective good of the world as decided by the powers that be, and alomost every one else.

The war raged on and progressed further than ever before, killing a lot of people and blind fighting on both sides accompanied by protests from all corners brings us to the end of April slightly out of breath and finally easing up on the bombarding. That five kilometre piece of land probably looks like a tsunami hit it just about when it was getting over a 10.5 richter earthquake or something.

"if you keep your head while everyone else is losing theirs..." or something like that. Something to the affect that you shouldnt 'lose your head in troubled times' sort of like when you're a number 4 batsman watching the middle order crumble and seeing Murali walking in with about 70 or so more runs to get in as many balls. Actually by that time you'd probably have completely given up, unless of course you were Murali himself, whose belief that his closing eyes and blindly swinging 'improvised' cricketing shot actually will get him more than a couple of fluke sixes never ceases to amaze people on the occasions where it actually works.

Its nice to see the calibre of politicians havent changed. We seem to revel in the steriotypical fat , greasy mass appealing buggers with eloquent vocabulary with nothing substantial to show for it over and over again. Fucking cunts.

Theres swine flu going on people so watch out, as Dili, who tweeted someone else's tweet said, it cant be as bad as bird flu because 'pigs cant fly'. Lol right man, at the rate things are going prety soon pigs will fly. Nothing is known of this 'semi pandemic' except it seems to target 'young adults' more than anyone else. A vaccine is due in only about six months according to the docs at WHO so stay away from Mehico hombre.. of you know what is good for you.

We seem to think SL is safe from global shocks, which explains the downright ignorance people show for global news, Most of the arrack parties and blog discussions focus on local aspects. Is that only cos there is so much more going on here and people dont really have the time to look outside or is it cos the universe is always a flexible thing and will always contract to contain only the particular area of space that you want it to. Which will explain the amount of people walking around with dazed expressions looking at the stars circling their heads a foot away.

Ok im out. Nice insanity people. Lets see what May brings.

*ok that header's off. a little too much insanity there..

Putting the 'Dirty' In Politics

2009-04-27T16:03:00.016+05:30

Casting the vote in Trincomalee courtesy getty images

David Cameron promises to

Shame overpaid civil servants, with a "people's right to know" scheme
publish all items of public spending over £25,000 on a website
publish all public sector salaries over £150,000

If he were to get elected. Just got me thinking what narrow bases most Western democracies have the luxury of basing their political decisions on. Everything seems so organized. At least in comparison with us, where its just who has the more clout and who is bloodthristy enough and unscrupulous enough to get to the top that wins. Corruption is a common denominator so the people disregard it completely when comparing candidates.

Whatever may be said about Western conspiracies and underhanded government and well-organized 'crime' dsguised in socially presentable front operations (like banking policy, begger thy neighbor trade policies, international interventionism etc.) their daily operational politics are decidedly less bloody than ours.

A lot of people getting seats in the provincial councils this time around are known criminals. Rape, murder, drugs, coercion, robbery it's all in a days work for them. As a matter of fact, it is almost hard for you to get anywhere close to politically successful in Colombo if you do not have substantial amounts of gangsta clout. Same goes for any other parts of the country.

So why do we sit and take this shit? Every single time over and over again, we see the same types of openly corrupt people enter into what should be one of the most sacred institutions of our nation, the government. Safe to say we are a nation governed by crooks then and yes you can stop laughing now, i am aware of the absurdity of calling something as sacriligious as the SL government 'sacred'.

People's attitudes play a big role. There is a general consensus that corruption 'cannot be stopped' and therefore the people don't mind leaders who are corrupt as long as they contribute 'at least as much as they steal' to the economy's development. I find this lax attitude to dishonesty rather distubing actually. By accepting corruption as 'normal' we are deeming it acceptable.

This should tell us a thing or two about the people's morals. Maybe we are more or less a whole nation of crooks then, always looking for a sly way to make a buck. Maybe we can't really blame fate for the type of leaders we get.

Guminda

2009-04-26T00:53:00.011+05:30

Arr Guminda woke up amongst his favourite cuddly pillows. There was Smokey and Pokey and Cherry. He sighed and burrowed himself deeper in-between the covers. This was life.

The provincial council votes would be coming in by now, Chief Minister here i come!

He stretched himself luxuriously

'SOMEY!? where was that butt less moron of a butler?

'Somey!!' dammit, this is what happens when you hire people from your mother's village, damn political obligations, Guminda thought. The twerp doesn't even speak proper English! Doesn't even know what the word 'butler' means even! he felt weighted down by the unfairness of it all.

He looked around his penthouse flat; the place seemed lonely these days. He found his thoughts being dragged to earlier times, happier times.

He missed her, when the nights were lonely. He missed her high pitched voice which always reminded him of his favourite movie, Bride of Chucky. He missed her baby eyes, which could always convince him that she was younger than she appeared, much younger, the way he liked it. But most of all he missed her boobs, those soft cuddly boxing fit boobs, those perky ripe apples of Shakespearean praiseworthiness except that he didn’t know any Shakespeare, he didn't read much really. It wasn’t really required in his particular line of work.

He found himself imagining her lying on the bed right next to him; he found himself imagining what he'd do to her. Oh how he'd crush those boobs between his massive hands. He loved the way they would come out in red welts after they had sex from where his numerous rings would cut into her flesh. He loved the way she squealed when he'd enter her and pound her missionary style letting her breasts bounce around like two demolition balls crashing around against each other in utter chaos. Sometimes, when they were really going at it and his hips were moving back and forth at a quarter of the speed of light, they would move so fast that all he'd see was a blur of motion.

He sighed. It was the boobs really, he'd thought he'd loved the girl, but he'd only really ever loved the boobs. At least, the only emotional attachment he could connect to her centred heavily on her chest area.

He sighed again and tut tutted. Fuck that, chicks with good boobs are a dime a dozen. Of course, now that he was Chief Minister, he could have all the pussy he wanted. He tried to cheer himself up, tried to shrug his shoulders and force that famous Guminda grin that made old ladies swoon in motherly euphoria and kids cry in anticipation of being eaten alive. But he still felt bugged.

Was it possible to fall in love with a pair of boobs? He wondered. He made a mental note to ask Somey about it.

Right, now for the affairs of the state. He thought about his campaign. He was rather proud of it actually. He kind of enjoyed campaigning, he was a born poser and no matter what they say about actual practicing politics, there was nothing like an exciting campaign to really make a guy feel like he's doing something important you know? He'd felt on top of the world these past few weeks. He'd just loved the attention.

Was there anyone who could even come close to his magnafacious brilliance! Ow! He was the only real man in the whole electorate. What was a leader if he didn’t have a body the people could be proud of? What was a leader if he looked as if he could not even defend himself in a fistfight? Arr G was all male, he was the man for the job. He was the silver stammering nimrod, he was batahira sulange yotha balakaaya, he was the bee’s knees and the cat’s meow he was in short the greatest political icon to ever enter the political arena in the world! Yes that’s right! Soon the world would see that a Sri Lankan president could be just as iconic as an American one, he would even show Obama a thing or two about style, he would...

Oops. He’d just thought 'president' hadn't he? Must watch himself. The incumbent doesn't like ambition. And that goddamn brother of his looks like he practices black magic anyway, what if he read his mind or something? No, it was too early. He must keep his ambitions to himself for now. He must wait.

He sniggered maniacally. There was a side to Guminda that the press did not quite see. And he meant to keep it that way.

Arr G sighed, again. Oh well, a city awaited his benevolence. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd sweep the polls clean. He knew he was the dopest most illest gangsta pollsta to ever hit this sunny island and that limping simple wackass ex cricket bat cleaner didnt stand a chance against his awesomeness. He'd even had a song written about himself hadn’t he? He’d been so innovative and just simply marketed himself beyond the competition. The competition wasn't even in his league. In fact there was no competition. There was only him.

He hadn't even bothered to switch on the television. To him, victory was a foregone conclusion.

Ah! now for some tea.

Somey?

Grrr.. thats it, that cross eyed bugger was going back to his village

SOMEY? hukannathuwa mata thei ekak geneng!! (quit fuckin'around and bring me some tea) he yelled.

Sometimes you just gotta make mofockers understand you dig?

Disillusionment tactic

2009-04-24T17:23:00.009+05:30

She was standing on the sand. Her dress giving itself up to the whims of the wind. Her hair like wisps of night in the evening air flowing in waves around her face, revealing in turns to me her eyes, her nose, her gently curved mouth.

She was smiling slighly. She knows what im upto. What im trying to do. I try to hold her hand but she slips it away deftly, i cant resist reaching over to push her hair away from her neck. she winces.

She tells me she's changed her mind.

Ouch.

I take a step back, mentally. I should have thought this out better. Here i am, with her again knowing fuck all what i want to do. What I expect of her and what she thinks i expect of her. It is aways hard to approach the ones whom you are slightly in awe of. It is like approaching something frightening, like your principal's desk. You are unsure, you are hesitant, yet you push through with all the courage you can muster and a nonchalant expression on your face only to get suspended for ten days, or to be ordered to bring your father to school the next day.

I push on nevertheless, because i'm a think skulled man who doesn't know how to take no for an answer. And i reach over and place my hand on her neck. I expect her to stiffen but she doesn't. Or perhaps she did but i was deluding myself into thinking she didn't. Or perhaps i was so filled with self doubt that i could not imagine her not to stiffen at my touch.

I stoke her neck, her shoulder, her hair. I ask her why, i try to explain things, show her that this will work. That this can work, but she's not buying it.

In a minute or two she says she has to head back.

And that was the end of that.

Theres a voice inside that tells me to fight back. To go on. Deep inside the knowldedge lurks that when a woman says no, she usually means yes in a very convoluted and inexplicable way. She is beckoning me into her own mingled maze. But that is a maze you will get lost in if you attempt to walk it. That is a maze that hides the Minotaur of madness, waiting to grasp you and send you to your doom if you take but a single wrong turn. Is it a test of your manhood? or of your sanity and pride?

Mordor

2009-04-23T16:59:00.002+05:30

Frodo got it wrong.
Now the Ring of Truth is on it's way to Mordor.
The Nazgul sit and laugh.
While the dwarves die for a lost cause

The demons are encircling the fortress
to welcome him into their lands
to make him king
of the reign of lies he'll bring

Like a surface of a lake
the truth will seem unchanged
but the illusion will permeate.
A monster in its depths.

It will darken the waters
with the blood of its victims
all will be corrupt, save
for the surface that glistens

The truth that remains

will be a sliver of it's former self

the rest of the iceberg
will be bathed in a sea of blood

Please, Do not vote this 25th.

2009-04-23T09:30:00.000+05:30

Do not vote this 25th.

If you absolutely have to, vote for an opposition party.

Why?

Well it’s because of a few simple reasons. The government is powerful enough as it is, some may say even too powerful. They have already swept away any credible opposition and clamped down on freedom of expression. This administration has not been overally better in terms of morality or fairness than any other administration that we have had in this country since the times of JR.

The government "is itching to declare success ahead of an important regional election on April 25th" - The Economist, and we know it is true. Concrete victory in the war before the elections would doubtless ensure them a landslide victory. And this is where we have to remember what happened the last time a government in Sri Lanka won an election like that;

JRs administration had so much power that they simply swept aside any opposition and the much derided 'Executive Presidency' was initiated. This measure has had a lot of opposition over time but could not be brought down because of the fact that it was written in the constitution by a government that the public voted in with an overwhelming majority. And every single president who came into power after him has always gained office through promises to abolish this scourge on the political system but have always avoided doing so, why? Simply because it favours those in power. It allows them to virtually do whatever they wish. Imagine a man unaccountable to the law itself? And is deemed so by nothing less that the law itself? if a person with no political awareness whatsoever heard about this he would say this man would turn out to be the biggest criminal in the whole nation. And reality has shown us that it is far from untrue. Crime becomes effectively written into law, for crimes conducted by one who cannot be held accountable for them are essentially allowed. This was nothing less than a desecration of justice.

JR also abolished the prevalent system of voting. that of smaller 'seat' based voting where citizens voted in candidates who they genuinely felt would serve them in some way and did not vote in candidates who they felt did not do anything worthwhile during their time period in office. Candidates catering to a smaller demographic were thus forced to include some measure of integrity into their activities and were to an extent answerable to the public of their individual seats if they were not.

This system was expanded and people were made to vote for candidates on a district level and on a provincial level. Creating disconnect between the candidates and contestants and leaving their voting decision susceptible to campaigning and promotions rather than their actual personal knowledge of the person being elected. This also pushed out smaller, less financially able candidates due to the vast resources required for a district wide campaign effectively ensuring that only the existing members of parliament through their amassed wealth, and rich individuals with political connections could enter into the fray with a hope of winning. It created barriers for smaller more idealistically motivated candidates to enter the political arena. So not only did they make it impossible for people to vote in individuals who they thought could do some genuine work, as in people they knew more closely, they also effectively made it impossible for such people to contest in the first place, ensuring a cycle of similar minded individuals continuously maintaining control of the political power of the country.

The impacts of JRs administration were vast and many, and not long after he came into power, the country was plunged into chaos and a quarter century of devastating violence befell us.

Now, i understand that people will be grateful to Mahida's government if he wins the war, regardless of the humanitarian atrocities that it enacted during its course. But the same gratefulness and overwhelming support that was extended to JR, if it is extended to Mahinda as well, would end up being abused and used for more consolidation of undemocratic power, more restrictions of the freedoms that we still enjoy.

If you are a blind eyed freak who thinks that the current government is the best thing since heaven, i would not be able to reason with you, because you are disillusioned, and hypnotized. But if you are a rational individual capable of looking at events objectively please, i beg of you think of the balance of power. Don’t let your emotions get the better of you. Make sure that even if you want the government to have a majority, do not let them have too much of a majority because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts more than anything else.

IF you want them to take power let them, current public sentiment may well achieve that. But take no part of it yourself, or you will be blamed for God knows what comes our way afterwards. Voting is power, you are effectively handing it over, thinking of your own preference is not enough, and you need to understand the macro picture. So if you want to vote, vote, but vote for the opposition at least. And ensure that those who are in power do not get too drunk with it.

War Tourism

2009-04-21T16:15:00.009+05:30

'(Viet)namtank' : Ron Gluckman

The End wrote about war porn here. There has been enough growth in demand for war related merchandise that hawkers are selling VCDs of war footage on buses. Complete with background music and i'm guessing, a strong 'patriotic' flavor.

And now the war 'is almost over', hell its been 'almost over' for several months now but in the classic Sri Lankan way the war also is dilly dallying away and taking its own cool time to end.

If people are eager enough to gobble up war merchandise or war porn, i think a decent case can be made for the emergence of a new niche in the tourism industry. Why not war tourism?

The idea first came to me after reading one of Cerno's many google earth posts depicting sunken warships off the coast of Jaffna, and i thought hey, someone could really make a buck organizing diving trips down there when the war ends..

But It's not exactly an original concept. War tourism has also got a Wiki entry. The definition seems to vary from referring to tourists stuck in warzones to the more commonly accepted one of actual touring to conflict zones. Whereas there has been no proof that the practice is officially happening in live conflict zones and no tourists have been interviewed who have visited a conflict zone for the purpose of tourism, we are not talking about a conflict zone here, we are talking about a conflict free zone, a-post conflict zone if you will.

I don't think there is a location like Sri Lanka so well placed to take advantage of this in the whole world. Not at least since Vietnam, although admittedly theirs was a high profile war with plenty of eager Americans willing to pay good money to come see how their tax money was spent, and World War 2, which continues to be the number one attraction for war tourists worldwide.

Assuming the war finishes, we'll be fresh out of conflict. If somewhat of a whitewash victory is attained, the security up there will be a bit more conducive to tourist presence. This will give us an opportunity to target a whole new demographic, the young adventure seeking high spender, instead of the usual retirees that we see coming over.

Jungle treks to LTTE bunkers, tours through battlefields, LTTE occupied villages, sea tiger bases, airstrips, off roading and crash courses in guerilla warfare are only some of the things we could offer. But it has to materialize through concerted efforts through both the private sector and government. Economic support must be given to the niche if it is to prosper. You or me can't just take off to Jaffna on a bike and expect to have the experience of a war tourist, the whole thing will need to be designed and offered as packaged holidays with substantial investment by the players in the local market.

And they must act. The government must be looking at avenues of economic exploitation of the North Eastern provinces if it is seriously expecting to win the war soon, and in a Ballardian world, why not try and be a little innovative and dynamic for a change? adopt a slightly more edgy image; that of the paradise with a touch of the dangerous? Adopt a stance of mercantilism in our business strategies, make the end of the war become a launching pad for an industrial revolution so to speak.

I know it may seem rather morbid to talk about this when there are so many people dying. But most of this war was about profits anyway, and the same people who filled their pockets are sitting around in powerful places harping about patriotism. why not let the people who truly suffered benefit from the war now? And give a boost to the freshly liberated North-Eastern economy?

You know you're broke when..

2009-04-20T14:55:00.001+05:30

you decide against a second chicken samoosa cos your delirious pangs of hunger have died down to a mere inferno after eating one, and survival till you eat your home cooked lunch is just an agonizing hour away.

you decide to walk to the junction instead of taking a tuk tuk cos you want to take the 'scenic route'

you 'window shop' at the used booksellers' on the pavement

you avoid eating an isso vadey in order to 'cut down on the the oil intake'

you walk around unity plaza looking for the best prices for blank dvd's, and your colleagues have to call you and remind you to get back to work.

you decide to splurge on the way back and spend lavishly on a five rupee bus ticket, and feel rich 'cos you don't feel guilty afterwards.

you think the 25th of April is the happiest day of your life.

Coming Home to Eelam

2009-04-20T00:15:00.001+05:30

The last bund of the LTTE in Pudumantalan has been broken down and the army claims to have rescued 5000 civilians. I live near the Rathmalana airport and sometimes have a chat with the Air Force guys guarding the top of our road. According to them, there are still a lot of troops dying, and they're not dying through enemy fire, only through mines, and they bring them via Rathmalana obviously, including the civilians who are injured.

I saw this video of this kid, would've been 16 years old, right leg ripped off above the knee, left leg by the hip, genitals gone in a flash of shrapnel, screaming his head off while his father sits by him in a shocked trance and his mother screams. There is a nurse trying to cover up his wounds but he's struggling and screaming too hard, shreds of flesh flailing from his torn limbs.

Is this what they are fighting for? The cowards, forsaking the lives of 'their own people' for a cause which they claim to be fighting for them, why would a force such as the LTTE, who claim to have the best interests of the Tamil people at heart, do this? And why would the Diaspora whose support they've relied on for so long, still support their activities knowing the carnage this is inflicting on their own people?

It's become a dirty fight, and it seems that it is almost at the end. Even the UN now claims that it is the rebels who are not letting the civilians be rescued, and coming from the normally despised or lauded (depending on which side you were on) 'peacenik' side's big cheese, it is a significant thing. Not that UN really has the truck or the credibility anymore to comment on 'humanitarian' crises, considering the tremendous hits it has taken to its credibility over the years, but its probably the closest thing we have to an unbiased coalition of an international organization.

The Tamil Diaspora is desperate. They don't know what to do or where to turn. They've supported the LTTE for so long that their psyche is unable to change their stance into one of acceptance of a possibility of a united Sri Lanka. It would be like turning traitor.

The Sri Lankan people should stop seeing the Tamil Diaspora as the enemy, or the germ of the LTTE would spread in their eyes to encompass every single Tamil living abroad. These people were oppressed, hate was bred within them, and the government and the rest of Sri Lanka were not completely innocent of crimes. Somewhere within the madness and delusion and terror and chaos there really was an original Tamil cause and everyone has to accept that.

EELAM is right here, but it’s called Sri Lanka, and people of different races live here together. ‘Come home’ is what the government and all of us need to say to them. Win them back, prove to them we’ve changed, prove beyond doubt that this country is a place where everyone can live in harmony in reality, not just in a speech of a politician or in the frames of a propagandist TV commercial.

Admittedly this may be easier said than done, but is needed to avoid an exacerbation of a fresh wave of violence/Eelamist extremism from abroad. Changes and compromises may need to be made. But isn't lasting peace worth all that? Society is too rigid.

Update: President says more than 35k civillians rescued and the 'complete defeat' of the LTTE imminent.

one day i WILL join the ranks of the free

2009-04-19T23:40:00.000+05:30

and i aint talking about retirement

(o_O Then?)

(I mean, what are you talking about if not retirement? o_o)

FREEDOM!!!

i believe in a freedom that i cannot yet visualize
it is a dream, an illusion sometimes, but i hold on to it
for that is what keeps me going throughout the nights
and the days of opressed corporate life

Plastic Guns

2009-04-17T11:30:00.003+05:30

dust
dust as i play cricket day and night
ride my bike through by roads and more by roads
dark skin
darkened to a beach black by constantly being in the sun
friends
taunt you and you fight, alliances are formed
nothing unites except mutual hate
but that was play-hate
we'd all unite over a quick game. plastic guns.
shooting each other to glory
except i didn't own one
nope, no plastic guns for me
no guns no violence, my parents were adamant
no swaying them there.
I wonder if i am a different person because of it?
i wonder if all the kids who were allowed plastic guns are scarred in some way that i don't know of?
but it didn't last, so there is no point in wondering is there?
cos at my first b'day bash after 3 or four years, i was seven
i got some plastic guns, and my parents didn't have the heart to take them away.

So im not scarred am i? or am i just as scarred as you, and we don't see each other's scars.
cos they're probably normal to all of us.

Rock Saturday, my first experience with a joint
i didn't smoke one then though
my first would come later, with a girl, innocently stoned, nineteen years old.

I burned, the first cut was the deepest and yet
i learned

From plastic guns to my first joint
the road was a bumpy ride
walking in the sun cursing for a ride
crowded trains growing pains
the usual life
of a windblown kid, teenager, adolescent, adult
and im still growing.

here you go mixedblessings89, thanks for the tag i enjoyed writing it! and open tag, just start with something that reminds you of your childhood and take it from there..

a rainy days' forest path

2009-04-15T17:46:00.000+05:30

we are just prisoners
here of our own device
the song sings as my lone valley
prepares for the wrath of the beast

you can run but you can't hide
as Napoleon asked
what is this mysterious fluid that gets in the way,
that makes the world seem a farce?

the dream stings reality
with a nightmare 'come real
and you swoon in possibility
when signs materialize, however trivial

you are caught in a mudslide
as the slippery surface takes you down
all you can see is the mud-spray around
making colors disappear

the world is bathed in black and white
and grey and brown and shades of light

choice,
choice to feel
choice,
of what you percieve to be real
choice...

is it that simple?

So how was your weekend?

2009-04-15T14:35:00.002+05:30

I discovered this 80's metal MP3 at the most unlikeliest of places; in a 13 year old kids' PS2 and movie collection. There i am going through 'white chicks', 'wrong turn', 'grand turismo', 'tekken' etc etc trying to find something worthwhile to watch and find 'Best of 80's Rock Albums', and im like woah, whos is this? its apparently the kids'dads. i can take it he won't mind.

Jason X then beats me at wrestling. I'm Batista and he's John Cena. I dont stand a chance, once he has me on the ground i cant get up till he stops hitting me. And he doesnt stop hitting me. I beat him at NFS undercover. that ought to show him who to mess with.

I was at Kurunegala on Friday and Saturday, my friend's dad owns a coconut plantation there. We're walking along, me and my friend, in the evening checking out the paddy plantation and going to a place he tells me is awesome to look at, when a really drunk chap assails us. He is in the middle of cursing loudly in very colorful language at no one in particular (standard village drunkard behavior) when he notices us.

Did i mention he was drunk? He reeks as he tells us about coconut thieves and 'dishonest folk' and how my friends dad's very employees are stealing money from under his nose etc and launches an elaborate campaign to try and grab a job, obviously under the misconception that we could get him a job. he alternatively calls me 'mahatthaya' (sir), 'machang' (buddy), 'putha' (son), he takes us to his little clay hut and makes his wife bring us tea, he shows us pictures of his sons who are at the army and the police, he claims to have immediate access to grenades and other heavy weaponry and tries to convince us to disguise ourselves and come with him to hide and catch the thieves when they come out.

He's a royal pain in the ass. He is insistent on taking my number so that he can 'call me when the thieves get there' and i manage to avoid giving it to him at his house. We then try to get away and he follows us home. We try to part ways and he extends his hand for me to write my number on it, i say i dont have a pen and he throws a fit, says he will come right to our doorstep and all that. We are rescued by the estate manager, who by then has got to wondering where we were and come to have a look. Mr. Paranoid-delusional-drunk is meek as a mouse.

On Monday i took of to Negombo. Mainly cos there were a few relatives over and some family obligations awaited me on the next day as well. Not that I specifically avoid family gigs, just that this didnt especially require my presence and i wanted to squeeze in as much as i could in terms of chill time this long weekend.

Went with two friends and we ask the tuk tuk driver 'does he know a cheap place'? he takes us to the sleaziest joint in Negombo the 'Rooms Victoria Lodge' or something like that and we get one room with a double bed and a juddering AC. We go out to 'hit the town' and the town is pretty much dead. We have an excellent meal at the 'King Coconut' where they make some really great pizza and then go back to the room after walking around a bit cos they are not serving beer or anything and my friends wanted a sip.

Next morning, we contemplate going to one of the hotels for a day package since the town itself seems to be asleep today, and decide to hit Browns Beach after breakfast. So me and MP mosey on down Beach Road to 'dolce vida' which MP (who frequents Negombo on bored weekends) tells me is an excellent place to chill. But they are closed along with all the other places where anyone can expect a decent morning meal and we are ultimately rescued from a delirium of hunger by the hospitality of Mr Alfred Cruz who runs a second hand bookshop a few hundred meters past Browns Beach. He has qite an interesting collection. I buy 'The Hobbit' and 'The Last Continent (Pratchett)' and MP gets 'Digital Fortress'.

Browns Beach as MP puts it 'looks like an old people's home for German tourists' but it is not exactly totally devoid of eye-candy either. So we mostly relax by the pool and read and jump in for a swim and check out the few ladies who pass us by (some even smile back). We enjoy the buffet although the food is not all that great. Im home in the early evening after a couple of nice cool AC bus rides reading a book and hit the sack later only to be tortured by mosquitoes all night long.

Today feels like a Monday, except that Saturday is only two days away. Need to find something to do this weekend. How was yours? And obata haa obey pawle samata kiriyen paniyen uthurana sarusaravath subooma suba nawa wasarak weva! e-mail me the meal vouchers, it'll be easier for you :D

A higher purpose

2009-04-09T11:44:00.000+05:30

The world is poetry it sings all around us, the nations sing to each other often in tones of utter hatred and people adopt these tones to sing these songs even louder at their homes, to their kids, talking of Irish pride and English dominance. Talking of American industry and and Indian commitment. Talking of Australian freedom and African triumph over hardship, but we, what do we talk about?

What do we tell our kids when the guns have come out and the war is on and people around us are falling and dying? What would i tell my kids if i were a father withering in fear waiting for who knows what on the northern frontier? Would i breed fear and thereby hope they stay away from all the dangerous places where i believe danger could happen? Would i breed anger and animosity in the hope that one day they will work towards taking down that nameless enemy that fate thrust upon them, they never asked for him.

They never claimed to have demanded a birthright of poverty in a war zone that would probably be the worst birthright claimed by anyone to this date unless you are born on the day of apocalypse and will take a short stock of the world and then go away forever. But then the sadness in life is in having to live it and if you were born on the day of apocalypse you would not have sadness for you would not live it.

We protect and serve the burden of life with sacrifice. We go through shit to survive but why? We may live maximum of hundred years or hundred and six like that lady in Obama’s speech of presidential acceptance. but yet what is the difference between Obama and that lady of a hundred and six years when they both will be mere corpses in the ground in few decades and few more years perhaps if they are lucky, well she may not be so lucky and Obama may yet survive a few years if he is not as idealistic as many claim him to be and if he sucks up a lot to corporate greed but i digress.

What difference does Obama bear to that baby born of wedlock discarded on the streets of Kilinochchi in the days of the roaring battles and left to struggle and fend for itself in some garbage bin in the eastern slums where Muslims Tamils and a few Sinhalese hang around at night for a little bit of kasiya and a joint if they are lucky? What difference does life bear to death in its perception they are both the same they are both meaningless and they are both insane.

We live a hundred years and then we die and it is like everything we did does not exist but even if it does what is the point of living itself don’t we wonder why do we live simply to do the things we just did? is there not a higher purpose of existence a reason behind all this i have tried to uncover it and God is why. Is there not a higher purpose you tell me why is it we are here is it why we drink day and night water for sustenance and food for the same? Is it why we breathe the air we breathe are we but a mechanical bit piece a cog in the wheel of the universe?

This ain’t absurd if you look at what science has learned on the nature of nature and the natural world. it adapts and discards as it sees fit and evolution may be a magic but it kills the ones that don’t serve it any purpose and do not help to maintain the balance of nature. man is often accused of destroying it but i say NO it is all just cause and effect and where there is cause and effect there is always a reason for which you are attached a reason beyond mere daily activities such as eating drinking working or jumping in the sack. we may live confused and think that this is what life is all about coming here and reading poetry at open mic. going there and working asses off going there studying behinds sore but NO i say there is greater purpose to life. If not greater a purpose more abstract and in touch with nature a purpose we have drifted away from as far as mere knowledge is concerned.

So we are cog in nature and we are a purpose unto ourselves that we are not aware of. It may be God it may be philosophy but can it be both is that a question to be even asking in a mixed society? So we come to war when we ask that question and we breathe clearly our purpose in this world and what we are meant to be. And it’s hard when purposes that counteract exist simultaneously and therefore battles erupt and that baby in Kilinochchi may join one day forces of some armed military. Depending on which of the joint seekers pick him up will it be the Muslim the Tamils or the Majority? and there we are lobbed down to a purpose of life never knowing which purpose is right cos if each purpose drives a person to fight the very last fight then such a purpose should have at least a trace of nobility right?

Yes it should and yes it would but do we always fight for the purpose of life? How often do we fight for money wealth land even culture and the other traps of mundane existence? So if i was a father living that life, in a war zone slum dwelling fearing for my family’s life, I’d tell my son; son, only fight for a purpose you know is right. We are Sri Lankans and that’s alright, they may be Indians and they may be Americans but this earth has no distinction except humanity and the universe has no distinction but life.

Should Nibras Bawa be burnt at the stake?

2009-04-08T11:31:00.020+05:30

I’m sitting here and cannot start off my day without releasing some verbal nonsensicalities. And im thinking what to write. There are several things circulating in the background like birds flying round and round a forest clearing but i can’t seem to pick off just one of them to kill and eat. (Oh im sorry, were you expecting me to let it sit on my shoulder and sing?).

Judging by the general trends of posts on the blogosphere, there is a lot of animosity towards a certain Mr. Nibras Bawa. Who from day one, built his brand like a Hindi movie builds up the brand of Amir Khan, or Rajni Kanth or whoever its main male lead is. Showing off his power, wealth, education etc etc etc. But so what? different strokes get different people's rocks off. And if he wasnt lying then good for him. If he was then what did i care? there were probably hundreds of liars in the blogosphere.

Then he went and pulled a fast one. A fast Juan. Slap bang revealing a few details about Mr. RD in his blog. But I have my doubts as to how he got the data. Im thinking he first got his name through flickr/facebook etc. Then just Googled it to find his company and website. You can do it yourself if you wanted to. Getting someone's IP and server is just a matter of being a little crafty with your Google analytics account, its even easier of you've got word press. Not exactly MI6 spy shit if you ask me.

All his information on Deecee was probably taken from careful study of her blog posts. Anyone who reads her blog would have told you the same. And according to DQ, he got it wrong about who wrote that comment as well.

But what of this whole scandal? Should Mr. Bawa be burned at the ceremonial stake? But why should he? I think he mirrored some of the hypocrisy and fear in the blogosphere in general. And i cant help looking at the guy with some form of scientific awe because he seems quite so open about it. Doesn't give a shit about niceties and doesn't care if his opinions are greeted by looks down the nose at his writing style.

And I also think that stunts like what he pulled are regular happenings in the real world. I hardly think it's illegal. And hardly something for Mr. RD to worry about, which im gald to see he's not. Kottu and its little sub-social groups of isolated bloggers are sheltered environments. Other blogospheres in the rest of the world are crazy ass places. And how can you expect shit like Nibras Bawa's to compare against major fraud and cyber crimes in a place and time where blogging is almost a professional thing with millions of readers and almost the same amount of blogs? Its a jungle out there and i’ve not explored it much although i’m sufficiently aware of it to realize what idyllic environs we seem to be enjoying here at kottu.

So being the cargo cult we are, you and me get our testicles magnetized to our anuses and block our intestines to release a shitstorm at the first indication of some chap entering our village with a gun. And we can't call it unfair simply cos we choose to fight with catapults can we? Ethics after all are subjective things, bent by all of us now and then (like when we use annonymous comments, insulting or otherwise) but whenever anyone steps out of the norm and tries to be too cocky there is a monsoon of negativity directed against them.

I’m liking all this though, call me an arsehole if you like. Rock on people.

Surfing Civil Society

2009-04-07T16:04:00.001+05:30

There is the urge again. The addiction will not leave, it is back and dangerously close. And this time as the full moon swings into view and the howling starts in the distance he feels the urge again, to run amok among the wild birds, skimming the treetops, an obsession with freedom.

An obsession with gut wrenching exhilaration. He lives for it. He dreams about it. Yet he does nothing. He is careful when he drives, and he never cries, he doesn't have a wife and he is alone. He doesn't know what he is thinking most of the time and these days even his dreams are hazy. And life threatens to pass him in a despairing cloudscape blurring everything from pain to bliss.

How to stop this? he doesn't know. He believes excuses are not the way to go. There should technically be no excuses because nothing is impossible. That is his idiom, his very own idiom. He knows it has been wasted and overused since the beginning of time but to those overused words, he bears a kinship that is unique. He knows that they are true. He doesn't believe in them as one would believe in some abstract concept. He truly, honestly believes that nothing was impossible.

Of course, there are reasons why everything is not possible. There were the limitations cast upon by the laws of physics for example, which are hard to beat. But that is not to say that in some universe somewhere there exists a scenario where gravity was such that the norm was for people to be constructed in loosely attached particle like forms, flowing from place to place randomly and in any direction, including up.

Humans were too naive to actually believe that anything was impossible. Their knowledge did not expand to everything, so how could they dare to make such an audacious assumption to the affect that something in their purview could be deemed impossible! It was nothing less than absurd.

But at the same time while thinking all this, he is aware that he has sunk into somewhat of an abstract concept. But then his mind wanders into the question; what is abstractness? Is not reality another illusion? isn't reality simply called reality because it is the illusion that most people seem to have in common most of the time? Reality is the vision of the majority, the collective dope of the diasporas, the colors of a collective conscience.

But his world sometimes teeters on the edge of this perceived reality. His world is on the edge where colors are not colored the way they are expected to. People do not think the thoughts they are expected to, its a world where human achievement pales in comparison to the natural, a world where poverty, sadness, elation, wealth and despair are all constructs of society invented by the disaporic illusion and put in there as a sort of control mechanism to ensure no one steps out of line. An opposite of an insurance policy and an insurance policy at the same time. And no one really needs insurance to survive, insurance is a trap to false senses of security and therefore an ideal world will not have insurance policies; an ideal world will not have poverty, sadness, elation, wealth or despair.

He liked his little world, and found it hard when it clashed with the much bigger and harsher 'real world'. Usually he was tough enough to withstand. But he barely preserved his balance and therein was his adventure, riding the thermals of society. Preserving his balance and trying not to fall. Plunging into new challenges like a bungee jumper seeking a new truth. A new edge to taunt, a new rope to test. So there, that was his sport. He called it surfing.

Before the shit starts hitting the fan

2009-04-07T10:34:00.002+05:30

Just imagine it man, the shit hitting the fan.. The guys who came up with that intense line sure had some insight into situations. Not life, but situations. it doesnt take much for the shit to hit the fan, things can turn around in an instant and before you know it, you are idly sitting around staring like a moron at a huge ball of shit traveling in slow motion towards the whirring blades of a big ass fan.

Sometimes you refuse to believe it, sometimes you know that you're gonna be screwed deep down inside, but still you sit and watch. And when it ultimately hits, you keep sitting there and take it calmly, you are bland about life.

You may like spicy food, but you are bland when it comes to life.

Society dictates security, It tells you to find safety, it scares you into finding a lame ass job in a lame ass company which is regarded as an 'established' place to work in. Your parents start associating you with the company you work in, as if it has become a part of your identity.

Tea splattered like little blotches of vomit. Dried up on my workstation which was so clean only yesterday. Something made me splutter like i'd never spluttered before.

I want to let go of this security, but im afraid of what my parents will say. Seeing as i am dissociating myself from an 'established' firm and all that. But Dialog is crumbling, it feels like a morgue in here. You could almost smell the fear and uncertainity a week ago, now its just a dull air of resignation.

I have my dreams and i know what needs to be done to achieve them. I know what im doing and im doing it. Im not wasting away like some poatato without a vision stuck behind a PC for 8 hours everyday, the chief difference between him and me being the vision that is, for now.

The dream keeps me alive, through the dust and grime of daily life. And somehow im gonna find a way to make it all real. Screw the corporates, i do not want to depend on you types. Modern day slave trade. Exploiting the commercially opressed. The willingly opressed. I don't want your company car and your big cardboard cubicle and your pot belly. I don't want your varicose veins and muted sense of rebellion. I don't want your conformity and your fake smiles. I don't want your blind intelligence and process driven mind. I don't want you, corporate life. But I am stuck inside you. So, for now, I'll use you to quicken my ride. Cos i need you to survive.

Chapter X: In the end, everything burns.

2009-04-06T22:55:00.004+05:30

contd from here.

A million years later...

The antimatter was black. Not only was it colored black, but it was positively radiating it, glowing with an evil light. But he knew that it wasn't really evil. Life had taught him that 'good' and 'evil' were just words. To be written on paper, to be thought of in your mind and to be spoken out loud.

But there was no good or evil really.

There was simply existence. And his would soon come to an end.

The antimatter was dense, and concealed the starscape with images of terror and fear, projected directly onto his mind. He'd always had a thirst to explore. When his brain had developed and he had access to the thoughts of his ancestors, his realization of his fathers disapointment at never really getting to see the universe had only egged him on.

He'd had a good start. After being sucked into the planet Earth and befriending the humans, he'd watched as time whittled their weak lives into brittle bones and sagging skin. He'd seen his mentors pass like dust in the winds of the cosmos as their short lives evaporated meaninglessly, disappearing like wisps of smoke caught in the great cyclones of Time. He missed them still. But he’d become older, and wiser. And he was more determined than ever to live life to the fullest.

The universe was a strange place. An apple in one corner was a fried chicken in the other. Life originated only on planets with the carbon molecule K. And Superman was real. He'd been from the planet Isotope that was the base for the last and only truly Galactic Empire anyone could ever remember. Isotopians had been known as Gorgons and they were right bastards. They had ruled the galaxy with iron fists ‘til one day all their suns mysteriously went nova without warning and every single one of their base planets were destroyed.

The one known as Superman, as legend had it, was the sole survivor. He was ‘good’ because he was brought up by the Americans, a noble race of people on planet Earth. And he had lived a happy life until he had found himself unemployed when his newspaper went bust and demand for good looking male reporters with nothing to speak of in the mental arena suffered a blow. He then had no choice but to work in a Chinese toy factory for a living. And there he succumbed to kryptonite abuse eventually traced to the paint in some (now decommissioned) toy engines.

But now, after a million years MIA, the Gorgons were back! It had turned out that they'd had a backup empire in a parallel universe all along and a group of them had escaped the nova and had been plotting their return to galactic dominance for all these hundreds of millennia! But in their eagerness to conquer, in their eagerness to destroy everything in their paths, they had done the unthinkable; they had torn the very fabric of space and time that separated one universe from the other.

The result was the antimatter, slowly seeping through the tears in the fabric and into both universes simultaneously, filling up space, distorting time. And eventually, when the density got too much for the collective universal gravitational fields to hold up, when the crushing of the antimatter pierced the point of Absolute Pressure, it would all finish.

Baklava found himself thinking about Greenwilly who had died such a long time ago. He’d seen the blue gas escape the shattered bubble. He’d heard mammy’s screams of despair as Willy’s gas dispersed into thin air. He’d seen it himself! Willy was dead. There was no hope of getting him back! Everyone had known this! Everyone had known…

They’d managed to track down every last molecule of the gas eventually, but just like humpty dumpty, they’d never been able to put Willy back together again and it had broken poor mammy’s heart. Blue had always been up for an adventure though, and Baklava and him had had a roaring time until Blue had ended a lifetime shorter than that of most fruerahbeest with a final request that his remains be converted to a green gas and mixed in with Willy’s blue gas so that they could be together in death for all eternity.

At least he’d thought so. Or liked to think so. Anyway, they were still sittingon top of his bookshelf at home.

Then, approx Three hundred thousand years later, he’d been on a trip to Kronos on business. When on a whim, he’d thought to pay a visit to Septerkande 4-Oh-Oh to see the famed Mad, Half - Machine Morgothron. To see if the famed seer was really as mind blowing as everyone said he was. And boy was he mad. The room had gotten dark, there was only silence, and before he could figure out what was going on, everything was spinning. And the voice of Morgothron had boomed out;

The Central Sun in the Universe Beta! Take them to the Central Sun! Take those who would take you for their own, now enclosed in a gaseous form, take them for the universe’s salvation, the salvation of all! It is your only hope.

At that time he’d not known what the implosion this piece of half fleshed metal had been talking about and regretted spending his 2 tringares. But now that the Gorgons were back, and the presence of an actual Universe Beta was revealed along with impending apocalypse, his mind had obviously been magnetized by those words again.

Green’s blue gas and Blue’s green…Could he really make it happen? Could he really save this universe and the next, with its myriad of life forms? And if this Central Sun was so amazing, could it bring back his two old friends to life? It seemed absurd. That crackpot of a machine! It was impossible! Anyway, he thought, how could he get to the middle of the next damn universe before the antimatter sparked? And what and where was this Central Sun anyway? Whoever heard of a universe with a central sun! Shaking his head, he tried to dispel the crazy notion.

He stared into the sky, blacker now than it had been a mere decade ago, and steadily darkening. He wondered where the first spark would ignite. Where the first little sun would succumb to the black mist and go nova, triggering the explosion that would rip two whole universes into atoms within the space of a few nanoseconds; a force no bigger than two big bangs. He hoped it would be far away from him, because he wanted to watch the sky ignite, and see the glorious flames erupt and consume everything he’d ever known in his life, just for a moment.

He remembered a famous quote on Meepus 45.

And in the end, everything burns.

And far away, in the next universe, swirling antimatter not coming within light years of its outer surface, floated the great bright orb of the Central Sun. Forever burning. At least for now.

Click for chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Demons

2009-04-04T11:37:00.003+05:30

They are among us, it is too late already; demons, different shapes, different sizes. There is talk about the Djinn, the Raksha or your plain old Exorcist starring people possessing filthy tongued mainstream celebrity variety, but these demons are different. they are in the realms of your mind, and they are truly vicious.

PROCASTINATORR - the terrible procrastinator is blamed for all things terrible. but hey i'll get to him later..in fact i think i’ll just get back onto this post when i have some free time. im feeling abit odd, i think i need some tea.

SCAPEGATORR - this is the bugger which blames everything under the sun when things go wrong. oh this post isn’t interesting? yeah man it must be the weather. Bouts of searing heat coupled with heavy rain majicks with the standard umbrella balance of your mind, wets your brain and renders you unable to appreciate intellectual stimulation. Pfft! me? boring? you must be out of your frikking MYND!

EMBARASSORR - Now this guy has a complex and diverse repertoire. he even has several lesser demons working for him to carry out his tasks. there is the WrongTimer who will make you say things like 'damn i’m just here for the free food and the booze' within hearing distance of the deceased persons close relative. there is also the WrongLiner at the hands of which you are completely devoid of any sense whatsoever, dispensing corny lines to practical people and bluntly honest ones to airy fairy corny people.

THEUNDERSTANDINGSCREWERUPPER - This dastardly piece of antimatter flux paper is blamed not only for the instances when you suddenly have flashes of realizations where you realize that your perception of the world as you know it may have all been a grand illusion, this guy collectively is to be blamed for all of the world’s problems.

Racism, Social Divides and Broken English

2009-04-02T12:12:00.009+05:30

Am i idling? Now that is a strange question, for what is idling? is it doing nothing? but if it is doing nothing then you're technically still doing something, so you not doing nothing. So I’m not idling. That’s good, cos if i was idling i'd have to start feeling a little guilty.

The question of racism in Sri Lanka is an interesting one. There are the utopians who believe that racial prejudice is dead, i was one of them not so long ago and there are those who firmly belive that nothing has changed since the 80s.

Mahinda Rajapakse was a supporter of the nationalist uprising of the 80s, he is also a Southerner and relied heavily during the past years on the hardcore southern vote (a term from which you will deduce what you will). The voting scandal where the Tamils in the North and East were prevented from voting didn’t help his 'equality credentials' much either. But any underground agreement with the LTTE would have obviously backfired on the latter considering the current onslaught they are at the receiving end of, unless its all a cover up.

I am not calling Mahinda a racist, but i have doubts as to the integrity of the current philosophy of nationalism that is spread around, chiefly because of its slightly condescending and patronizing tone towards the minorities. And the strong Sinhalese tradition strain apparent in government war propaganda.

Question is, what are we doing really, to prevent the series of events that culminated in the war from happening again? Are we as a nation really looking at the social, legal, economical, political and other macro and micro environmental factors that contributed to the ethnic conflict that blasted into a full scale war in the mid eighties? Is there a think tank for this? a think tank that is taken seriously by the government and the people in power?

Is racism a symptom of inequality where the deprived masses turn upon the minority community closest to them in hate to channel the anger at being deprived of basic needs and opportunities (as pseudorandom said)? In which case political manipulation should be blamed for turning the people against each other. That wouldn’t be too surprising since the political class of SL has always been consistent of elitist wealth accumulators. That would also explain the total lack of effort at taking the racism issue seriously and the molly-coddling of the people's emotions.

Also, English, one word which speaks volumes. English is encouraged on the surface but nothing has ever been done to promote it in a big way, like promoting English as the language for all educational purposes etc. English knowledge will help bring the masses onto a global platform and get them out of the narrowed frame of mind they seem to be in. It will help them interact with a globalized world more easily and in short they will be more knowledgeable, savvy and aware for it. A common tongue will unite people from different backgrounds a little bit more due to the breakdown of the lingo barrier. It will also improve our competitiveness economically in a global scale. So why is this not happening?

One explanation is that we are a backward population and like to cling to traditions for as long as possible. A squirrel living in a tree for as long as it can, even after its been cut down and the wood is rotting. Another explanation is control. A knowledgeable and empowered people will mean a savvier voter base, which means that a few things will change in the political arena of the future. So maybe the power structure itself is resisting change?

Branding came up as a possible solution. But how much can branding and marketing alone do to promote change in beliefs (i.e. racial differences and prejudices) without some tangible change happening? Actions speak louder than words and branding and media promotions are mere words without action to evidence their validity.

So what do we do? I’m pretty much convinced that if we do nothing and this war does finish, another 'ethnic conflict' will not be too far away, mainly because the root causes have not been addressed and there is still seething anger amongst the people. So while doing nothing may still be doing something, it doesn’t help anyone, and ultimately all of us, who have a responsibility to ensure we do what we can, will be guilty.

and then there was twitter

2009-03-31T23:06:00.001+05:30

social networks are a mind boggling scene. here are people present in their vitual form producing all sorts of refreshing verbal paraphernalia using big words that have no specific relevance to the exact context to the structure of the sentence in question. Just rolled in a rather timed arrival on the twitter bandwagon and found out where people have been hanging out all along. a few random selections;

uh-oh suspicious package discovered outside the Bank of England.Speculation rife that it may be the missing British interest rate, beheaded.
about 2 hours ago from web

lying in bed is therapeutic cos it makes u think of all the things u could be doing if u got off it
about 16 hours ago from mobile web

my cim lecturer thinks that there was an active bridge connecting india wit sri lanka during british colonial rule.
3:54 AM Mar 30th from mobile web

BABY TV: turning out a whole new generation of hypnotized machine-people. keep ur baby away from it!
11:53 PM Mar 29th from web

is it just my imagination or does a tone of a womans voice coincide with the frequency of ones genitalia? creating a tuning fork effect
11:27 PM Mar 29th from mobile web

confessed to the papadum crime. and was duly forgiven. trick is to confess after uv eaten it
11:12 PM Mar 29th from mobile web

so sanga went from hutch to airtel, why do u care u hypocrites? thats normal human behaviour
11:09 PM Mar 29th from mobile web

stadium wall collapses in ivory coast. 22ppl die in ensuing stampede. but hell its only 22ppl so they went ahead with the game anyway
5:46 PM Mar 29th from mobile web

just saw a new breed of metallist. somebody's calling back to the pink floyd era
5:04 AM Mar 29th from mobile web

broken english is not the Best Medicine
12:51 AM Mar 29th from mobile web

So if your twittering add me up.. and hear my randomness take over a tiny part of your little universe.. and happy fools day in case you think i forgot. I was going to pull something tricky but i see that Finrod is already lining up for a big one, or is he? later.

Managing Expectations

2009-03-31T12:46:00.012+05:30

I am not much of a talker, and i usually try to mind my own beeswax when it comes to the personal arena or coliseum, owing to the particularly spectator unfriendly nature of the blood sport, which nevertheless, is enjoyed by some. But perusing through Jerry's blog i realize that the poor boy is smitten by some damsel, whilst wishing him al the luck i am appalled at the rate he seems to have escalated his phone conversations with the said certain someone. Huge doses of talk time totaling up to an almost six hundred percent increase over a period of two months! While the telecommunications industry executive in me is cheering him on into the pits of doom, the caring fellow blogger is slapping his forehead in utter disasmagoria.

Now i know he will say it is none of my business, i know he will tell me to go flub myself, but i have to tell him what i have to tell him. Cos sometimes it takes a man to shake another man by the shoulders and say; Hey! Snap out of it! ~~Or in this case it takes a man to shake Jerry by the shoulders and tell him the same thing.~~

Conversations are all very well when you start dating, you positively cringe at the very sound of the other person’s voice and the initial instinct dictated from the deepest bottom of your gut is to get into the fetal position on the floor and wiggle about curling your toes with your thumb in your mouth.

And that’s when another part of your brain, buried deep within a smog of black illusion-matter pulsing red with the effort like the unseen bottom of a long dead volcano, tries to send a signal to your right arm, and that signal is commanding your arm to slap your face. Hard.

Listen to that command! Slap your face hard! Snap out of it.

You gotta manage people's expectations, you can't hire a secretary and pay her a million bucks only to realize that your organization is crumbling as a result because a million bucks is barely your annual revenue inflow! Cos then you gotta reduce her wages because you don’t want to lose her but she’s not gonna like it.. Oh no, so then she’s gonna mess up your paperwork and make you look bad in front of your board members, she'll start hitting on your clients just to spite you. and she'll start telling your employees what color your boxers are and reveal the fact that you wear the same holey banian to work every day because you clearly do not believe that what lies underneath counts for anything much.

She will challenge your intellect and call you stupid. She will blast you to smithereens if you so much as imply an intellectual deficiency in her regard, she will pester you and trouble you and distract you from your life, she will in short become that number one scourge in all organizations; The Unsatisfied Yet Essential To Running of Organization Employee Who Is Perfectly Aware Of The Fact.

This is a point when a tough decision has to be made, you can either sell the organization, give up on your dreams and run away to the jungle to live with the secretary and keep her happy, whereupon she may well get sick of your incompetence as a man to take care of her 'the way she deserves' and run away with Tarzan's chimp. Or you can fire the secretary, go through some real rough times but somehow persevere and recover your business intact, but largely shaken.

If it comes to the crunch, I’d advice you to take option number two, but the crunch doesn’t have to come! Oh no, yes the crunch can be avoided if you just Manage her Expectations before she starts using and/or implying in a roundabout way the dreaded A word. Yes well. She’ll call you an asshole at some point of time sure but i mean the other and far deadlier, the king of all fearsome A words.

So don’t let it get there, Managing Expectations is key to long lasting happiness. For after all we are all CEOs of companies that are our lives, and market forces will determine how you sink or swim, figuratively speaking of course. So take heed! Let us save ourselves some corporate hassle and stressful job loss here.

Why should i give a damn for the world economy?

2009-03-30T11:14:00.003+05:30

Is the problem I’m grappling with right now, having to write some 2000 words worth of assignment material on the stuff. Why should I? People talk about the death of capitalism but is capitalism really dead? Aren’t we all capitalists? even the communists are capitalists man. Capitalism is simply capitalizing on your power, market power, personality, position or any other power, we are all superheroes trying to use our powers to climb upwards the ladder.

Look at America, the self professed 'greatest nation of the world'. Many people just do not recognize the US for what it really is, an empire. Most talk about various aspects of the US; it's culture, people, habits, policies etc. Most even seem to be gullible enough to believe mainstream media and think that the US is just another nation among several other nations on a planet just trying to get by and help its fellow countries along, which is total bull.

Capitalism is good at one thing, creating an illusion. It is so good that you can't even figure out where it goes wrong. You talk about the widening gaps in income and the increasing percentage of people living on $2 a day (75-80% of the world's population) but how does it exactly transpire? How do policies of rich countries that seem, at face value, to be purely beneficial to these same rich countries alone while being totally harmless to anyone else, work in tandem with other such policies that create ripple effects that totally cripple whole sections of populations?

The victorious always write history. And contemporary history is no different. It is constantly being written as we speak, through CNN, BBC, Fox News, Bloomberg and a whole lot of other machines of the mainstream corporate controlled Big Media. They are so big that they have to be controlled by the powerful. FARC, the revolutionary Columbian rebels. some of the 'biggest terrorists of our times' were a bunch of farmers who lost their territory when the Columbian government together with the US built dams and various other infrastructure projects without giving a damn for them.

The US has always followed an economic pathway to world dominance. Don't look so shocked. Look at history; look at every single powerful nation that has ever risen. Haven't they always looked to test their skills against their counterparts and try to win their resources? History is littered with empires man. The world has always had some form of empire, but this empire you could say is different, because to most eyes and ears, it is underground.

After the world war, the prospect of a geographically expanded empire was deemed impossible due to the presence of nuclear weapons. Meaning that one too pissed off nation and boom half the world is reduced to radioactive trash. The prospect of an economic empire came about in the 1950s when the Shah of Iran was overthrown by Mohammed Mossadegh who then chased out all the British oil companies and nationalized the Iranian Oil industry. The US sent in Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore’s grandson) who paid off a lot of people, organized a coupé, overthrew Mossadegh, installed the Shah back into power, and brought the oil companies back. And that’s when they decided hey, this is not a bad idea. And they've been at it ever since.

Latin America has been a long standing victim. The basic format of empire building works like this. The US, through private corporations sends in economic teams who then convince the local governments to undertake massive infrastructure projects to 'develop' the country, This is of course just a way to get them to take vast amounts of debt from US banks which in turn are given over to US construction firms who build the dams, electrical grids etc. This infrastructure is often hugely extravagant and unnecessary but valid economic forecasts are provided to justify them and often, corrupt government officials are paid off to agree to the project. The countries subsequently find themselves unable to pay of these loans, get on the verge of defaulting and promptly become the US's puppet, which then gets free access to natural resources and UN votes and builds military bases on their soil, amongst other benefits.

If local governments try to resist, then the 'Jackals' go in and an assassination or a coupé is staged and someone more 'friendly' to US foreign policy is put into place.

The world isn’t a rosy place. It's far darker than we imagine. But its not a question of hating the US for what they are doing or getting paranoid about everything you read in the media. It is just enough if people try to understand and accept the truth. People are living in the illusion. The illusion cast by capitalism itself. And as long as the majority eats into the bullshit buffet that is broadcasted down and fed to all and sundry, the world has no chance of rising above itself.

Its stupid no? Capitalism in its essence, in its ideal, is a good concept. If everyone worked for himself collectively everyone will benefit. But it fails to foresee the potential for the failure of markets. It fails to realize that every action will have a thousand reactions in the greater economy and most of those reactions may not be good. It fails to realize that self interest without moral regulation can be an uncontrollable demon. And coupled with a messed up monetary system and open corruption and greed, we have a mallum of slow acting poison, a poison that will probably kill us all eventually, including the US

Weekend Blues

2009-03-27T13:24:00.006+05:30

What can a decent fun loving guy with a bit of free time on his hands do on the weekend in this city man? There is nothing. Clubbing bores me, the music is too loud and crappy, and I’m not too into drinking. I don’t like the high. Movies keep showing for months at a time and only in two or so cinemas at that and the movies showing right now are hopeless. (And in case you're hoping to go see Australia, which i hear is coming to MC, don’t bother; utter waste of time)

We are an entertainment starved population. We can go to the beach, we can hang out at MC, we can hangout at excel world or we can get together with a few friends and throw a 'session' as they are called.

There was a time in my teens, when i used to spend ages simply wandering around with a couple friends on Saturdays in MC doing nothing. Walking into shops, checking out the latest CD's, playing a coupla songs, annoying the guy in the shop who thinks we're gonna buy it, making up some excuse as to why we can’t buy it, and walking out again and repeating the process somewhere else. Classes were at Shakti Institute, opposite Bamba flats, after classes we'd make a beeline for the Dosa shop, whack some Indian junk food, barely manage to pay the bill, and walk to MC.

MC however, does not seem all that appealing to me anymore. Excel world is dried up, and the last time i went there was in broad daylight on a weekday to take some surreptitious pictures of a competitor set up. Met up with a few friends at the Keg another day, that place was packed to the rooftop.

Call me a stoner, but there seems to be nothing better to do in this city. Its dried up and discarded like...or maybe it’s ‘cause im just naturally bored with everything by default these days, feeling very dispassionate. Or maybe everyone else is out there having fun and no one has told me where the REAL party is happening, the bastards!

Sinhalese or Sri Lankan

2009-03-26T00:14:00.015+05:30

Sometimes, there seems to be this unspoken sense of superiority within people. Their eyes are telling you to fuck off back to your country. As a matter of fact, somebody did tell me to go back to my country and I asked him what the hell my country was, if it wasn't Sri Lanka.

He tells me to go back to Arabia, in the trading boats that my grandfathers came down in. Well, i tell him, my grandfathers may have come down from the sands of Arabia but my grandmothers were probably from around these parts.

Sinhalese blood? What blood is Sinhalese? And what is Sinhalese blood? Aren't we all Sinhalese in that case? I'm sure I’ve got some of this so called Sinhalese blood inside me.

Sometimes i laugh at those i perceive to be stupid, but i try not to because stupidity often disguises genuine ignorance. But when people say things like 'if you don’t know Sinhalese you don’t deserve to be living in this country' and 'you should go back to your country', is when i really know that here, finally! Is stupido ignoramo-ceylonis, a not-so-elusive Sri Lankan indigenous species.

And we aren't just Indians. Cos if we are Indians then where is our funny accent? (No offense to Indians, i merely jest Russell Peter-esque firmly acknowledging that Sri Lankans have their own funny accent), If we are Indians then where is our dynamic work ethic? (cos let’s face it, we are a pretty relaxed bunch, which i am not complaining about btw)

Our blood is very much unique to the world, Vijaya's posse mixed in with the indigenous people, the resulting mish mash mixed in with a host of other people, Arabs, Colonists, Tamils etc and now if you cut us up and put us through a zillion mass spectrometers you'd probably be hard pressed to find something too different. Although people of different races do look and act a bit different mainly due to cultural backgrounds, a lot have amalgamated too much for our identities to be easily guessed if we were all naked and trussed up in front of a concentration camp.

There was a discussion on one of David Blacker's posts and Acromantula casually comments (on the harassment that Tamils face at check points);

'Frankly Tamils brought this upon themselves.. (the whole racial profiling thing).. well some Tamils at least…instead of going after lost privileges since independence they should hv started integrating in to the Sri Lankan society (notice i used da word Sri Lankan)'

And as DB points out to him, what exactly IS this “Sri Lankan society”? Tamils are part of Sri Lankan society, so what do they have to integrate into? What Tamils are NOT a part of is Sinhalese society. It’s like telling an African-American to integrate into American society.

Are we a country of bigots? I am not saying that the Sinhalese in particular are bigots. Not at all. The majority populations of most countries are probably bigots, and so probably are minorities for that matter. Then is this simply a part of human nature? A result of an act of conforming to a strong identity that excludes the possibility of equality being bestowed upon somebody ‘different’ merging with the difficulties that emerge from having to live with and accept such people in mainstream society?

I say mainstream but how many of our cities and suburbs are truly cosmopolitan? An extreme case would be Kiribathgoda, where you'd be hard pressed to find a Muslim business operation due to there being a mafia like control where only 'Sinhalese' owned businesses are allowed.

That is not to say however, that there aren’t any towns where people of all races exist peacefully, in fact all (or most) the towns I’ve lived in my short life were peaceful places and I am glad to say this. But i think we have a long way to go and i think where it all needs to start is at the grassroots, we need to start educating our young.

I find that, in the case of a bigot, or a person not open to accepting a 'different' person, exposure and chances to form a bond or a friendship with a person from another race have been minimum. I went to a school where there were people from diverse backgrounds and when you're a kid you're not really aware of the concept of race so much. You play hide and seek and cricket and join the interact club and fight and scream and tussle and get punished together and see each other humiliated and share a few laughs over the years, by the time you leave school, chances of you being a bigot (even a closeted one) are remote.

That is not to say that where you school determines who you turn out to be, your whole life from your parents, family, neighbourhood and the nature of the times you live in probably play a heavy role in that. But my point is, for a country to be united, its people should genuinely accept each other, and what better way for me to accept and understand Sinhalese, Tamil or Burgher people than to have a strong friendship with one of them?

Policy should change to accommodate this. Screening of students in schools should be stopped. This de facto racial segregation sends a powerful negative signal and must be eradicated. Language policy needs to be re-looked at. There is only so much people themselves can do. The government has to look into this seriously. It has to prevent racial differences from being exploited for political gain (which has happened and is happening in abundance) and people should genuinely be allowed to integrate, and a new culture allowed to emerge.

B side chronicles

2009-03-24T16:42:00.004+05:30

There are times i feel not too unlike the character from Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground. Paranoid, schizophrenic. Schizophrenic! People are out to get me damnit! are you listening?

The realization hit me full force just now. Schizophrenic, Its official. I don’t know whether to feel good about it or bad, because previously i thought i was simply egoistic. Cos that was the only word i could think of to explain the situation, seeing as i thought the world revolved around me, modern astronomical discoveries notwithstanding.

When I’m in the bus i can feel them staring at me.. judging me by my clothes and actions. Looking at me reading BBC while holding on to a seat back and i can feel them resenting me. for what? i don’t know. But they are about to mob me! so i look up and cast an appreciative glance around the place, just to let em know that i am also a humble traveler and there is no need to hit me.

At work i am constantly narrow eyed if colleagues are gathering around the tea table and talking, a sharp ear is cast in their general direction to discern what they are saying. If the boss has a meeting and most of the other team are there or they are looking generally shifty, all sorts of conspiracies never cease to go through my mind when i look in their direction and with good reason too! oh yes, they are all out to get me!

Sometimes the threats become too much and i can’t take it and so i come to depend on apathy. Sometimes and really this is true, the whole world conspires against me and tries to bring me to my knees. I get a painful feeling in my crotch and my gut starts to feel like its full of hot uneasy gas. And then i fart. No no of course i don't fart.

Interesting thing about asking girls if they fart? Some of ‘em will avoid the question like the plague. And some will straight up admit it and say yes. Then you're left trying to figure out a whote new set of psychological phenomena.

There is a swamp inside me and it’s called The Mind. And I’m stuck somewhere bogged down with a useless motorboat in the middle of the night and there are alligators circling me and they are getting closer bit by bit. And the closest one is called ‘Confusion’, while 'Paranoid' and 'Schizophrenic' are somewhere close behind. And behind all of them, circling in the widest circle, moves the biggest, most dastardly alligator you have ever seen, 'Defeat'.

23- 03- 09 Irony

2009-03-23T12:48:00.003+05:30

You have to forgive me for spurting aimless pieces of writing man but writing sometimes becomes to me something like therapy. Nothing interesting has been happening of late. things are getting into a bit of a boring monotone. Life doesnt suprise me these days. My parents are getting older i think and that scares me a bit.

Work is as shitty as ever. I don't know where i want my life to head. I have interests and am inclined to a particular area of academic study at least for now, but what the hell im gonna do with my studies, as in tranfer it into a career, i don't know.

The future looms up dark and foreboding and there is nothing to keep me distracted from it in the present. My boss has become more of an asshole of late and so has the company that i work for. That is good in a way because that may ensure i don't get too comfortable working here, it'll keep me motivated to get out.

This is a freaking diary-ish post and im wondering why i would publish this. On saturday night, a beach run. About two lengths of the whole of Mt. Lavinia beach with a friend. The beach is crowded. There are girls, boys, couples, families, dudes walking in their underwear under the false premise that they look like swimming trunks, same dudes drunk and rolling on the sand. Up past JoJo's a bunch of guys in beach shorts and t shirts are killing crabs, or at least they are trying. The crabs are fast and run around like greased tuk tuks with jet engines. Hitting them with cricket bats is like swatting flies with your bare hands. Hurts the bat and the sand, not the crab.

We leave the beach and get some juice. Banana, papaya and orange, with ice-cream and smoke a cigarette or two. And in a sudden flash of insight i realize that a cigarette feels the best right after a long beach run, now isn't that ironic?

life in technicolor

2009-03-23T10:10:00.003+05:30

Vitoria's secret empty girls scantily dressed. desperation looking to impress nothing but desperation. a showbiz abomination unlike any other abomination but all showbiz, is an abomination.

A lie for the masses a plastic illusion a sell of sorts of human flesh blood and talent.

They slink and swerve with fake plastic smiles bodies and faces more made up and re-engineered than the Hoover after its massive collapse.

Are we human or are we dancers the song plays in the background questioning the truth of the answers

A taunting ploy by the perpetrators to create an illusion by questioning its validity. and thereby solidifying the denial of such a questioning taking place, and thereby impressing the showbiz illusion, even stronger.

You are captivated, advertising promotes more information. Brand perception does not move away from perfect competition, does not move consumers away from price sensitivity.

It does not create barriers to entry, making the rich richer. Showbiz is kinder, its yours and mine, beauty is essentially love, and love is always good.

It is our daily drink and food. it is essentially life in a tube, it is all you need, the perfection you should aspire to be.

Why do we blog?

2009-03-21T22:24:00.042+05:30

oh no not another reflective narcissistic post about some bugger wondering why he writes the stuff he writes! why can't people just get along with their core business and envision their values and just run the corporation the way its done?

it seems the Maharajah of Bad Things has been upsetting people again. this time its Miss Passionately Patient. who on a personal note i dont think is boring at all. But the M of Bad doesnt deal with people with tact it seems. now 'oh please you are boring' may seem a tad harsh to put in there as a comment. but personally i'v heard far worse from jerry.

but there was no upsetting Miss Patient it seems. the comment triggered off a reflective post on the rationale behind blogging that got me thinking. Actually i'v been thinking about this now and then and hell, sooner or later we all write a reflective post about said topic dont we.

are we all boring? or are we just interesting to some people? and if we are interesting is that the sole reason to keep writing? or are we writing for our own pleasure in which case comments and hits and such like will be just a bonus? But what is this 'own pleasure' we seek?

does something we write have to be interesting? or are we but whores for attention? which leads us to the question of what it is we write in the first place, and why we do it.

feel good factor

2009-03-21T03:53:00.008+05:30

was he small fry?

was he insignificant and thought to be not worth a smile?

was he the guy who would stand alone under a street lamp when he was fifty years old

and look into the black night in front of him and cry?

did he belie his soul for fifty years and was the only lie ever told the lie he told his own poor ears?

was it his way of life that entered him into an eventual struggle with poverty and misery

coupled with an ageless remorse that seemed far more ancient that his own self?

it almost seemed like his blood came down from an age of losers loosing the crown to maggots who wanted nothing but money and fame

a generation of human beings who the good aliens came and brainwashed into being unforgiving altruists

to whom they entrusted a great plan to overcome the evils of man.

a race of man now failed by its ultimate offspring,

to cling to a light post and sing the songs that only the extremely sad and lonely sing.

a song of tears and clattering teeth and unruly beard

a song of shattering backbone and torn trousers not worth the trouble of stitching up since they were more holes than trousers

was he nothing but 'just a beggar' on the street

unclassified, unrecognized and greeted with blind eyes

was he just another feel good factor for those in such urgent need

was he but a tool for society to displace its occasional guilty whim

was he no one but him, and him being no one, what was he then?

That chase again and a bit about words.

2009-03-19T17:51:00.004+05:30

It is a strange feeling you get when you like someone but you're just not sure yet. When you've been alone for months and you've been liking it, God puts someone in your way who is utterly irresistible, and that person just may make you bend, If you're not too careful.

Or if you are careless, you may end up chasing that person away, and that is something you do not want either. You have pledged to remain alone, knowing full fell the release of freedom, yet you want to plunge into another open space not knowing on what surface your feet will land, or with what velocity.

You do not want it to end, yet you are not sure you want it to finish. and finishing and ending are too different things, mind. A finish is not necessarily an end, it is the beginning of a new race, a new chase. Whereas the end is the end, when you have lost interest, or have had the interest lost in you. That's why it's fucking called The End. And remember the full stop.

It is a mind boggler for sure. And it is just like me to think and ponder upon the strange psychological majicking that is going on, probably in the minds of both of us, rather than worry about the actual situation and the actual connection that exists between us.

Or perhaps that is the connection that means something when you are almost lost. Wayward and bored, someone comes along and actually pricks your mind before your penis even wakes up to their presence. It takes you by surprise and after that, it's surprises all the way man, all the way.

Lol. That's the first time i've used that word in a blog post. I used to hate it immensely. Now i spurt random 'lol's all over the place, it is like an auto reaction man. it sounds so obscene and immature; the word 'lol'. Reminds me of this Sri Lankan slang word lolla.

But this is making me laugh out loud. Another thing about words man, swear words. What is it about a well placed 'fuck' or a 'shit' that gives a sentence and a post so much more panache and effect? personally i do not condone swearing. It is definitely a bad habit. But there remains to be said a thing or two on the necessity of effect. And when you are deep into conveying a message, a 'fuck' here or there definitely helps.

Perhaps it is because my vocabulary is not refined enough. Who knows man. Or perhaps it is another sign of the evolution of language, because for fucks sake, is it only me who has noticed that we speak in different ways and change our language almost everyday? Maybe words that are conventionally considered to be 'bad' are just entering into the mainstream vocabulary. And now it's conventional and 'fuck' doesn't really refer to people having sex anymore. Well not specifically. The word 'fuck' now has so many implications depending on context and nuance. It is complex and refined. It is filth no more.

You would definitely have heard that recording of a hermit type 'guru' laying out the various forms of the word's use. Someone posted it on a blog, but i can't seem to recall who or where. Please help me on this so i can link to it.

Another word is shit. As MP elaborates in the first para of his new post, he has 'what seems to be an ocean of shit' he'd like to read. Now if my father saw this, he may be mildly confused, but perhaps not, my father has surprised me in the past, but no matter. MP goes on to elaborate that 'Shit can be used in the context of ''Good''.. hence the statement... ''Good shit'' '

When we hear the words fuck or shit, as a part of a whole sentence sunk within a conversation or a blog post, how many of us would actually think of sex or human excreta unless the context specifically refers to such a scenario (e.g. I saw two dogs f*cking, i trampled some shit today etc.)? We usually do not right? we will either think of frustration or emphasis of some sort in the case of the 'f' word and the 's' word would simply be part of some other vague generalization.

Another word that is doing the heavy rounds i'v not gotten used to is 'meh'. I see quite a lot of people using it. It's apparently a 'verbal shrug'. I'm still slightly averse to using it since i keep associating it with the sinhalese 'meh' which is used to imply some sort of challenge or as a part of a gesture to mean 'don't be ridiculous man'. Hmmm, it'll probably grow on me though, i can't really say.

In the meanwhile im off to see how all this is going to turn out and hopefully will catch you beautiful fuckers at open mic tonight. In the meanwhile as indi i think once said, i'm sorry of i just tore you a new asshole. Actually, no im not :D