We live in interesting times…..
I have a lot of talented friends writing really insightful blogs using a variety of narrative devices. Know a 8 year old who writes the most amazing stuff in his blog….cracks me up everytime I go through it.
All of us are on the social networking sites, posting a lot of stuff, shouting loudly about a lot of things, signing up for causes we dont even know about. Exploring and putting up a lot of personal stuff because the option is there. Compulsively exploring as many of the nifty commands as possible.
I still keep reminding myself that am part of a generation that started learning to use computers. Not the pioneers or the engineers etc who started in the 70s or the 80s. Nor the generation which came next where playing with a computer or a mobile phone was the equivalent of me playing with a squeaky toy. But full blown usage at home when i was around 15. Learning the tedious MS DOS commands and marveling at people who could pull up the same stuff you did in 7 lesser characters. Was lucky that I had a computer at home, wasn’t really a common thing back then.
From there to full blown Graphic users interfaces in the mid 90s to the then wondrous Windows 95 (no had never even seen a MAC until then). Then to post graduation where we got to work in a “computer lab”. Where a bunch of 110 people fought for 15 computers. Bizarre I know. Many of the people with me hadn’t worked on a computer before then and had to go through an introduction course.
Then onto work where again luckily I worked in a place where everyone had a desktop, this wasn’t really common practice 8 years back. In my internship a year before that I saw the bizarre dance of having to type out an email and give it to a receptionist who had access to the prized password and she would send it out. We of course received print outs of the emails we received.
And so on and on and on….until now where I stare into the screen of my laptop almost 14 hours a day. Just makes me wonder whether I am part of the (un) lucky generation that grew up with the gradual increase in the usage of this machine.
I am one of the billions of normal people who use the computer as part of a routine, nothing in terms of cutting edge usage or anything of that sort. In my younger days I would know enough to keep it running, or start it up if something went wrong. But these days if something goes wrong with this machine, then apart from doing what every self respecting sys admin would do, i.e restart it, cant do much more.
And how does this tie in with my opening sentence?
Well was just wondering that where would this go on until.
So now we use the net to publish our thoughts and like I said there are a lot of talented people I know who are doing this beautifully. For the real savvy ones amongst us, to work within a boundary in their social networking sites or blogs etc is second nature. Like I said earlier it just leaves me bewildered. One of the fall outs is that potential employees, girl friends, boy friends, business associates, random people have unfettered access to murky pasts. Think this is already part of a wider debate or will be soon.
All the above has been explore by much smarter people and there are lot of literature available on the same.
The more interesting part is this…..where would this all end up with as far as the next generation is concerned? I think it could have potentially hilarious fall outs.
“DAD you did what during the summer of ’04. And you are telling me not to do this? Where is the justice? What am doing is not even 6.8% as potentially lethal. I have gone thro all the images, all 4539 blurred ones. What do you mean, that was a different time?”
“What the hell have you been writing about me since I was a child, and those images? And how come you never took my permission to put my images?”
“You know am never going to go thro all that you have been writing to me over the last 20 years…video blogging would have been so much easier!!!!”
“What bands have you been writing about anyways? And why are you forcing me to read about them? Give it up the Beatles are like so 100 years back.”
I never wanted to know what my dad did in his college years or what my mom and dad did on vacation! Perhaps thats a personal choice and avenues for learning about the same was offered by the parents and it was your choice to take it or run. But what if it was all around? In a hyper networked world where all and sundry details of what happened 40 years back was there at the click of a button. Oh i know about the checks and blocking and all that stuff, but what if it was just a dunderhead like me doing the rudimentary things and not knowing or not caring enought to put more checks?
And so on…..contemplating how this generations blundering about on the net will be looked at by the next one to come. People in our personal realm of contact.
Should be interesting.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Character Actors
Tell me if am wrong but i would think that we are living in the golden age of character actors as far as Hollywood is concerned. Not that there weren't great ones through all eras of film making. But that they are getting some of their due in terms of starring roles...the recent resurgence of great content on TV also might have added something to it.
Over the next few weeks hope to add to this thread of thought not in terms of character sketches and bios but in terms of favourite moments. We all know the big breakthrough hollywood movements right from Jack Nicholson "Here's Johnny" or Clint Eastwood "Do you feel lucky punk". Am trying to look for some not so conventional moments from some not so conventional actors. Heres one for starters......
Alan Cumming in X2 as Night Crawler. When he's asked who he is. A slight straightening of the back, head tilted upwards "My name is Kurt Wagner, but in the Munich Circus... " and is rudely cut off.........this happens more than a few times in the movies and everytime you can see the hopeful gleam in his eye that he will finally establish his street cred with the rest of mutants....but always gets cut off and you can see the same slightly hurt/bewildered expression on his face every time....small moment carried off beautifully among the over the top performances all around....
Over the next few weeks hope to add to this thread of thought not in terms of character sketches and bios but in terms of favourite moments. We all know the big breakthrough hollywood movements right from Jack Nicholson "Here's Johnny" or Clint Eastwood "Do you feel lucky punk". Am trying to look for some not so conventional moments from some not so conventional actors. Heres one for starters......
Alan Cumming in X2 as Night Crawler. When he's asked who he is. A slight straightening of the back, head tilted upwards "My name is Kurt Wagner, but in the Munich Circus... " and is rudely cut off.........this happens more than a few times in the movies and everytime you can see the hopeful gleam in his eye that he will finally establish his street cred with the rest of mutants....but always gets cut off and you can see the same slightly hurt/bewildered expression on his face every time....small moment carried off beautifully among the over the top performances all around....
Sunday, February 1, 2009
AXL Rose – Chinese Democracy
(my comp crashed 3 times while writing this...how appropriate)
I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore
In terms of mind boggling statistics there has been enough written about Guns N Roses, Chinese Democracy. 14 years, 15 studios give and take a few years. Am not even going into the fact whether it was worth it. For that matter can anything in the pop culture be worth that much? How does one put a tag or a rating on a work which has obviously consumed not just time but the artist himself.
No, I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore No I...I
Forgive them that tear down my soul
And bless them that they might grow old
And free them so that they may know That it's never too late
What would it take for this man to just give up and get the damn thing out? To move on? How many changes of his team, studios, labels, hairstyles would it take to just say fuck it am done? What bullheadedness was needed to ignore the kind of changes which have taken in the music scene, whole sub genres of music have risen and fallen in that time. What was the quest for perfection or imperfection that he was looking for? What mythical Holy Grail drove him?
Oh the many times What seem like a memory I've searched and found the ways you use to lure me in
I've found the ways, oh why it had to be Mired in denial, and so afraid
If we ever find it true That we had the strength to choose I'm free of all these chains We held together
There were certainly enough of us out there who kept track of this. Actually that’s a lie, most of us remembered G ‘N’ R as this guy in a red bandana and white shorts running amok on stage while a guy with wild hair, a top hat and a dangling cigarette seemed to absorb the madness and channel it though one wailing note after another. We were certainly not prepared for the revolving door of musicians both known and obscure (the number of people who have been credited on the album might need its own website).
Until the day when the name of the album itself started to become mythical, a mirage, a derisive term even. Making its way up the list of works awaited for the longest time, shoving aside pretenders. Seemed the second coming of Elvis would happen sooner.
Would it even stand up to scrutiny…end up as a joke when it finally appeared on the shelves? Can anything live up to this kind of promise, waiting?
I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore
Am not even getting into the merits/demerits of the album (for the record I am obsessed). He certainly still has the voice, the wail, the guttural intensity. Rolling Stone magazine remarked that AXL needed a wall of guitars for what Slash and Izzy would conjure up. The songs are likeable enough, wavering between the brilliant and the pedestrian as any “good” album would. But this certainly isn’t an ordinary album is it?
No, I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore
AXL is a true rock star. That makes up for a lot of things. I have wailed enough times that the only super group of my times had split up too way ahead of its time. And the front man who could step into the ranks of the greats in any era (in terms of the attention he generates at least) was busy obsessively turning knobs in an unnamed record studio. He creates interest, obsession, condemnation, anger but never ignored. Oh we had all listened to appetite for destruction with a sense of wonder and worship, marveled at the perfect conflagration of music, promotion and hype that was use your illusion and were all equally bewildered by the spaghetti incident. But where would the Chinese democracy land up in this scale? Was he even worried about the reception?
The answer of course is NO. AXL is one of those once in a generation deviants who leads public opinion, not follow it in the manner of a market researched manufactured product. If he was to crash and burn then so be it.....but crash and burn he would...on his own fucking terms....
Of course the fact that i listened to the damn album obsessively could be that i bought into the wait...bought into the fact that this had to be freaking awesome.....
This song in red...Madagascar, has been performed by G N R over the last few years. With samples from cool hand luke, Martin Luther King Jr and visuals of katrina, starving Africa and Nelson Mandela this would be a outrage against the injustice around, a U2esque paen to those fighting to turn the world.....but I dont think so. Its almost like this is the tracing of the ordeal that was Chinese Democracy.....
No, I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore That I can't find my way back My way anymore
http://www.gunsnroses.us/chinesedemocracy/madagascar.htm
what do you think?
I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore
In terms of mind boggling statistics there has been enough written about Guns N Roses, Chinese Democracy. 14 years, 15 studios give and take a few years. Am not even going into the fact whether it was worth it. For that matter can anything in the pop culture be worth that much? How does one put a tag or a rating on a work which has obviously consumed not just time but the artist himself.
No, I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore No I...I
Forgive them that tear down my soul
And bless them that they might grow old
And free them so that they may know That it's never too late
What would it take for this man to just give up and get the damn thing out? To move on? How many changes of his team, studios, labels, hairstyles would it take to just say fuck it am done? What bullheadedness was needed to ignore the kind of changes which have taken in the music scene, whole sub genres of music have risen and fallen in that time. What was the quest for perfection or imperfection that he was looking for? What mythical Holy Grail drove him?
Oh the many times What seem like a memory I've searched and found the ways you use to lure me in
I've found the ways, oh why it had to be Mired in denial, and so afraid
If we ever find it true That we had the strength to choose I'm free of all these chains We held together
There were certainly enough of us out there who kept track of this. Actually that’s a lie, most of us remembered G ‘N’ R as this guy in a red bandana and white shorts running amok on stage while a guy with wild hair, a top hat and a dangling cigarette seemed to absorb the madness and channel it though one wailing note after another. We were certainly not prepared for the revolving door of musicians both known and obscure (the number of people who have been credited on the album might need its own website).
Until the day when the name of the album itself started to become mythical, a mirage, a derisive term even. Making its way up the list of works awaited for the longest time, shoving aside pretenders. Seemed the second coming of Elvis would happen sooner.
Would it even stand up to scrutiny…end up as a joke when it finally appeared on the shelves? Can anything live up to this kind of promise, waiting?
I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore
Am not even getting into the merits/demerits of the album (for the record I am obsessed). He certainly still has the voice, the wail, the guttural intensity. Rolling Stone magazine remarked that AXL needed a wall of guitars for what Slash and Izzy would conjure up. The songs are likeable enough, wavering between the brilliant and the pedestrian as any “good” album would. But this certainly isn’t an ordinary album is it?
No, I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore
That I can't find my way back My way anymore
AXL is a true rock star. That makes up for a lot of things. I have wailed enough times that the only super group of my times had split up too way ahead of its time. And the front man who could step into the ranks of the greats in any era (in terms of the attention he generates at least) was busy obsessively turning knobs in an unnamed record studio. He creates interest, obsession, condemnation, anger but never ignored. Oh we had all listened to appetite for destruction with a sense of wonder and worship, marveled at the perfect conflagration of music, promotion and hype that was use your illusion and were all equally bewildered by the spaghetti incident. But where would the Chinese democracy land up in this scale? Was he even worried about the reception?
The answer of course is NO. AXL is one of those once in a generation deviants who leads public opinion, not follow it in the manner of a market researched manufactured product. If he was to crash and burn then so be it.....but crash and burn he would...on his own fucking terms....
Of course the fact that i listened to the damn album obsessively could be that i bought into the wait...bought into the fact that this had to be freaking awesome.....
This song in red...Madagascar, has been performed by G N R over the last few years. With samples from cool hand luke, Martin Luther King Jr and visuals of katrina, starving Africa and Nelson Mandela this would be a outrage against the injustice around, a U2esque paen to those fighting to turn the world.....but I dont think so. Its almost like this is the tracing of the ordeal that was Chinese Democracy.....
No, I won't be told anymore That I've been brought down in this storm And left so far out from the shore That I can't find my way back My way anymore
http://www.gunsnroses.us/chinesedemocracy/madagascar.htm
what do you think?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Our cricket tour committee is truly a bunch of witless morons
this is just out....the tour of NZ in Feb...we have included an extra test and 20-20, so the tally is two Twenty20 matches, five ODIs and three Tests..awesome...wow... there must be a catch right?but of course this comes at the expense of... wait for it....the three day practice match....how many more times will we repeat the same crap...possibly the toughest of tours ever...where journeymen cricketers of the caliber of Simon Doull have made mincemeat of us......how many more tour openers will we lose?!?!?!?!?!!?!?we are legendary poor starters anyways and absolutely mindless stupid fucking decisions such as this just makes the shit explode through the ceiling.....possibly the only saving grace is that the tour starts with 20-20 goes into odi and then the test matches.....but again the players not in the 20-20 and odi scheme of things will come into the cold as of course the three day warm up match between the ODIs and tests has been scrapped....so hasta la vista Dravid you are fucked...Laxman better start thinking of excuses not to tour, you too sir are fucked..we have not won a test here in 3 decades...with lunatics running the show its a miracle that we win abroad at all...just reinforces the fact that we win inspite of these assholes....
Friday, September 26, 2008
Nickname
Walk into a party once, introduced to people all around. My moniker (auto) brings a few smiles. Until this dude who starts rolling on the ground. As in he finds the nick so hilarious that he goes around telling people and expecting them to find it equally hilarious. In the midst of all this my friends are looking amused and a little irritated. I decided that this dude must either be really high or his funny bone was real pathetic.
Few minutes later, the laughing guy introduces himself as “Chappal”. You would agree that I had the right to be really pissed off.......
Few minutes later, the laughing guy introduces himself as “Chappal”. You would agree that I had the right to be really pissed off.......
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
My Glasses
From sleepy to complete wakefulness in less than 1/10th of a second can be extremely disconcerting and very few things can do that to me. That particular snapping sound does that to me every time.....
I had just broken another pair of glasses….. DAMN….
How many creative ways can one break a pair of glasses, pretty standard right? WRONG!!!!! Ask anyone who’s been wearing a pair for some time; you will get a different story every time.
Pretty much every way I can buff up a pair of glasses I have done. Unbreakable lenses….bah seen them all…flexible frames…chewed….real cheap pair..gone in 3…real expensive…gone in 2…..
Some of the saner ways I have broken them…
Bowled a full toss to the champ…..ball came back hit me in the face…..
Slept on them…many many many times…..
Friends dog chewed them up…..am not joking bout this one….
Head banging to a wimp song to impress girl…divine retribution…lenses flew out of the frames….
Kept them very carefully out of harms way on the table…clambered on the table next day to change a light bulb....
Grabbed my cap, put it on firm to rush out as it was my turn to bat…..glasses inside cap….. CRAP....
Got in the way of a book……book was unfortunately being swung around by a 100kg hand….
All time record… 5 mins…came out of optician place…kept it carefully on the bike…forgot it was there…..ass was glass....
I had just broken another pair of glasses….. DAMN….
How many creative ways can one break a pair of glasses, pretty standard right? WRONG!!!!! Ask anyone who’s been wearing a pair for some time; you will get a different story every time.
Pretty much every way I can buff up a pair of glasses I have done. Unbreakable lenses….bah seen them all…flexible frames…chewed….real cheap pair..gone in 3…real expensive…gone in 2…..
Some of the saner ways I have broken them…
Bowled a full toss to the champ…..ball came back hit me in the face…..
Slept on them…many many many times…..
Friends dog chewed them up…..am not joking bout this one….
Head banging to a wimp song to impress girl…divine retribution…lenses flew out of the frames….
Kept them very carefully out of harms way on the table…clambered on the table next day to change a light bulb....
Grabbed my cap, put it on firm to rush out as it was my turn to bat…..glasses inside cap….. CRAP....
Got in the way of a book……book was unfortunately being swung around by a 100kg hand….
All time record… 5 mins…came out of optician place…kept it carefully on the bike…forgot it was there…..ass was glass....
Thursday, September 4, 2008
home
My dad has lived in the same place for the last 50 years.
I have lived here for the better part of my 30 years.
My (extended) family still deem this to be their spiritual point of origin.
We have a mailing list named after this very same place.
I unconsciously refer to this place whenever anyone asks me where I am from.
My dad has decided to shift out from here in the next couple of months.
Will it revert to being just a house after that?
I have lived here for the better part of my 30 years.
My (extended) family still deem this to be their spiritual point of origin.
We have a mailing list named after this very same place.
I unconsciously refer to this place whenever anyone asks me where I am from.
My dad has decided to shift out from here in the next couple of months.
Will it revert to being just a house after that?
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