Outfoxed

I watched Outfoxed today. It's a documentary made in 2004 about Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network and its utter lack of neutrality. It is an unconscionable travesty that they advertise themselves with the slogan 'fair and balanced' - nothing could be further from the truth! They are nothing short of lackeys of right-wing political interests who unabashedly toe the party line and trample the truth into the ground. Have they no respect for democracy, fairness and the public interest? Is basic decency too much to demand of them?

For more info on Outfoxed, visit http://www.outfoxed.org/

This is a problem that is not peculiar to this one news network. Across the board, we are watching journalism subverted by sensationalism and propaganda. The fourth estate is one of the vital pillars on which democracy stands. Do not stand by and watch it ruined by shallow people. Please watch this documentary. It is a clarion call to all those who stand on the side of fairness and democracy.

Today, the internet is the biggest ray of hope for those who fight to preserve journalism. It costs nothing to disseminate ideas through this medium and it is possible for anybody and everybody to reach a wide audience. The power of money and political clout don't count for much in the cyber world. But all is not well here - there is another battle that looms just beyond the horizon, the one to preserve net neutrality.

For more info on net neutrality, visit the following websites:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html

Rage

Note: This post is NOT going to make for pleasurable reading, not by any stretch of the imagination. These are words that have refused to flow from my pen for a long time now. This dull wintry evening, for a reason I know nothing of, they have found their release, and I mine. And I am glad of it, for I carry my pen lighter now. Is this fact or fiction? Does it matter?

To those of you who do venture beyond this point, I ask this much of you. Do not judge me a negative person, upon reading the initial paragraphs. Read on to the end.

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Have you ever felt rage? I do not refer to the sort of anger that makes you want to hurl curses or even blows at someone. No sir! I speak of the primal rage that you feel coursing through your very veins - a feeling that makes you want to END whomsoever is the object of it... right then... right there... with your bare hands. When I speak of ending someone, I don't mean just killing him... you want to rub him out of existence... even from the memories of people... make it like he never existed... wipe the slate clean! That is the sort of rage that in no time drags you across that invisible line which separates the sane from the insane. Mistake it not for the silly madness that makes you crave ice cream on a snowy December evening. This is the sort of madness that takes prisoner your senses and sensibilities before you even know it. It is a rage that derives from deep-rooted hate - hate that slowly burns you up as it burns within you... the sort that leaves you nothing but a hollow husk, numb to all joy.

Forgiveness is divine... but alas, I'm no God! When someone wrongs you so badly as to make you comprehend the true nature of hate, they have killed your innocence - they have killed a part of you. Forgiveness is not an option. However, vengeance doesn't accomplish much either. True, it does grant you an immediate satisfaction but, all too soon you are left with a void that is impossible to fill. What's worse is that the hate and rage make you oblivious to pain - both your own and that of the ones you love - but just long enough to let you commit acts that leave you with the ever-lasting bitterness of regret.

I have felt that hate, that rage and yet I have managed to pull myself out of that downward spiral. So what you may ask was my solution? Amnesia... dumb bleeding amnesia... not the clinical kind, but the self-induced variety that is brought on by sheer force of will. It takes a lot to hold on to your senses while your body shakes from the force of your anger. But in the end, it's worth it to rediscover your lost smile. His life is not worth living, he who can not recall the sound of his own laughter. I can and I do - and every time I do, I smile to myself, relieved - knowing that none of this may have ever come to pass.

I do not have it in me to forgive nor do I even wish to be able to do so. But I can be blissfully absent-minded when I choose to be. There are doors in my mind that have been locked, never to be opened again. The cobwebs of time have already begun to obscure them and soon they will be lost to oblivion. And I live my life now with a passion and vigor known only to one who has wished death. For, no possession is cherished so sweetly, as one lost and regained.

And I leave you now with words from Friedrich Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

PS. I couldn't help myself this incongruously silly digression but all this perhaps explains why my favorite superhero is Batman - his life a hollow existence, defined by the very vengeance that drives him.

Thus spake Nietzsche

Here are a few quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche that I recently came across:

• Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
• The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
• A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
• Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
• Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?
• It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

Another day in the life

Note: Text inside square brackets denotes actual physical actions and my take on stuff is demarcated by paranthesis. The rest of the text is what goes on inside my head.

[Ta-na-na Na-na-na Na-Na-Naa... alarm goes off]... who's making these horrible eardrum-busting, eyeball-bleeding sounds at this ungodly hour... wait a bleedin' minute... I know this sound and it means it is no longer some ungodly hour... alarm on my mobile phone. Where is it? That's right, at the foot of my bed. [I turn it off]... it's only the first of 3 alarms... I can sleep till the third one goes off. Argghhh, that annoying cock crows again from across the room... my second alarm... it's already 5 minutes since the first one went off?? Turn it off and lay down again... this time I'll be woken up by pleasant music... I'll get some more shuteye before that and I'll feel better about waking up.

Comfortably numb...what a way to start the day (rhyme entirely unintended)... why don't I lie in bed and listen to the whole song? Western blot... incubation... class? ... 8:58 TRAX? ... shower... breakfast? ... are there any bagels left? Will there be time to dry my hair after I shower? Damn! Get up!

[I jump out of bed... look at the clock that was howling like a banshee a few minutes ago... turn towards the laptop.] No... there's no time for this... [I go through my morning ablutions.] (This marks the completion of the process of my waking up... once I'm through this I won't be able to sleep until the wee hours of the next morning.) [I shower... rummage through my wardrobe as I dry my 'flowing black mane' (which is still a tangled mass of bad hair at this point) and pick a decent (at least I think so) set of clothing] Did I wear these yesterday? Maybe the day before? What the hell, there's no time to look for something else. Must make that next TRAX. [As I put on my clothes, I also pick my laptop. Still, drying my hair. If time permits, I swing by the kitchen for a cup of milk or juice and a bagel. Tie my hair up in a neat pony. I walk/run to the TRAX stop.]

[Once I get to the lab, my day pretty much consists of coffee, work, looking at my reef tank (my own lil' vacation in a box), more coffee, work, music, some more coffee, work, maybe some food... you get the idea.]

(Evenings are a kaleidoscope of movies, music, food (cooking and eating) and a spot of reading. By the time my evening ends, the first hours of the next day are already upon me and the next day begins.)

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: [narrating] "Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday night. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

But who needs mind-numbing reasons or an-escape-from-reality-reserved-for-pathetic-losers (heroin) when you can have the exctiting and much healthier life of a graduate student? Yes, a grad student's life... a psychedelic cocktail of intellectual peregrinations(research), penury, independence, procrastination... a drab gray existence punctuated by eclectic animated interludes in brillitant colour. Yes, my life's a trip and I love it!

Know you cussword

Read this and be enlightened:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fuck

What makes me me?

I know this is rather crappy but I just felt like writing this...so read on and suffer!

10 things I love:

1. To wake up to the intoxicating sound of Pink Floyd or Oasis on a rainy Sunday morning and do nothing all day. Or to drift off to sleep listening to heavy metal (rather counterintuitive to most, but it can be an extremely calming influence).
2. A cup of strong coffee followed up with a piece of smooth dark chocolate.
3. The feel of the pages in a new book and the smell of old leather-bound volumes.
4. The way cool water tastes when I am really thirsty.
5. A hot bath at the end of a rough day (preferably with music playing).
6. That sudden spark of inspiration that leads you to the (often simple) solution to a mind-numbing problem.
7. Sitting down to a hot self-cooked meal.
8. That well timed PJ (for the uninitiated, if indeed such people do exist, PJ stands for a poor joke and not pajamas!) that makes everyone outwardly cry out in agony while they secretly laugh over it.
9. Watching people on a bus/train while listening to music - like a silent movie, only better.
10. Writing with a pencil.

10 things I hate:

1. Governmental control in everyday life and curtailment of liberty.
2. Bad music and speakers that jar.
3. Waiting for the next issue of a comic book to read the ending to a great story.
4. Dessert that is too sweet.
5. Sand sticking to my feet and especially in between my toes (yup, you guessed it...I NEVER step into the water when I'm at the beach.).
6. Siting in the front row in classes.
7. Dealing with banks and managing finances.
8. Wet shoes.
9. Dressing formally.
10. Tying up my shoelaces.

The Macnife Point of View

It's here. I know you've all been waiting for this. So go visit my new photoblog at http://macnifepointofview.blogspot.com/ and rejoice!

My life, my loves

Disclaimer: I am responsible for any mental trauma caused by the reading of this crap but there's jack you can do about it. I would blame it squarely on the late hour and the film The Big Lebowski, which I watched just prior to writing this.

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Apart from the noble purpose of seeking enlightenment and such, my existence is driven my love of 3 things: toys, thrills and travel and my greatest passion of all: FOOD!

Let’s save the 3T’s for some other time and go straight to the good part. Food… of all the millions of tastes and flavors, let me just bring up 3. Why 3? Because, 3 is a prime number…not just any prime number but the first lucky prime. Three is symbolic… the holy trinity (the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva…well, also Christianity’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit), the 3 fundamental particles, the 3 primary colors, ancient Rome’s triumvirate, the 3 musketeers…wait a bloody second…what the heck am I blathering about? Digressions are sometimes unavoidable, but this one is just too much. Am I digressing again by talking about a digression? Wow! (Pure genius, I know!).

Well, where was I? Ah, the 3 flavors: chocolate, coffee and chillies. What is it with me and groups of three items starting with the same letter of the alphabet? I don’t know. There I go blathering off again.

Chocolate…mmm…chocolate…it exists, therefore I do. I love chocolate for the chocolate and not for the sugar, i.e. the more bitter, the better. Legend has it that the Aztecs and Mayans, who discovered chocolate (the greatest contribution to humanity…ever!), reserved it for their royalty (I’d say those folk had it better than the Greek gods with their ambrosia!) and commoners found stealing chocolate were put to the death. As much as I abhor violence, between me and my chocolate is a bad place to be.

Coffee. Being a full-blooded south Indian, it is only natural that I love coffee. However, I go beyond quintessential cup of filter coffee and embrace coffee in all shapes and forms save for that weird stuff they brew in the Philippines from cat droppings. This is not one of my quirky jokes… I kid you not. I do have one criterion – coffee is meant to be strong. Not strong as in strong enough for you to smell the caffeine but strong as in strong enough for a cup to wake up a sleeping elephant. Bring on the caffeine. (All godless decaf drinkers will have their livers ‘roasted’ in hell!* - roasted, coffee…get it?) I divide my days in two – BC (before coffee) (that’s when I’m pretty much wasted or irritable (read homicidal) or both) and AC (after coffee).

Chillies…yes, chillies. Why chillies, you might ask. Ears turning a slight shade of red, sweat beading on the brow, watery eyes, a drippy nose, lips on fire, lack of any sensation whatsoever on the tongue… those who know these sensations well, know the pleasure that follows it. It’s true…chillies cause the body to release endorphins. An acquired taste most definitely, but one with more depth than most realize. Those who get past the initial burn recognize the many shades of heat… from the tongue tip burn of green chillies to the sharp point of heat traveling through one’s alimentary canal characteristic of habaneros.

These are more than just my favorite tastes…they are my passions. Let me put it this way. If I were to be faced with imminent death, I imagine memories of my life would come flooding (cliché, I know). But not all those memories would be visual, they would be disconnected emotions, smells…TASTES - and my 3C’s would definitely top the list.

PS. I guess this is what happens when I try to write something in a lighter vein.

PPS. * - I stole that one from the ever-so-funny former dis-Information Minister of Iraq, Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf. He said, “God will roast the stomachs of infidels in hell at the hands of Iraqis.” Here’s the part I don’t get. Does he mean to say that all Iraqis by default go to hell? Or is/was there an elite group of Iraqis handpicked by Saddam to work the ‘hell detail’?