- 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
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
and then there was twitter
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;
Managing Expectations
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.
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!
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.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Why should i give a damn for the world economy?
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
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
Friday, March 27, 2009
Weekend Blues
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!
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!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sinhalese or Sri Lankan
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
B side chronicles
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'.
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'.
Monday, March 23, 2009
23- 03- 09 Irony
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?
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
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.
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.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Why do we blog?
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.
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
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?
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?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
That chase again and a bit about words.
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
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
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Warming
...from a lost time machine
He was a boy. Just another poor boy on the street just like all the other poor boys on the street. They were crying out for food. Dying of starvation. While the moon collapsed above, cleaves of it falling, crashing onto Earth. The dream was real and he had woken up inside it.
Earth had been a victim of change for a while but it had resisted, or the humans themselves had preffered to ignore the consequences. Their dire inaction had proven fatal, their ignorance proven to be some archaic and shoking suicidal tendency perhaps put there by the Creator himself so that eventually, by ignorance and arrogance, they would kill themselves in the end.
It was all very neat and practical.
The pundits and intellectuals claimed destruction was nigh and potentially fatal. But by the time it had sunk in that it was in actuality not fatal to the planet itself but rather only to its inhabitants, the damage was done. Earth as they knew it was no more.
She purged them. This destructive bacteria. This troublesome fauna imbalancing her system. Causing her pain in all the wrong places. Causing her irritation and sickness. When things got serious she went into labour. Her oceans rose up and smothered the land in seething giant waves, earthquakes tore the ground asunder, lava lakes, acid rains, thunder and lightning, brought chaos and destruction that were never remembered, but still, they were a part of a repeat performance.
She was in tremendous pain, But pain was needed for a fresh start. In order for her to relive the days when she was young and free, in order for her to feel new again.
20 millions years later, the species later to be known as the Blattella made it's first flint tool.
He was a boy. Just another poor boy on the street just like all the other poor boys on the street. They were crying out for food. Dying of starvation. While the moon collapsed above, cleaves of it falling, crashing onto Earth. The dream was real and he had woken up inside it.
Earth had been a victim of change for a while but it had resisted, or the humans themselves had preffered to ignore the consequences. Their dire inaction had proven fatal, their ignorance proven to be some archaic and shoking suicidal tendency perhaps put there by the Creator himself so that eventually, by ignorance and arrogance, they would kill themselves in the end.
It was all very neat and practical.
The pundits and intellectuals claimed destruction was nigh and potentially fatal. But by the time it had sunk in that it was in actuality not fatal to the planet itself but rather only to its inhabitants, the damage was done. Earth as they knew it was no more.
She purged them. This destructive bacteria. This troublesome fauna imbalancing her system. Causing her pain in all the wrong places. Causing her irritation and sickness. When things got serious she went into labour. Her oceans rose up and smothered the land in seething giant waves, earthquakes tore the ground asunder, lava lakes, acid rains, thunder and lightning, brought chaos and destruction that were never remembered, but still, they were a part of a repeat performance.
She was in tremendous pain, But pain was needed for a fresh start. In order for her to relive the days when she was young and free, in order for her to feel new again.
20 millions years later, the species later to be known as the Blattella made it's first flint tool.
Big Matches Island Style
I have long been confused with this particular aspect of Sri Lankan adolescent/post adolescent annual rituals. During Big Match season we generally tend to see an uprising of sorts from boys school all over screaming in enraged defiance at their opposition and at the world in general for no particular reason other than that two school teams will be playing a cricket match a week or two later.
Most of them wouldn't even know any of the players in a team but will usually have a rough grasp of which team is favored to win since this is an important factor in determining the level of defiance in your roar and levels of virtual testosterone in air humping movements made on top of moving pickup trucks.
The whole deal as a matter of fact, is nothing about the cricket. the big Match is just a chance for some legitimate skullduggery, some legitimate jumping into girls schools and some license to feel like alpha males for a little while at least. Everyone's a little tolerant of these things come big match season yeah? Principles are in a boys-will-be-boys mood, the girls are coy, the teachers wear grim faces yet undergo tremendous stress to keep amused smiles from breaking out. Pedestrians are annoyed, yet secretly wish they could prance around without a care just like the objects of their annoyance.
And they All contribute, knowing full well that the money goes to nothing more than an alcohol, papare band, and smoking material fund that will probably contribute next to nothing to whatever cause they claim to be collecting it for, and that claim usually goes something like 'for the big match', which is very vague and that’s the way everybody likes it. see no evil and the rest of it.
And the girls. I think the number of girls at big matches would outnumber the boys if there weren't already so many boys inside the place already. It's like they actually enjoy being amidst a rowdy bunch of hooting males drinking and smoking everything drinkable and smokable regardless of legality and screaming and fighting and pushing and taking their shirts off at a moments notice. The attention factor must draw them to it. Because i suppose there is nothing more gratifying for a woman than to be ogled at by a hundred guys at the same time. Which is roughly the proportion of males to females at most big matches. And the alcohol and intoxicant content would ensure that pretty soon any woman seen on the grounds would have her own fair share of oglement. We're very politically correct that way.
Not that I've done a statistical analysis of these things, I've never been trucking or jumped into a girl’s school mainly 'cos the school i went to didn’t have an operational big match. But crazy rumors and stories circulated telling of a of a big match that once existed which was abolished due to some chap 'from the other school' dying, as in being stabbed to death, of course, our guys say we did the killing. Versions may differ. There is a bit of an ugly side to the whole thing, sure. But isn't there an ugly side to everything?
The chap sitting next to me sums it up best, big matches are not really about the cricket, once you leave school they are mostly about catching up with your old mates and having a slice of that carefree life you used to enjoy. Not really about enraged fans screaming for a win and more about a bunch of males with a rowdy license meeting for a good old booze up and a smoke up and a screaming fest with constant ogling action thrown in. It's the atmosphere. The cricket is only what holds it all together.
Most of them wouldn't even know any of the players in a team but will usually have a rough grasp of which team is favored to win since this is an important factor in determining the level of defiance in your roar and levels of virtual testosterone in air humping movements made on top of moving pickup trucks.
The whole deal as a matter of fact, is nothing about the cricket. the big Match is just a chance for some legitimate skullduggery, some legitimate jumping into girls schools and some license to feel like alpha males for a little while at least. Everyone's a little tolerant of these things come big match season yeah? Principles are in a boys-will-be-boys mood, the girls are coy, the teachers wear grim faces yet undergo tremendous stress to keep amused smiles from breaking out. Pedestrians are annoyed, yet secretly wish they could prance around without a care just like the objects of their annoyance.
And they All contribute, knowing full well that the money goes to nothing more than an alcohol, papare band, and smoking material fund that will probably contribute next to nothing to whatever cause they claim to be collecting it for, and that claim usually goes something like 'for the big match', which is very vague and that’s the way everybody likes it. see no evil and the rest of it.
And the girls. I think the number of girls at big matches would outnumber the boys if there weren't already so many boys inside the place already. It's like they actually enjoy being amidst a rowdy bunch of hooting males drinking and smoking everything drinkable and smokable regardless of legality and screaming and fighting and pushing and taking their shirts off at a moments notice. The attention factor must draw them to it. Because i suppose there is nothing more gratifying for a woman than to be ogled at by a hundred guys at the same time. Which is roughly the proportion of males to females at most big matches. And the alcohol and intoxicant content would ensure that pretty soon any woman seen on the grounds would have her own fair share of oglement. We're very politically correct that way.
Not that I've done a statistical analysis of these things, I've never been trucking or jumped into a girl’s school mainly 'cos the school i went to didn’t have an operational big match. But crazy rumors and stories circulated telling of a of a big match that once existed which was abolished due to some chap 'from the other school' dying, as in being stabbed to death, of course, our guys say we did the killing. Versions may differ. There is a bit of an ugly side to the whole thing, sure. But isn't there an ugly side to everything?
The chap sitting next to me sums it up best, big matches are not really about the cricket, once you leave school they are mostly about catching up with your old mates and having a slice of that carefree life you used to enjoy. Not really about enraged fans screaming for a win and more about a bunch of males with a rowdy license meeting for a good old booze up and a smoke up and a screaming fest with constant ogling action thrown in. It's the atmosphere. The cricket is only what holds it all together.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Truth
As they always say, is far stranger. Yesterday's sexual frustration was an amalgamation of many things put together i think. And i cannot say what for sure because i myself am not completely aware of exactly what goes on in my own mind most of the time.
Does that make me crazy? or just slightly less presumptuous?
Damn. can you believe that the lights and the AC in my office have just gone bust? have any of us got any actual idea as to how much we depend on infrastructure?
Like for example, i was dreaming the other day how nice it'd be to live in the period of the Middle Ages (or is it the Dark Ages) with all the modern amenities like vehicles and cell phones and computers and the internet for e.g. Then you could run around op/impressing the peasants and destroying the knights and slaying the dragons with kisses to rescue the golden haired princesses with RPGs. That is to say, kill the dragons with the mortars and kiss the princesses after you rescue them.
But then how long will your Defenders last without petrol? and how long will your cell phone or computer work without batteries? How can you maneuver the tough mountains on top of which the dragon lies without proper roads? Indeed how would you make a call or access the internet without proper network infrastructure?
In fact without roads, telecom networks, data networks, fixed water supplies, maintenance infrastructure such as garbage disposal, road cleanups, repair crews, trade infrastructure such as supermarkets, grocery stores, petti kadeys, trade organizations. trade agreements, financial infrastructure such as banks, insurance, finance, investment, public infrastructure like education and health, manufacturing infrastructure for a host of specialized products to meet the needs of all the other types of infrastructure mentioned above, transport infrastructure such as airports, train stations, busses, petrol sheds etc and a whole host of other things we'd effectively be lost. Plunged into chaos.
We'd be in constant darkness, with no way to get about, no way to talk to your relative living 5 kilometers away, we'll live a hand to mouth existence until the remnants of public works slowly disappear and then we'd effectively be in the jungle.
That's scary. Governments and the 'collective whole' suddenly make some sense when you think of things that way, which is all the more reason a little more thought should be given to how things are run around the place. Will you vote this April?
Does that make me crazy? or just slightly less presumptuous?
Damn. can you believe that the lights and the AC in my office have just gone bust? have any of us got any actual idea as to how much we depend on infrastructure?
Like for example, i was dreaming the other day how nice it'd be to live in the period of the Middle Ages (or is it the Dark Ages) with all the modern amenities like vehicles and cell phones and computers and the internet for e.g. Then you could run around op/impressing the peasants and destroying the knights and slaying the dragons with kisses to rescue the golden haired princesses with RPGs. That is to say, kill the dragons with the mortars and kiss the princesses after you rescue them.
But then how long will your Defenders last without petrol? and how long will your cell phone or computer work without batteries? How can you maneuver the tough mountains on top of which the dragon lies without proper roads? Indeed how would you make a call or access the internet without proper network infrastructure?
In fact without roads, telecom networks, data networks, fixed water supplies, maintenance infrastructure such as garbage disposal, road cleanups, repair crews, trade infrastructure such as supermarkets, grocery stores, petti kadeys, trade organizations. trade agreements, financial infrastructure such as banks, insurance, finance, investment, public infrastructure like education and health, manufacturing infrastructure for a host of specialized products to meet the needs of all the other types of infrastructure mentioned above, transport infrastructure such as airports, train stations, busses, petrol sheds etc and a whole host of other things we'd effectively be lost. Plunged into chaos.
We'd be in constant darkness, with no way to get about, no way to talk to your relative living 5 kilometers away, we'll live a hand to mouth existence until the remnants of public works slowly disappear and then we'd effectively be in the jungle.
That's scary. Governments and the 'collective whole' suddenly make some sense when you think of things that way, which is all the more reason a little more thought should be given to how things are run around the place. Will you vote this April?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Boy meets girl, boy eats girl
Girlfriends. There. I am coming to this elusive topic that has been causing me to stop, stare and hyperventilate every time i sit in front of my screen to write something. and i cant fucking handle this. when i cant write, my work suffers, and we all know how much one should care about one's girls work.
I haven't had any sex in months, I mean im not a exactly a bed hopping charged battery-bull but you know, i like the occasional roll in the grass or more like the pavement you know. But you can't even get laid in this land without undergoing torturous psychological trauma where the girl will give you no end of hell accusing you of knocking her up and jumping the gun.
I am sorry, i may be offending a lot of ladies here but to my credit, i really don't care. I almost suspected myself of turning into a homosexual for goodness sakes! i have been for so long removed from womankind by choice that there are points of time when i am seriously concerned about the true nature of my sexuality, this is a serious, serious problem.
This all started ages ago, along with my first experiences with women. I have always been careful not to be too sexually involved with a woman that im emotionally involved with and my list of encounters of the close kind have mostly been with causal flings. But then again this is not a very telling point seeing as i've only really been emotionally involved with about 3 women (and only two of them anything close to serious). But the thing is, sexual experiences in my book feel nothing as good as when there is a bit of emotion involved.
Casual flings are great. but there is a reason they are casual and pretty soon you get bored and move along yeah? and the more time you spend in casual flings the more you tend to start wanting something more real and more exciting and then poof! before you know it, you are treading the Menstrual Swamps, with bitch fits, hissy fits (apologies to DQ whom i met over the weekend and whom i thought was very nice), underground arguments waiting to grab you by your feet and drag you under, and the occasional extremely dangerous surprise landmine that will explode the moment you keep your foot in the wrong place.
It takes a long time to navigate out of the Swamp, and its a tough, tough process. There will be many vines that grab you. Many zombified 'other people' who will involve themselves and perform slave rituals in trance like dreams to make your life even more of a living hell than it already is. The swamp itself will play mind games on you, it will make you believe that you don't really want to leave! it will try and convince you that it is in reality a paradise, and it will actually show you a some wonderful times to prove it. But these wonderful times will soon be few and far between and one must know to get out whilst one still can. One must be strong and determined. And immune to the temptations of the flesh.
Such drama and torture is not worth the sex on tap that is probably the sole benefit of the whole operation. Oh of course there is love and understanding and caring and all that, but that's nothing a guy can't mostly do without, cos it all comes at such a great price see? And like i said, sex in a relationship is different from just plain old sex. No, to me its more intense, more thrilling, much more of an experience than just a wham bam thank you m' am at Big John, Dehiwala. Sex with emotion is truly ecstatic. And the other kind simply pales in comparison.
So what do we do then? this is quite the perplexing conundrum (not the blog). Here i lie frustrated the fuck out, wanting to get laid but pooh-pooh-ing at a casual fling, checking out boys and wondering what the fuck is wrong with me, examining this post and wondering why the fuck i've written the word 'fuck' so many times. Trying my best to stay the hell away from emotional involvement with women and not finding it all that hard either because i'v become jaded and cynical and most of the women i know don't make me feel like i should be in a relationship with them anyway.
Yes, the world is boring and nothing presents me a challenge worth taking.
Change man, change is what i need.
Obama! is this the thanks i get for telling my best friend in Maryland to vote for you? So what if he was not a citizen and couldn't actually vote? and so what if i didn't actually tell him anything in the first place? %%$^#$!
I haven't had any sex in months, I mean im not a exactly a bed hopping charged battery-bull but you know, i like the occasional roll in the grass or more like the pavement you know. But you can't even get laid in this land without undergoing torturous psychological trauma where the girl will give you no end of hell accusing you of knocking her up and jumping the gun.
I am sorry, i may be offending a lot of ladies here but to my credit, i really don't care. I almost suspected myself of turning into a homosexual for goodness sakes! i have been for so long removed from womankind by choice that there are points of time when i am seriously concerned about the true nature of my sexuality, this is a serious, serious problem.
This all started ages ago, along with my first experiences with women. I have always been careful not to be too sexually involved with a woman that im emotionally involved with and my list of encounters of the close kind have mostly been with causal flings. But then again this is not a very telling point seeing as i've only really been emotionally involved with about 3 women (and only two of them anything close to serious). But the thing is, sexual experiences in my book feel nothing as good as when there is a bit of emotion involved.
Casual flings are great. but there is a reason they are casual and pretty soon you get bored and move along yeah? and the more time you spend in casual flings the more you tend to start wanting something more real and more exciting and then poof! before you know it, you are treading the Menstrual Swamps, with bitch fits, hissy fits (apologies to DQ whom i met over the weekend and whom i thought was very nice), underground arguments waiting to grab you by your feet and drag you under, and the occasional extremely dangerous surprise landmine that will explode the moment you keep your foot in the wrong place.
It takes a long time to navigate out of the Swamp, and its a tough, tough process. There will be many vines that grab you. Many zombified 'other people' who will involve themselves and perform slave rituals in trance like dreams to make your life even more of a living hell than it already is. The swamp itself will play mind games on you, it will make you believe that you don't really want to leave! it will try and convince you that it is in reality a paradise, and it will actually show you a some wonderful times to prove it. But these wonderful times will soon be few and far between and one must know to get out whilst one still can. One must be strong and determined. And immune to the temptations of the flesh.
Such drama and torture is not worth the sex on tap that is probably the sole benefit of the whole operation. Oh of course there is love and understanding and caring and all that, but that's nothing a guy can't mostly do without, cos it all comes at such a great price see? And like i said, sex in a relationship is different from just plain old sex. No, to me its more intense, more thrilling, much more of an experience than just a wham bam thank you m' am at Big John, Dehiwala. Sex with emotion is truly ecstatic. And the other kind simply pales in comparison.
So what do we do then? this is quite the perplexing conundrum (not the blog). Here i lie frustrated the fuck out, wanting to get laid but pooh-pooh-ing at a casual fling, checking out boys and wondering what the fuck is wrong with me, examining this post and wondering why the fuck i've written the word 'fuck' so many times. Trying my best to stay the hell away from emotional involvement with women and not finding it all that hard either because i'v become jaded and cynical and most of the women i know don't make me feel like i should be in a relationship with them anyway.
Yes, the world is boring and nothing presents me a challenge worth taking.
Change man, change is what i need.
Obama! is this the thanks i get for telling my best friend in Maryland to vote for you? So what if he was not a citizen and couldn't actually vote? and so what if i didn't actually tell him anything in the first place? %%$^#$!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Who wants to be an escape artiste..
Lafayette heard them from afar. Gonzzales with the wheel, Peiter Deschovsky with his caramel ball and Freud snorting, holing up on that magic dust again
Escapism comes in all forms and shapes. all dreams and wishes stem from the need to escape, to get away. In the pages of a book, in the solitude of ones room, on a beach, in a coffee shop smoking a cigarette. A dream of a counter reality of sorts. A hope that suddenly the curtain will lift and everyone will shout 'surprise!!'and then you'd actually be in the real world.
A happy world. Where no one woked. where no one had to slave within capitalist greed to feed and clothe themselves. A world where the truth wasn't an obscure offshoot of what the majority took for granted, where it wasnt hidden beneath endless layers of lies and half truths, which were no better than lies anyway.
Yet we live on in the world of grime and dust. deluding ourselves on a daily basis. Ignoring what our eyes see and what our ears hear. Choosing avenues put forward by proponents of greed and industry. Choosing ignorance in pursuit of comfort, in favour of truth and hardship.
Good luck to us. We'll need it. When the sky falls and the universe destructs, when black holes open up and we are dragged within to be atomated and taken apart. Yes i make up words but so what? we use words as they are today because someone somewhere made them up. So get off your high horse already.
But luck won't save us. There's no putting off the inevitable. We can push it forward one more day and tell ouselves that tomorrow, tomorrow will be the day that we shake off this sheen of falsity and bow down to the voice of our conscience and turn over a new leaf. But tomorrow we will blame something else, some new force not within our control like that guy at McDonalds who looked at us in a funny way, to put it off another day.
And another day and another, 'til finally we die and there are no more tomorrows. Only possible eternity to cope with. And by then luck won't help us. Nothing will.
Dining with Terrorists
Heres something that Realskullzero pointed me in the direction of. It's a video from AlJazeera taking in the 3 decades or so from the Southern JVP uprisings and the current 'terrorist' situation. Why 'terrorist' was in inverted commas was because the video clearly indicates Mahinda Rajapakse's sympathies with the Southern Sinahlese Nationalist uprising or the JVP uprising, which he now denies and says that the only thing he was sympathizing with was their feeling towards how the government quelled the rebellion and not their actual cause. But a young and radical looking Mahinda clearly talks about India's invasionary tendencies and how they are trying to 'take over this country' and how we could soon become 'a part of India' (unless that was a result of an editing trick where he was actually referring to what the JVP's sentiments about it were).
But in Sri Lanka today, his own government is accused of terrorist acts just like the then UNP govenment was accused of. What i realized on a personal note was just how much i didnt really know about the political history of Sri Lanka, the devil is in the details they say. Those in power will always exploit and push their own ideology forward not caring about the same ideologies and the need to be heard of others, it is the imperfect nature of the inherent power struture. And at the end of the day what is 'terrorism' in the first place? is it just a distinction between two sides? Where the ones challenging the existing status quo are branded so?
He seems anti establishment in terms of bowing down to the existing world order; to the pressures of the West and other external interests. But we all have seen how the West fights its own brand of 'terrorism' (which leaves whole lot to be said there). Fight fire with fire? And if so, you really can't make a distinction between the two can you? Government and terrorist? What then do we call them? Insurgents? Freedom fighters? I guess it depends on which side your sympathies lie on. Words build perceptions and unfortunately or otherwise, or perhaps as a simple characteristic of archaic (?) human nature, perceptions are everything.
If the embed has problems, you can view the vid here.
But in Sri Lanka today, his own government is accused of terrorist acts just like the then UNP govenment was accused of. What i realized on a personal note was just how much i didnt really know about the political history of Sri Lanka, the devil is in the details they say. Those in power will always exploit and push their own ideology forward not caring about the same ideologies and the need to be heard of others, it is the imperfect nature of the inherent power struture. And at the end of the day what is 'terrorism' in the first place? is it just a distinction between two sides? Where the ones challenging the existing status quo are branded so?
He seems anti establishment in terms of bowing down to the existing world order; to the pressures of the West and other external interests. But we all have seen how the West fights its own brand of 'terrorism' (which leaves whole lot to be said there). Fight fire with fire? And if so, you really can't make a distinction between the two can you? Government and terrorist? What then do we call them? Insurgents? Freedom fighters? I guess it depends on which side your sympathies lie on. Words build perceptions and unfortunately or otherwise, or perhaps as a simple characteristic of archaic (?) human nature, perceptions are everything.
If the embed has problems, you can view the vid here.
Friday, March 13, 2009
the rise of the Lankans
We didnt drift away to die like they wanted us to,
Stupid little islanders!
Trading coconuts and fish, they thought.
They cast us aside like a used condom.
They left our bones in the open like an eaten fish.
They were here to take over; to use and abuse.
Yet we did not fail!
We stood up against their onslaught and we protected that which was their main target,
Our pride.
We as Lankans stood forth and faced a common enemy,
We made them stand up and take notice
Of the pride that some little speck of an island's inhabitants could have..
And we were glorious in our victory!
Watching them recede like a wave recedes from the shore..
Yet we were still gripped in that energy of hate
And having no way to expend that energy,
We turned upon ourselves.
This was lying around in my other blog. Thanks to Fallen for telling me he liked it. Made me think of putting it out here..
Stupid little islanders!
Trading coconuts and fish, they thought.
They cast us aside like a used condom.
They left our bones in the open like an eaten fish.
They were here to take over; to use and abuse.
Yet we did not fail!
We stood up against their onslaught and we protected that which was their main target,
Our pride.
We as Lankans stood forth and faced a common enemy,
We made them stand up and take notice
Of the pride that some little speck of an island's inhabitants could have..
And we were glorious in our victory!
Watching them recede like a wave recedes from the shore..
Yet we were still gripped in that energy of hate
And having no way to expend that energy,
We turned upon ourselves.
This was lying around in my other blog. Thanks to Fallen for telling me he liked it. Made me think of putting it out here..
Thursday, March 12, 2009
wish upon a star
so here i sit right
slap bang in the middle of nowhere
no woman to fight
and a bothersome sense of actual peace of mind
but then again i wonder
what is the use of this life i ponder
coming in and going out
wishing well but feeling ill
and thinking where the little Well
of wishes went
'that little fucker betrayed me!'
when i asked for unlimited wealth
he took my rupee
and took my hopes
i took my dreams and entrusted him
and to his concrete edge i clinged
and i said
oh Wishing Well, oh Wishing Well
grant me peace and don't give me hell
give me money and give me women
give me brains and strong mental acumen
'ah' said the Well 'you little tyke!'
do you not know that it is a contradiction
that little thing you call life?
it aint no playground ride
You can have brains but you cannot have women
you can have money but then peace is but a faraway dream
this is not built upon some personal whim
these are the laws of physics
so here i am,
im broke and single
but happy and peaceful
and my mentality is mostly a jingle
but blast all that. im not satisfied yet
I still think of so many things that i wish i could get
villas in Rome and the harem of a czar
so next time i think i'll try a shooting star.
slap bang in the middle of nowhere
no woman to fight
and a bothersome sense of actual peace of mind
but then again i wonder
what is the use of this life i ponder
coming in and going out
wishing well but feeling ill
and thinking where the little Well
of wishes went
'that little fucker betrayed me!'
when i asked for unlimited wealth
he took my rupee
and took my hopes
i took my dreams and entrusted him
and to his concrete edge i clinged
and i said
oh Wishing Well, oh Wishing Well
grant me peace and don't give me hell
give me money and give me women
give me brains and strong mental acumen
'ah' said the Well 'you little tyke!'
do you not know that it is a contradiction
that little thing you call life?
it aint no playground ride
You can have brains but you cannot have women
you can have money but then peace is but a faraway dream
this is not built upon some personal whim
these are the laws of physics
so here i am,
im broke and single
but happy and peaceful
and my mentality is mostly a jingle
but blast all that. im not satisfied yet
I still think of so many things that i wish i could get
villas in Rome and the harem of a czar
so next time i think i'll try a shooting star.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Interesting ThingsTM
When the blue mountains of hope, clouded over in the dark mist that blurred, did they not wonder why they were not resilient to that change?
Have human beings adopted change like a fish adopts water? Through its lungs and back to the sea outside. Are we deluding ourselves for that which we so gleefully absorb is not just pure water but black smoke that leaves an oily residue that slowly slows us down and straight cripples us eventually and kills us like dogs dying by the galactic alley mouth in the great race of species and life?
The Missing Sandwich writes about the old game of sexual pursuit, and mating rituals that should be arcane practices but human beings are of course, not capable of ridding ourselves of complicated bullshit. So unfortunately the Sandwich is stuck and so are all men who are on her side.
The Spider has a narcissistic streak that materializes every morning in the form of loving conversations with herself in front of the mirror. She attributes it to possible coffee overdoses but then fails to understand a blahbarian narcissist who puts her the posh parts in an interview and dishes him the super dirt in a post published on her blog and not in the real write up which she attributes to the honesty of today's Press.
Noorie is back with a bang I missed you crazy woman where have you been and why are you contemplating suicide involving lock picking dogs and nonexistent neighbors while dragging down innocent gold fish down into graves with you?
Realskullzero makes a valiant attempt to revive his blog of yore and legend and writes a post explaining that very fact through a haze of lazy smoke and switches off again to resurface when? Soon, hopefully.
The Passionate ladybird writes about jerking off and wanking and touching oneself and sparks off a lot of interest in the topic as if people needed her to point out the fact that such a phenomenon exists and inspires new forms of mystic poetry.
The Stoned Age is a blog I recently started reading and boy is it full of random yet brilliant philosophical musings and meanderings on the topic of drug use whilst under the influence. The writer has my two cents of encouragement to continue and keep going and keep going strong and long, strong and long as long as you feel you are in control says my guilty conscience afraid that I may help push him overboard if I may be as brash as to assume my influence has the power to do so.
Nervous ticks attack us all and the Desease's superhero that is me looks like some sort of deranged psychologist absorbed in creating illuminous hypnotics by the wiggling about of these strange gadgets that I possess in my hands. Yes I think I will be a villain. It is more fun. But I won’t kill people; no I am a thinker not a fighter.
For those of you who did not make it to the last open mic you do not know what you missed and if you want to find out what you missed please go to Indi’s blog and watch this video or type wagon park on youtube and check their stuff out. Simply brilliant and if I may say so I think this is another truly original Sri Lankan rock artiste that we are witnessing here folks a very very rare breed.
I did an interview on pakspectator as requested by them and also promised to publish a link to it but I’d have done it anyway ‘cos I’m a bit of a narcissistic blahbarian they took my Word document and copy pasted it without any edits at all much to my chagrin. But my usual tpyos were missing thanks to it being typed on MS word and its auto correct facility or whatever saved me and all Sri Lankans from eternal embarrassment of not being apparently able to spell simple words.
I will conclude with this video that Ravana posts. Go to youtube and check the rest of Aunty Netta’s stuff out it would be wrong to say I died laughing because I am typing this post telling you about my near death experiences laughing.
Have human beings adopted change like a fish adopts water? Through its lungs and back to the sea outside. Are we deluding ourselves for that which we so gleefully absorb is not just pure water but black smoke that leaves an oily residue that slowly slows us down and straight cripples us eventually and kills us like dogs dying by the galactic alley mouth in the great race of species and life?
The Missing Sandwich writes about the old game of sexual pursuit, and mating rituals that should be arcane practices but human beings are of course, not capable of ridding ourselves of complicated bullshit. So unfortunately the Sandwich is stuck and so are all men who are on her side.
The Spider has a narcissistic streak that materializes every morning in the form of loving conversations with herself in front of the mirror. She attributes it to possible coffee overdoses but then fails to understand a blahbarian narcissist who puts her the posh parts in an interview and dishes him the super dirt in a post published on her blog and not in the real write up which she attributes to the honesty of today's Press.
Noorie is back with a bang I missed you crazy woman where have you been and why are you contemplating suicide involving lock picking dogs and nonexistent neighbors while dragging down innocent gold fish down into graves with you?
Realskullzero makes a valiant attempt to revive his blog of yore and legend and writes a post explaining that very fact through a haze of lazy smoke and switches off again to resurface when? Soon, hopefully.
The Passionate ladybird writes about jerking off and wanking and touching oneself and sparks off a lot of interest in the topic as if people needed her to point out the fact that such a phenomenon exists and inspires new forms of mystic poetry.
The Stoned Age is a blog I recently started reading and boy is it full of random yet brilliant philosophical musings and meanderings on the topic of drug use whilst under the influence. The writer has my two cents of encouragement to continue and keep going and keep going strong and long, strong and long as long as you feel you are in control says my guilty conscience afraid that I may help push him overboard if I may be as brash as to assume my influence has the power to do so.
Nervous ticks attack us all and the Desease's superhero that is me looks like some sort of deranged psychologist absorbed in creating illuminous hypnotics by the wiggling about of these strange gadgets that I possess in my hands. Yes I think I will be a villain. It is more fun. But I won’t kill people; no I am a thinker not a fighter.
For those of you who did not make it to the last open mic you do not know what you missed and if you want to find out what you missed please go to Indi’s blog and watch this video or type wagon park on youtube and check their stuff out. Simply brilliant and if I may say so I think this is another truly original Sri Lankan rock artiste that we are witnessing here folks a very very rare breed.
I did an interview on pakspectator as requested by them and also promised to publish a link to it but I’d have done it anyway ‘cos I’m a bit of a narcissistic blahbarian they took my Word document and copy pasted it without any edits at all much to my chagrin. But my usual tpyos were missing thanks to it being typed on MS word and its auto correct facility or whatever saved me and all Sri Lankans from eternal embarrassment of not being apparently able to spell simple words.
I will conclude with this video that Ravana posts. Go to youtube and check the rest of Aunty Netta’s stuff out it would be wrong to say I died laughing because I am typing this post telling you about my near death experiences laughing.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Fear of fear itself
As bloggers in Sri Lanka, do we really have the right (or the honor) to be scared of repression yet? Are we such a troublesome blip on the political radar that we warrant white van teams deployed on our doorsteps and the trouble of equipment of torture sharpened in our faces to make us piss in our pants?
The blogosphere is not without its spats and even death threats. I've seen enough hate comments on various political posts around the place to deduce that much. But how much of these comments are really backed up with the capability and willpower to be followed through with hardcore action, and how many of them are just empty mouth-offs by people who disagree strongly enough or are suitably offended to leave abusive comments behind?
It looks like Dinidu has gone and deleted his blog again. That's a pity 'cos there was a post on it that i wanted to link to, with a very interesting comment by David Blacker.
No matter. The gist of it was that Dinidu had written a post on a disturbing incident that had occurred that he postulated was a result of his journalistic mischeivousness, and a very moving poem elaborating his defiance in the face of such threats accompanied it.
David Blacker followed up with a dose of cynical reality (?) and stated in no uncertain terms that SL bloggers should not really flatter themselves with the notion that they are really that important and should realize that they are too insignificant for the powers that be to bother with them.
Also, Indi tells me that Open Mic is getting affected by the same vibe as well because certain individuals have announced fears of repercussions due to the potentially politically volatile, against-the-status-quo nature of the material being read out.
But all this talk and no evidence of actual harm done to any blogger gets me thinking. It first gets me thinking of the nature of the society we live in, about law and order and the fear that people have of exercising their fundamental rights.
We live in a city and a country where the fear of being a victim of thuggery (political or otherwise) takes precedence over the feeling of assurance of back up from the law. In other words people are basically saying; the law? Screw the effing law, the law won't help me here..
But all this fear could just be founded on empty air.
This article i found links to this MSN survey on the Asian blogosphere in general and one striking fact to me was that politicians across the region fared poorly with only 14% shown to be actually reading blogs. This is with countries like China, Korea, India and Burma in the loop mind you so that is a telling statistic.
Assuming it was the same in SL and only 14% of politicians read blogs and presumably 100% read newspapers, the proportion of violence against newspaper journalists that could be directed towards bloggers would be marginally insignificant.
That is however, merely a play on numbers i admit and speaks nothing of the volatility of the country in question or the conniving brutality of its political class. But here's another interesting statistic;
Research has shown that most blogger arrests have occurred 'In countries where the media is restrained from reporting adversarial news' and where 'blogs continued to be the only source of information'.
In other words, what research has shown is that serious repression against bloggers has only occurred when they are bringing something into the media that is heavily blocked from the public by the respective government in question. It's usually only when they are bringing something new into the sphere of public knowledge in terms of cold hard facts that they are taken seriously enough to warrant action against them.
Like Woeser for instance, 'Tibet's most famous writer and blogger' who was put behind bars for the crime of taking pictures of Chinese military installations. This may seem like a trivial thing maybe. But how many of us actually go to the extent of performing some real investigative journalism and going through dangerous shit to get some pics or information to put up on our blogs?
Not many of us. Most of us (including me) merely harp about what we see and hear in the news, receive in e-mails etc . As a community of bloggers we are mainly reactive, and not very proactive.
The big fish are the guys who actually go out there and get the kind of information that gets people worried. And they are the ones that we usually talk about. So it makes sense to repress them first and cut off the sources of information we usually use to blog. Any old fool can voice dissent in terms of opinion, but it takes a real crazy sonofabitch to actually go out looking for the facts in order to bring them to light.
And i may not be all that political in my blogs (you can hardly call posts about tea ladies and peeping toms political) but i'v got eyes and ears. So what do you think? is there any real danger? or are we just flattering ourselves a wee little bit more than we should be?
The blogosphere is not without its spats and even death threats. I've seen enough hate comments on various political posts around the place to deduce that much. But how much of these comments are really backed up with the capability and willpower to be followed through with hardcore action, and how many of them are just empty mouth-offs by people who disagree strongly enough or are suitably offended to leave abusive comments behind?
It looks like Dinidu has gone and deleted his blog again. That's a pity 'cos there was a post on it that i wanted to link to, with a very interesting comment by David Blacker.
No matter. The gist of it was that Dinidu had written a post on a disturbing incident that had occurred that he postulated was a result of his journalistic mischeivousness, and a very moving poem elaborating his defiance in the face of such threats accompanied it.
David Blacker followed up with a dose of cynical reality (?) and stated in no uncertain terms that SL bloggers should not really flatter themselves with the notion that they are really that important and should realize that they are too insignificant for the powers that be to bother with them.
Also, Indi tells me that Open Mic is getting affected by the same vibe as well because certain individuals have announced fears of repercussions due to the potentially politically volatile, against-the-status-quo nature of the material being read out.
But all this talk and no evidence of actual harm done to any blogger gets me thinking. It first gets me thinking of the nature of the society we live in, about law and order and the fear that people have of exercising their fundamental rights.
We live in a city and a country where the fear of being a victim of thuggery (political or otherwise) takes precedence over the feeling of assurance of back up from the law. In other words people are basically saying; the law? Screw the effing law, the law won't help me here..
But all this fear could just be founded on empty air.
This article i found links to this MSN survey on the Asian blogosphere in general and one striking fact to me was that politicians across the region fared poorly with only 14% shown to be actually reading blogs. This is with countries like China, Korea, India and Burma in the loop mind you so that is a telling statistic.
Assuming it was the same in SL and only 14% of politicians read blogs and presumably 100% read newspapers, the proportion of violence against newspaper journalists that could be directed towards bloggers would be marginally insignificant.
That is however, merely a play on numbers i admit and speaks nothing of the volatility of the country in question or the conniving brutality of its political class. But here's another interesting statistic;
Research has shown that most blogger arrests have occurred 'In countries where the media is restrained from reporting adversarial news' and where 'blogs continued to be the only source of information'.
In other words, what research has shown is that serious repression against bloggers has only occurred when they are bringing something into the media that is heavily blocked from the public by the respective government in question. It's usually only when they are bringing something new into the sphere of public knowledge in terms of cold hard facts that they are taken seriously enough to warrant action against them.
Like Woeser for instance, 'Tibet's most famous writer and blogger' who was put behind bars for the crime of taking pictures of Chinese military installations. This may seem like a trivial thing maybe. But how many of us actually go to the extent of performing some real investigative journalism and going through dangerous shit to get some pics or information to put up on our blogs?
Not many of us. Most of us (including me) merely harp about what we see and hear in the news, receive in e-mails etc . As a community of bloggers we are mainly reactive, and not very proactive.
The big fish are the guys who actually go out there and get the kind of information that gets people worried. And they are the ones that we usually talk about. So it makes sense to repress them first and cut off the sources of information we usually use to blog. Any old fool can voice dissent in terms of opinion, but it takes a real crazy sonofabitch to actually go out looking for the facts in order to bring them to light.
And i may not be all that political in my blogs (you can hardly call posts about tea ladies and peeping toms political) but i'v got eyes and ears. So what do you think? is there any real danger? or are we just flattering ourselves a wee little bit more than we should be?
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Dude, Where's the Party Yaar??
He was a bored boy with idle hands,
a dangerous mind and devious plans,
he walked into the neighbors' when no one was there,
he looked through the key hole,
and saw her standing there.
she was bare with not a thread of clothing..
except for a towel, she'd just been bathing..
he was shocked and confused,
but at the same time his eyes started glowing..
curiousity gripped his little frame,
and eagerly his neck he craned,
breathing as silently as silence came.
He looked through as she let the towel slip..
she bent over and the sunshine crept,
through the slender gaps between her legs.
he scratched his head--
he looked again...
It wasnt there!
Sensations gripped him afresh,
and now he was obsessed..
Possessed by a plan,
to get to the bottom of this mystery, man!
so later on, when she was sleeping--
he crept in, and his hand slowly snuck in,
he felt his way inbetween her thighs,
beneath her undergarment and on inside..
And....
She woke up with a scream!
Quick as a flash--
His hand was no longer where it'd been.
Their eyes met.
She must have thought she was having a dream..
'Cos she just dropped back and slept.
Hmmmm...
he thought to himself
so that's it then..
He thought a little more--
and more impossibilities opened up;
like 'how do they pee?' for example.
and then he was inducted into a world
of whole new mystery.
Which is altogether,
A very different story.
a dangerous mind and devious plans,
he walked into the neighbors' when no one was there,
he looked through the key hole,
and saw her standing there.
she was bare with not a thread of clothing..
except for a towel, she'd just been bathing..
he was shocked and confused,
but at the same time his eyes started glowing..
curiousity gripped his little frame,
and eagerly his neck he craned,
breathing as silently as silence came.
He looked through as she let the towel slip..
she bent over and the sunshine crept,
through the slender gaps between her legs.
he scratched his head--
he looked again...
It wasnt there!
Sensations gripped him afresh,
and now he was obsessed..
Possessed by a plan,
to get to the bottom of this mystery, man!
so later on, when she was sleeping--
he crept in, and his hand slowly snuck in,
he felt his way inbetween her thighs,
beneath her undergarment and on inside..
And....
She woke up with a scream!
Quick as a flash--
His hand was no longer where it'd been.
Their eyes met.
She must have thought she was having a dream..
'Cos she just dropped back and slept.
Hmmmm...
he thought to himself
so that's it then..
He thought a little more--
and more impossibilities opened up;
like 'how do they pee?' for example.
and then he was inducted into a world
of whole new mystery.
Which is altogether,
A very different story.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Me and the Tea Ladies
So you know that story in which some professor leaves a question in an important paper which asks the student; 'What is the name of the Janitor?' and that goes on to tell us how important it is to respect the support staff in offices and schools etc?
Well i took it to heart.
So whenever my morning tea is served at work, or whenever someone comes in to empty my waste basket i make sure to give a smile, a nod and a thank you right? just simple manners.
Then the tea lady incidents happened.
They were more girls than ladies. And they were quite pretty in a tea serving latha like way. So i go about my usual smiling routine and they smile back right? And i'm probably the only guy who smiles with them on my floor so they get quite attached to me in a distant sort of way. With 'good morning sir's' etc.
So then i get this series of phone calls, the line sounds grainy and a distant female voice is talking at the other end. I can't make out anything so i hang up the first few times right? then one day the line is clearer and i find out it's the tea lady.
She proceeds to relate to me one of the most bizarre stories i have ever heard.
Apparently a chap at a different division had gone and let her verbally have it accusing her of 'being involved with me'.
Needless to say, i was speechless. absolutely bamboozled. its one of those moments when you're trying to figure out if its actually you this should be happening to, a feeling of utter disconnect.
Then i'm like wtf right? the whole shock of it settled in. So i ask her. Er, why would Mr.xxx go and say something like that to you?
She acts cagey, said she just wanted to make sure things weren't gonna take a turn for the uncomfortable. and hangs up.
I contemplated going and confronting the guy but then drop the idea. Believe me, i've come across weirder people with greater their-own-business-minding-deficency-disorders than him. But the sheer insanity of it struck me like a hammer. Here stand I and a tea lady. Possibly from two different social classes working at the same office. And from the mere fact that there are some smiles exchanged between us every morning and evening, some goon draws conclusions of midnight meet-ups and starlit rendezvous'.
The girl came into work a few more days, then left. Hopefully she just got a transfer and didn't quit or something.
The mystery only cleared up when later I found out that the tea boy was her boyfriend. And in a fit of jealousy may have convinced my 'colleague' (who apparently derives some sort of sadistic pleasure out of these sort of things) to do the deed.
And i didn't even know those two were even going out. He was half her height, and had the most innocent looking face you ever saw.
Well that was the first incident. The second one started a bit after the first girl left. the second girl starts to smile a little bit more and a little bit more coyly than usual everyday, and once I caught her staring at me when i was leaving the lunch room. I started getting this uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach so finally decided that some changes were in order.
I have since developed a more professional smile with a slight nod that communicates politeness more formally than my mal hinawa of old. And i find myself identifying more closely with a previously dark and detested area of accepted societal norms as well. But I still smile at the tea lady, albeit a smile completely removed of all traces of come-on-over-ness. Yes I admit, in retrospect my smiles may not have been all that strictly professional as i had thought.
Well i took it to heart.
So whenever my morning tea is served at work, or whenever someone comes in to empty my waste basket i make sure to give a smile, a nod and a thank you right? just simple manners.
Then the tea lady incidents happened.
They were more girls than ladies. And they were quite pretty in a tea serving latha like way. So i go about my usual smiling routine and they smile back right? And i'm probably the only guy who smiles with them on my floor so they get quite attached to me in a distant sort of way. With 'good morning sir's' etc.
So then i get this series of phone calls, the line sounds grainy and a distant female voice is talking at the other end. I can't make out anything so i hang up the first few times right? then one day the line is clearer and i find out it's the tea lady.
She proceeds to relate to me one of the most bizarre stories i have ever heard.
Apparently a chap at a different division had gone and let her verbally have it accusing her of 'being involved with me'.
Needless to say, i was speechless. absolutely bamboozled. its one of those moments when you're trying to figure out if its actually you this should be happening to, a feeling of utter disconnect.
Then i'm like wtf right? the whole shock of it settled in. So i ask her. Er, why would Mr.xxx go and say something like that to you?
She acts cagey, said she just wanted to make sure things weren't gonna take a turn for the uncomfortable. and hangs up.
I contemplated going and confronting the guy but then drop the idea. Believe me, i've come across weirder people with greater their-own-business-minding-deficency-disorders than him. But the sheer insanity of it struck me like a hammer. Here stand I and a tea lady. Possibly from two different social classes working at the same office. And from the mere fact that there are some smiles exchanged between us every morning and evening, some goon draws conclusions of midnight meet-ups and starlit rendezvous'.
The girl came into work a few more days, then left. Hopefully she just got a transfer and didn't quit or something.
The mystery only cleared up when later I found out that the tea boy was her boyfriend. And in a fit of jealousy may have convinced my 'colleague' (who apparently derives some sort of sadistic pleasure out of these sort of things) to do the deed.
And i didn't even know those two were even going out. He was half her height, and had the most innocent looking face you ever saw.
Well that was the first incident. The second one started a bit after the first girl left. the second girl starts to smile a little bit more and a little bit more coyly than usual everyday, and once I caught her staring at me when i was leaving the lunch room. I started getting this uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach so finally decided that some changes were in order.
I have since developed a more professional smile with a slight nod that communicates politeness more formally than my mal hinawa of old. And i find myself identifying more closely with a previously dark and detested area of accepted societal norms as well. But I still smile at the tea lady, albeit a smile completely removed of all traces of come-on-over-ness. Yes I admit, in retrospect my smiles may not have been all that strictly professional as i had thought.
Monday, March 2, 2009
You Know What's Funny?
Theres some funny shit going down everyday in my life i think. I'll tell you a funny story shall I? Ok, this chap at the Colombo University, stole some radioactive Uranium from the lab cos it was all glowing with brilliant colors. He put it in his pocket and took it home. And four years later, he was dead.
What's funny is being a human insurance policy, a security, especially after having used such insurance policies in the past yourself, unwittingly. You realize that mistakes have different reflections in the mirror.
Whats funny is having people die like flies all over the place due to various reasons and seeing the individuals who are supposed to serve those same people get driven around in armoured seven series' to some midweek blood bath in the flesh pots of idyllic islands.
Whats funny is taking people at face value to find out that they have many different faces, with very different pricing structures. What's probably even funnier is that you've probably got a similar set of faces yourself.
Whats funny is a superpower which possesses a whole stockpile of nuclear weapons (and who just waged/are waging a very irresponsible war) trying to dictate terms to other nations about the non-possession of the same said nukes. While favouring their allies with the right to possess them.
Oh yes. Its a funny little world alright.
What's funny is being a human insurance policy, a security, especially after having used such insurance policies in the past yourself, unwittingly. You realize that mistakes have different reflections in the mirror.
Whats funny is having people die like flies all over the place due to various reasons and seeing the individuals who are supposed to serve those same people get driven around in armoured seven series' to some midweek blood bath in the flesh pots of idyllic islands.
Whats funny is taking people at face value to find out that they have many different faces, with very different pricing structures. What's probably even funnier is that you've probably got a similar set of faces yourself.
Whats funny is a superpower which possesses a whole stockpile of nuclear weapons (and who just waged/are waging a very irresponsible war) trying to dictate terms to other nations about the non-possession of the same said nukes. While favouring their allies with the right to possess them.
Oh yes. Its a funny little world alright.
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