Beware the White Van

I have always been disturbed by the way this country is run. I have been at a loss for words to describe what I feel. Because I always felt it should be described in specific socio political neoclassical modernistic and God knows what jargon. Explained intellectually to put it another way. But screw that! I am not some reporter, I am not some election observer or uptight piss arse politically correct writer, and I can’t explain it intellectually because I am NOT a bloody intellectual! I am just an average guy trying to fucking LIVE in this place. I have many, many grievances. And I don’t give a shit if you think they are irrelevant, or unpatriotic, or cowardly, or that I am an attention freak. Because I am pissed off and I am shouting about it!



First, our sad excuse for a president. That great lummox of an idiot should not have been elected. Let me express my heartfelt scorn to every single person out there who voted for him. Hopefully you did not know what kind of monster you were creating. It was shameful the way he won (because of the restriction of voting in the north, where he would have lost), and it is bloody shameful the way he is running this country.



Shameful I say! Do I need to elaborate? Fine I will. Take Mervyn Silva, everybody’s favorite neighborhood thug. How many atrocities has he committed? Why is that devil-spawn still on the loose? Take corruption. It is rampant. It is open. The president’s government does not give a rat’s ass who sees what they do. They’ve scared everyone with the war. Sure they’ve made advances in that respect, but they are using it to fill up their own pockets, expecting people to put up and shut up as long as they keep kicking the asses of the Tigers.



This is crazy, and I am continuously surprised as to why we put up with this whole fiasco. This circus of a government. They are like a pack of locusts swarming around a dying animal, the dying animal being our country. And the reason it is dying is because of the activity of its people! Yes. It’s people. The politicians are not different from a country’s people. They are the upstarts who take the lead to come to the forefront to lead us and then they lead us all down the road to still more suffering, pain and deprivation of basic human rights. We voted for them (I didnt, but we did). What the fuck were we thinking?



Wait a minute. Did you just say human rights? What’s that? We are not familiar with that term. What? You have a complaint? On the violation of human rights? By a government official? Oh, by a politician, okay. But how can someone violate human rights when they don’t know what it means? Please go and register the term in the National Vocabulary Institute for recognition in Sri Lanka and please wait 6 years while they do the appropriate research to determine its exact meaning and then another 4 years while they review its appropriateness for use in this country. Then another 5 years for parliamentary review and another 2 for presidential approval. Then come back.



In the meanwhile we will continue to deploy our white vans and abduct random Joes like you for various reasons and torture you before deciding whether to kill you or let you go. We will also go onto abduct whoever we want for ransom to fund the country’s ‘war effort’ while actually channeling those monies towards various offshore bank accounts and proceed to kick out of the country any discerning organization or person who tries to stop us. Because we don’t know any better see?



Things are going at a crazy pace. To a crazy place no doubt. But I feel it’s crazy enough as it is. I wonder if this post is crazy enough to warrant a white van of my own? Now that’ll be some negative feedback.

The Importance of being Earnest

I have decided to sit down again and I have decided to write. Writing something, anything, tends to release all the pent up frustration within me and put it all on the piece of paper, or the computer screen in front of me. It comes to pass that inevitably there will be the question that will arise in your minds asking whether if it is writing alone that releases my emotion or writing with the knowledge that someone will at least read it, or writing with the knowledge that there exists a chance of someone reading it?

This question, as far as my urge to write is concerned, seems somewhat relevant. Because I have contemplated it myself. And at this point I feel a doubt as to whether this particular piece of writing is going to be published. But I will keep on writing nevertheless because that was a decision I made somewhere around the time when I put finger to keyboard.

Having just taken a few seconds to check my phone because I just received a phantom SMS, that is to say an SMS that wasn’t an SMS at all, I am back to writing. It was just one of those times where you imagined received a text message and stopped what you were doing to check your phone only to find that you haven’t.

I just received an actual SMS. Sometimes I think that our generation has encountered some form of telepathy or mind power of some sort. Because on some occasions I am extremely confident that I just knew that I was getting an SMS or a call and picked up my phone just a micro second or so before it rang, or beeped. Perhaps we can feel the oncoming radiation on our skins. Who knows? Maybe I’m a mind freak like Chris Angel. I will soon release my video where I will predict all the phone calls in the city of Colombo to the closes t second, two weeks in advance. I am confident that I can develop my powers sufficiently in order to accomplish this feat. I shall start practicing now.

Now I have been interrupted for a long period of time so let me get back to the original point of this piece of writing. I have already decided to publish it and I suppose I had decided it at the inception itself although maybe I did not know it for sure. But that is besides the point. The point is, well in search of the original point I just had a look at the top of the page but I could not find one. Other than of course the entire point of this piece of writing was to do just that; write.

So I wrote and managed to write a few hundred pages of things that do not particularly have much meaning in terms of anything as a matter of fact. I say that because practically anything tends to have a meaning in terms of something. But back to my original question, which was the question that I thought could have a reasonable chance of arising (along with; ‘what kind of stupid fool would write something like this?’) upon reading the first passage of this piece was whether writing is effective in terms of reducing mental friction when it is purely just writing or writing that is published? I don’t know because I am done writing for now. Maybe I shall do it next time I feel like aimless writing.

Being earnest by the way, for some reason that escapes the power of perception that I am entrusted with at the moment, is somehow very important.

Searching….Imagination…can’t…find….Anything!!

Ook.. so this is inspired by Dramaqueen inspired by Dee Cee inspired by Gutterflower.

I have a thing for these kinda mind exercises and like to then sit and think about the quirky things that come out. Haven’t given much thought to the below. Doing so would have spoilt the spontaneity and originality of it. I don’t know if that’s the way it’s supposed to be done, but that’s the way I did it. Enough rambling. Here we go.


I remember everything that happened with her

I don't care a damn though (at least I think so..)

I want to move on with my life. Continuously.

I hate my ‘sucker for love’ attitude

I wonder If aliens exist

I have never seen one though

I know nothing much


And because Dramaqueen wanted to ‘stimulate her creativity even further’ which i think is a good idea, I shall try that as well:


I live for tomorrow

I desire wealth and power

I love money and beautiful women : )

I need some satisfaction!

I revel in pain and rejection.


Now that’s something to think about…

hungry now.

bones hurt knees hurt eyes hurt too,
harsh light, butterflies, that my stomach could do,
without ryt now i am feeling quite blue,
seeing red feeling rude need some rest ahh my bed!

laying butt so bruised by all day being kicked,
havent felt so much in need for a rest since i came,
home one day in the 8th grade after pretty badly getting beat,
but im not sad just tired,
like i said my knees hurt and my brain needs to be rewired.

ahh my bed, as i lie, writing about this day,
my stomach rumbles and now i realize that i am bloody hungry,
another problem goddamn this! will the troubles never cease?
now gotta walk all the way to the fridge,
to find a cracker at least.

i'll c you later.

10 Things I want to do Before I Die

I was just in the loo and browsing facebook (….erryes?). And I saw a friend of mine had written this laborious note; 100 Things I want to do Before I Die’. It got me thinking, I’ve got loads of things I’ve wanted to do before I die. Probably hundreds. But since I can’t be bothered to think of em all and bore you all by writing them down here. I’ll settle for a nice clean and tidy figure of (….drrrummroll…) Ten Things I Want to Do Before I Die (Allah willing of course).

So in no particular order and off the top of my head, Here goes,

1. Get a set of six-packs; closest I’ve come to so far is a six pack of coke.
2. Go to Egypt, see the pyramids.
3. Host my own radio show
4. Live the life of a nomad, travelling the world for at least 2 years; i think they call it backpacking.
5. Get rich.
6. Run a marathon!
7. Get a PHD.
8. Learn an art of self defense (to be used to kick ass!)
9. Surf the waves!
10. Write and publish a book. (It’s ok if no one buys it; I just want to see the finished product)

At this point, a suppressed part of my mind pipes up with a point valid enough for me to jot down here…

“Will writing it all down jinx it all and make it never HAPPEN??”

I don’t believe in jinxes but I do believe in the complexity of the human mind.

I guess I’ll find out...One way or the other.

Cheers!

Dilemma

The pain is in vain,
Just closure for my soul,
the gain though, is plain,
freedom to the floor!

The sweet release of guilt
the big relief i felt
the painful blow i dealt
is making my insides melt

But now the road is clear,
or at least its supposed to be,
but they still distract me dear,
blurring what i see

Odesseus and the sirens,
Samson and and his girl,
they both had their chances,
but only one came out the whirl

The other, on his knees
reduced to half a man
captured, confined,
broken, reduced to plead

So Samson? or Odesseus?
whose path will i chose?
but there are a lot of holes
and this theory may be loose

For odesseus was married
happily with a kid,
and Samson no doubt,
thought the same fate was his.

So Penelope or Delilah
either one of them could trick
so how do you find out
which is which?

The Only Way Out Is In

I've been taken in a hold, It binds like a vice, broken and i'm cold, burnt more than thrice.

This invisible force, curdling my bones, this dead man's pulse, posing as my own.

I wallow in self disgust, all I want is to know, escape from this I must, must get away must go!

Can't break away, the blanket is too strong, to keep the forces at bay, is all I can do

To go in is to get away, deeper into the murk, towards some percieved end, the only way out is in.

A somewhat murky and disconnected analysis

I have always been somewhat of an outsider when it comes to the existing social norms. My recent fully fledged excursion into the Sri Lankan blogosphere has proved to me nothing less. Kottu seems to be a melting pot of some very diverse thinkers. People who are not afraid to be radical, people who are not afraid to pose tough questions and people who are sometimes downright rude. But it’s all good; it’s all pretty refreshing after being immersed in a world of fakery and smiles, covering up stabbing of rear ends and talking behind the same. It is nice to get upfront and personal and in your face biatch! Now and then.

But in my objective look at the bloggodrome around me I have come to observe and form some early opinions of the creatures that are known as bloggers. Especially the community at Kottu. We are a homely bunch I feel. Feeding off each other’s misery, happiness, greed, ambition etc. I know in my limited time and vision I am not in a position to judge - I will do so anyway, and you will be more than welcome to correct me - but it is a community in itself. It has its mavericks, its conformists, its radicals, its geeks, jocks and so on and so forth. Some are pretentious; more than a few. I guess all human beings have a natural tendency to be pretentious. Including yours truly. I don’t know. But what is refreshing is the amount of people completely being themselves. Individuals actually putting in an effort to break their fears of losing social approval and simply lash out at the world with everything they’ve got. Revealing all, holding back nothing.

The blogger I feel, at least the one who writes bent more on a personal note; one like me for example. Is a somewhat self obsessed, somewhat gloomy character. Pondering on the aspects of life that are usually exempt from general everyday conversation, the blogger feels a need to release. And to be heard and responded to. The blogger needs to vent sometimes, he needs attention. But that is nothing abnormal, we all need attention sometimes. Sniff sniff; (.

This community, I feel, is a community of outsiders. But that is nothing abnormal, I think deep inside everyone is an outsider. Because no one is a carbon copy of everybody else. Therefore a part of you is similar while a part of you is different to the collective human psyche. So it must be the case that at some time there happens to be a person who prefers to exult in his difference to the whole, rather than in his similarity to it. Perhaps to the people in this community, or those of you who I am intrigued by; blogging is a way to revel in your outsiderness (if such a word exists).

Well to put an end to this rather gloomy post, The Whackster would like to reiterate that this was just a random rant and no empirical analyses and experiments were conducted in its production. Thoughts flew out based upon concrete observations and demanded to be documented because they were naively self-important. Any lab rats and animal testing was strictly confined to the realms of his mind and no living being was harmed in producing it. And to those of you extreme individuals whose blogs I so enjoy reading; keep writing so I can keep reading. I have hunted and failed for a method to bring this post around to a point where I could finish it off with a sly witticism perhaps, followed by an exclamation mark, but the mood will not allow it. It is pleasantly melancholy. So now, I shall stop.

Message in a Bottle

A green little bottle, the cork is screwed on tight. The genie inside might not or might, be waiting to tell you a story of light, a story of darkness, with thunder and flashes of white.

Three wishes my child do not ask for more. Your life can be changed for now and evermore. And for the rest of eternity you will reside, in peace and in riches, i do not lie.

Contemplating the wisdom of the attempt to be made, the mind is taken on a journey of hope, a thrillseeker, the thrills are here to take.

But there is always and will be a price to be paid.

It is the bite of the darkside, the deal is your soul. Live in the light my child all mighty and bold, at the end of your time, the secrets will be told.

And then the darkness will swallow you whole.

Throw the wretched bottle back into the sea, the temptation is there but it is not for me. Destroy it I must yet so should it be? but its too late, the bottle is already out of reach.

If you see it, destroy it.

That was a public service announcement :-)

Are YOU politically correct?!

Nowadays in this country, in fact, everyday in this country, and in countries all over the world, people are expected to refrain from speaking out their real thoughts and views by the social demand for ‘political correctness’. God forbid you criticize the war; our soldiers are dying out there! How can you say that all their blood and sweat is in vain? God forbid you criticize the president?? Talk about gay people? Women? Men? In fact just shut up. You’ll probably be much safer from attacks of accidental offendees.

Politics, as is, is a game of lies and deception. Players in that game constantly put down each other with constant word play and abuse and always try to come out on top. It is a game obsessed with the superficial aspects of life and tends to cater purely to people’s emotions rather than to actual rational thought and purpose.

Political correctness is no different. As a matter of fact, isn’t being politically correct practicing politics for the masses? Everyday people go about on their tip toes doing anything and everything possible to avoid offending others, and the potential offendees, my God; you should see the way they react! A black man can call another black man by the N word but anybody else tries it and you’ll be hanging by your nipples on some tree somewhere. That doesn’t make calling him that right but it provokes some thought. At least when it comes to me.

Just like the real politicians, people go about everyday saying, doing and promising things they do not mean. Certain people can’t stand people from other religions, different sexual orientations, different skin color, caste etc. so they try very hard to show that they’ve got nothing against them and in fact, are perfectly happy to embrace them into their lives and times.

But watch it if your daughter wants to get married to a Singhalese or your son turns out to be bisexual. Whoa now, that kind of shit is OK for other people but not for me and my kind.

Well, I suppose we have to be grateful that we seemed to have moved on from the brutal open racism and other types of violent expression that we used to show towards different people. But have we moved on from openly showing and acting upon our irrational hateful sentiments to hiding it and coating it with smiles and when we are alone among our ‘own kind’, we trash them and smash them and vent out all our pent up frustration on them. So we breed hatred and ongoing fear and mistrust for human beings who are not so different to us after all.

Differences exist right? I don’t think we can make apple jam about that. And some of those differences we do not agree with, this will be the case with any person. If you are religious then there will be people practicing things in society that your religion requires you to denounce, and if you are not religious, then you will secretly be quite suspicious of the lifestyles of the religious.

So what’s better, being open and quite plainly avoiding the ‘different’ as you perceive them and not making any secrets as to how you feel about them? or putting on your smiles and you wiles and being perfectly friendly and helpful on the outside while your flesh crawls with disgust and and hate on the inside?

There are people who are extremely tolerant of others and that is great to see. But are we honestly tolerant of any and everybody we meet and their practices? And aren’t we a slave to general public sentiment when we actually make that decision as to whether we should tolerate them or not? We might say that we draw the line depending on what we believe is good and evil. But do good and evil really exist in a firm manner when looked at through a given moral or religious perspective? You might be a liberal and there will be certain things you consider good and bad that will clash with a strongly conservative person who will have their own ideas of good and bad. So are we meant to live in constant state of agreeing to disagree with each other?

The Jungle

The path ahead, opens out onto jungle so thick, the dark and dank, the damp.

I want to avoid the jungle, want to bypass it, but on both sides to the horizon, it is all i can see.

I have run away, from the need to face the beasts, the beings that are waiting, to confront me there.

I can hear them roaring, screaming for blood, baying at the moon, covered by the clouds.

Cross it i should, the garden is on the other side.

But when?

And what terrors will I encounter inside?

Perpetual Fear

He is stuck inside his cave hugging his knees,

The situation is grave, all around him the darkness of fear,

Outside the sun shines a glimmering blur, as seen through a sheen of water.

The painting swarms in front of his eyes, forever shifting shapes,

He can see her face, her eyes, his future, his dreams going to waste,

That place, his race, his pace, his age

His face, his name, his date, his eyes.

His pain knows no disguise, it is visible to all but only a few decide,

To have a look and see inside,

And what will they find?

A writhing mass, writhing tall?

A seething pit of blood and gore?

He hugs his knees and bows his head

He lives in perpetual fear.

He refuses to believe the sunshine is real, he refuses,

His fear to him is far dearer.

My Obsession with the Horizon

The beach near where i live.. man it's gonna be hard to move!

Outside 'The Station' Wellawatte on a Saturday evening

Near Dematagoda Junk

I have always been intrigued by horizons. these are some photographs iv taken over the past couple of weeks and, being somewhat of an amateur photographer, i would greatly appreciate any tips from any knowlegable snappers out there. Cheers!

Raggedy Rag – The Beauty that is her

She seems so poetic, He doesn’t know why, Her hair like the dark clouds, Upon a rain soaked night sky. The stars they twinkle within, Glimmering upon her skin. Her smooth, soft insides, Turning me mad with desire. Her words of a turned blue, Like the waves crashing on the shore, The light of her sun shines, Upon my burnt soul so sore.

Sport Fuelled Sunday

Yesterday was quite a day for sports fans. I don’t know about other sports fans but for a sports fan like me it was a hell of a day all right. It started out all slow, no big plans, but then since my malli (who while not being my blood malli, was still my malli, as I am his) came down from Aussie last week, us and the old school crowd decided to make a day of it.

So we’ve been hanging out at this hotel with this stop for coffee and sports bar inbuilt and after the usual walk around the donkey park stuffing ourselves with anything and everything and commenting and rating every single decent looking lady around the place (one main schoolboy practice that never fades when we’re e together). So we’re walking around in shorts and rubbers me, Malli, Jundar (broken arm in tow, hunting accident, don’t ask), and Tunks, and ended up hogging a table in aforementioned sports bar and delved into some good old fashioned schoolboy catch up talk and some unexpectedly good sporting action..

Lewis Hamilton streaked home in first place in the British Grand Prix finishing up on the top of the list with Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, it was a thrilling race though and Massa and Kimi finished 4th and 13th. Rained like hell and quite a few drivers lost control and were out of the race including Honda’s Jensen Button. It was wet and wild and a nice race to be sure.

In the meanwhile Sri Lanka’s batting order starts to crumble after Sana’s initial blitzkrieg (‘what you bugger, we still need a 39 year old bugger to keep us out of the gutter?’) the rest of the batsmen proceed to cave in and SL, after looking extremely dangerous and poised to exceed 300, end up hitting a dismal 272 (or was it 273?). At this point the Indian guy at the next table wearing an ‘Ajay Jadeja’ cricket t-shirt looks extra smug and us having baited him for a while now, starts giving us sly looks and at one point points his finger at me and goes her-her-her-her-herrr!.. We suffer in silence.

But we have some diehard fans in the house especially this one chap that took it upon himself to shout out words of noble encouragement loudly from a table nearer to the screen (COMMON SANA! WELL PLAYED SANA! COMMON VASSIE, MENDIS I LOVE YOU! and YESSSS!! every time someone caught a ball in the field, a rolling ball mind you, and going OOFF! Whenever it passed within 10 feet of a fielder in the air) and although it is unclear as to whether he actually had an effect on our boys all the way in Pakistan, Mendis proceeded to tear into pieces the Indian batting order which had looked so good when starting off (Sehwag 50 off just 26 balls). Indian chap now looks thoroughly cowed and pretends to be more interested in the heating up battle between Federer and Nadal.

That was a fight to remember. All that hype and the game certainly lived up to it. A bit of background here, the Wimbledon as you have to know (if you don’t then it’s totally fine, I’m not that big on tennis myself) is the ultimate tennis championship and the most coveted of all. The come all and be all or whatever. Federer has won it 5 times in a row so far beating Nadal In the last two finals. He just needs to win it one more time to surpass Bjorn Berg to become the first guy to win 6 Wimbledon’s in a row so since Willie Renshaw (who played in the 1880’s). Nadal enters the game with four French Open titles under his belt and an advantage over Federer based on previous meetings. Anyways you can read all about how that turned out (Nadal won after a downright nail-biter) but the cricket was definitely the highlight of the day.

Mendis walks away the man of the match as well as the man of the series but how long will he shine? We could just picture the Aussies getting the VCR out and playing his balls (erm ) again and again and again in super-super-slo-mo. He’ll have a hard time remaining a mystery so he’ll have to work hard at developing the menacing consistency that Murali seems to have acquired over the years. But right now let’s all just feel good for a while cos the Lankans have fired again and hopefully this will be one of those winning seasons where the entire public will get so engrossed with cricket that our poor money starved government can finally reward itself a bit by increasing food prices a little further, what?

A Brief Note on Surrealism

Surrealism: a movement that rejected rationality, a movement that advocates the use of a free mind, a movement that recognized the limitations of human knowledge and experience and a movement that realized that to live within these limitations was to live in a constant state of social desrepair.



Surrealism is an ‘ongoing social revolution’ its advocation of imagination and free unreigned thought inspired many of the movements’ members to produce some great works of art, which has caused the term ‘surrealism’ to be mainly associated with the art world. But let us not be mistaken, surrealism is very much a socio political movement and a philosophy in itself.



It's artwork though, is quite beautiful and the Surrealist artists were a bunch who (like the movement did to existing socio political conventions) scorned commonly held beliefs and customs in the world of art. Their works represented the very essence of surrealism and is an aid to anyone attempting to understand the movement and a gateway to the cosmos of the imagination.



Here are a few (printed without permission), they are extremely erm, surreal im sure you will agree. I'l be glad to hear you thoughts on surrealism or anything else related to this post. i am still an early student of the movement and would love some input!

Ange du Foyeur by Max Ernst

Automatic Drawing by Andre Masson

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

The Red Tower by Giorgio de Chirico

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” Salvador Dalí

A Call to Arms

My People, Rise up!’



he cries.

‘The rulers of this land are misguided; they do not know that the lechery that is in their hearts fuels not only their greed but the downfall of all that they, and we, know in this life.

Raise your pick axes; raise your sickles and hammers. Purge this country of the devil worshippers that are exploiting us on the pretext of governance.

The hypocrisy of the powerful is exemplified again and again in its lavish wastage of public funds to fulfill its own worldly aims. They swell up their ranks to unheard of levels and proceed to endow each of their number with preposterous amounts of wealth and benefits. All at the expense of you! The politician has become a scourge and a curse on our resources and his deeds have gone on unchecked for long enough! So arise my countrymen! Let us teach him a lesson!

He and his fellows feed on a land already suffering, as a hyena rips apart a dying deer. They pretend, threaten, lie and do anything possible to gain entry into the circles of the powerful. Any idealistic notion of actually helping the people and the country is the very last thing on their minds. This fact is blatantly obvious to all of you. And yet you cast your approval for their assention to power. You buy into their lies and falsities and you get duped into believing you can actually see the castles that they create inside your mind’s sky.

They gain your trust and they promise you a good life. They use you to attain power and position and then proceed to use that power and position to create wealth for themselves. That should not be! That will not be! That power, that position is yours my people! Not theirs! That wealth should be yours! It should feed your starving children; provide our future with a better education. It should make our lives better, not theirs! Why should we have to skip meals so that they can have extra cream on their desserts? Why should we have to deny our children an education in order for them to earn what little money they can so that they can send their children abroad?

Think my people! Move! The time is now and the time is ours!’

The crowd roars.

The gunman aims.

A blast.

What a shame

They later say

As they slowly move away.

Freedom's Desire

He stopped his work
He looked inside
He saw her
He nearly died

She was lovely
So carefree
She was his bride
Soon to be

Me and her
We would be
As happy as happy
Can be

But then she went
On her way
Through the door
Across the road

As she faded
Into the crowd
He turned away
Back to work