underground smoke and sheet

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Home to Eelam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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..

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?

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.

Playah playah (we're all disillusioned about our looks)

What is with a persons looks that drives you up the wall man? We are all so concerned about the way we LOOK. i mean the way we look? wasn’t there anything else remotely important enough that we could have imagined to be so concerned about? like intelligence for example?

I was just going through the pictures in my office camera trying to find some pics i took of an outlet in the morning right. And when i get my hands on a public camera i rarely pass up the chance to look at all the pics everyone else has taken. i mean its a public camera right? you wouldn’t leave anything on there undeleted if it was private so what the hell. (a similar principle dictates that the best porn in net cafes are found in the PCs and not on the actual internet itself)

Anyways this chap at work who used it last, you know how people get when they have a camera and nothing to do but point and shoot at yourself right? so this chap is all gangsta poses and weird hand signals that apparently have 'meanings beyond comprehension of normal man', and every single picture of him, with anyone else or no had some sort of weirdly contorted hand signal and trying-hard-to-look-bad pose in it.

Now I’m not playa hating or trying to put tha man down, im only saying this cos thats what triggered this weird thought train in the first place, not that i haven’t thought about it before, but now i just felt like writing about it see.

It is a commonly known fact that when they look in the mirror, guys see something in addition to what’s really there and women see something less. That’s why no matter how beautiful she may be, if you complement a girl on her looks she'd blush and get all coy and surprised and you'll be wondering like; er.. what’s wrong with this one? doesn't she own a mirror?

If you complement a guy though, no matter how disproportionately challenged in the aesthetic department he may be, he'll just shrug it off and give a gruff thank you cos he knows see? its all just long overdue hero worship, finally SOMEONE has seen what he's been seeing all along! and it doesn’t surprise him either, cos the rest of em are too awed by his presence to actually venture a complement.

A guy will try out all sorts of poses in the bathroom mirror. He'll practice looking skeptical, he'll practice the i-know-what-you're-upto-but-im-gonna-leave-you-in-suspense-about-it look. he'll try out the gansta pose, the i-know-you're-checking-me-out-but-im-too-cool-to-look-your-way one (which is mostly constructed around an illusionary scenario generously created by his ego) he'll try and figure out what pose goes with what collection of clothes oh yeah baby he'll be ALL THAT man all that!

A girl on the other hand will fuss about with her make-up and take her time delicately rubbing cream and suchlike and wearing her clothes in gentle sweeps and will step out looking like a delicate little flower and look the bomb and be totally unaware of it. Yeah right? yeah i know, yeah right! She'll be aware of it, in a subconscious level, at least most of them will, but they won’t be sure about it. At least in most cases they won't. Some of them may feel insecure about it in a subconscious level but the bottom line is that they are more uncertain as a whole on the way they look

Such dangerous talk about women borders upon intellectual suicide for in my experience they are so volatile and unpredictable that they are akin to fresh dynamite on Guy Fawkes night, or Vesak take your pick. But i will carefully venture my hypothesis here.

A guy will walk in front of the mirror and even if he's the skinniest stick you ever saw, he'll puff his chest up and pull his stomach in and square his shoulders and leave the room thinking he is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh and he wont look at a reflection again unless he goes through the same routine, its like he changes reality for mental benefit, for he knows that afterall, life is a confidence game.

Ah what a delightfully complex creature we are! As for women, who knows what goes through their heads except possible schemes as to how to break that confidence and impose upon it some Khmer Rouge like autocratic dominance. Killing stray atoms of confidence like Pol Pot killed peasants.

How is this achieved? ah well that is another story altogether. More a story of voluntary slavery than anything else not to say that a decent defense is not put up in some cases. But i think i've already lost the thread of this one to a certain extent. So will stop

pornography, Lasantha and petrol

What happened to them? They all came up and several posts were written and major social unrest and discussion was caused and nothing happened afterwards.

There seem to be two 'sides' at the onset. The imposers and the resistors. The government and the public. But lines are mixed, and what may seem black and white is really various shades of grey, and without going too deep into the whole exchange of opinions and who is to be blamed for what point of view that is infusing society politically or otherwise it is pretty obvious that these are all just issues people discussed at one point, never resolved, got bored of and moved on from to the next.

Is hypocrisy to be blamed? but hypocrisy is everywhere. What happened to the whole porn thing anyway, the 'porn free' nationwide internet network that bordered on China like control of the web. Except the Chinese mostly cut down on the boring stuff like rebellious political thought.

Everybody talked about it, laughed about it, and now its gone. yet the topic of porn is one of the more lighter ones comparatively.

Lasantha's death on the other hand, sparked a furious outcry from all corners of the media, blogosphere and the general public. And it predictably died down as well. Where are the people who 'walked with Lasantha' on the day of his funeral now? Where are those who hailed it as an opportunity to show solidarity with his cause? What came of it? They may always say that nothing happened because I never turned up or more people never came, but still, some people went, and those people screamed in outrage. Screams which have died down now, just over a month after his tragic demise, with the traces of his killers nowhere near apparent.

Smoke on water.

And what about the Supreme Court and the prices of petrol? The initial order came to reduce the price of petrol to one hundred bucks and when that was chucked off into the rubbish bin there was an ultimatum that was never even considered and now even the tuk tuk guys have to go through so much of fuss for just four litres of cheap gas that they don’t give a hoot either. And they usually hoot all the time.

To be cool or not to be, Is that a question?

Ragamuffin maan ya! I’m just listening to this Apache Indian track called 'chok there'.It's alright. Now before this randomness takes over like the weeds have taken over half of Killinochchi I’ll try hard to get to the point.

What is Cool?

We are swamped down and bogged up with definitions of cool. Im walking to work today with my tattered gym bag on my shoulders right? and im thinking i need a new bag cos the one i have right now is ripped so much that the only thing holding it together is probably the dirt.

I was thinking of spending for an okayish Field bag, about 1.5k. A bit hardier than the regular stuff at Emperor (MC) so kind of worth the money. Then the back of my mind pipes up with the crazy notion of shelling out for an Adidas or a Nike instead. Subtle, black, 4k and as cool as a guy of my social standing can afford to get without pawning his left testicle. I dismissed the notion. After all, it's no point getting a bag like that and then going to just a regular gym right. People are gonna think you bought it off the World Market anyway.

But I am not averse to such extravagant purchases. There are some things that I feel the tendency to splash on. Shoes, some clothes maybe. Yes i am pretentious and part of the rest of society wanna-be bunch. Let's get that out of the way.

But Hwhy?

Reading through my last paragraph, my eye fell on this definitive statement; "People are gonna think you bought it off the world market anyway"

People are gonna think.

Hmmm.

I mean would I want that bag if every Somey, Siri and Ratnapala at the gym had a svelte Adidas of their own? Or would I wanna go even higher up the market in search of commercial offerings in the sports bag market that probably exist but which i am not aware of like maybe Versace Sport? I am just postulating here. But I think Nike will cut it anywhere, I’ve always had a preference for Adidas though.

But coolness does not only relate to 'stuff'. it relates very heavily also to attitudes, who we hang out with and where we live. But location of residence doesn't matter that much when you're young. It’s your school that matters when you’re young.

You're safe in the cool-o-meter if you went to a 'leading school in Colombo' or an 'International School'. You're coated in a mysterious aura, which is also uber-cool, if you've 'studied abroad' as well. If you're doing you're higher studies, it’s always cool to say that you're 'down for the summer' or 'taking a winter vacation'. Local higher education has it's own cool-o-metrics and whatnot, differing between the different institutes and courses, but I can't properly put my finger on it cos i am myself embroiled in it, and will probably be heavily biased to my own coolness if i tried :D

Its uncool to put a nose in a smiley, a fact which I found out from Jerry’s blog. when Fallen most kindly pointed it out to him.

My last post was apparently cynical yet aloof-ishly cool, according to Makuluwo. Thank you for that by the way, I was trying really hard. You’ll find out why in the para after next.

Cool is a phenomenon of society, it’s tied to what we aspire to and want to be. It often hits hard into secret places of our consciousness, taps into things that we won't even admit to our closest friends that we like, or want. You can probably tell a lot about a man if you knew what he exactly thought was 'cool'.

It’s also cool to be cynical. It’s cool to be aloof. To hold yourself above the massess. to be different. Hell it’s even cool to be a social outcast, but not in an un-cool way of course.

Cool-ness is a universal concept. And like all universal concepts, you can’t really explain what it means until you immerse yourself in it. And this post probably didn't teach you anything about it anyway either.

Today's post brought to you by, the local (oligopolistic) supermarket industry, Gedara yamang.

A Rational Argument

Today i was coming to work in the bus. And there was this little spat between the driver and a chap on a motorcycle. The bus stopped and the cycle chap walked up to the driver and they proceeded to argue. It was the usual flinging of bravado. All threatening and no real action. you know how it goes;

'hey shut up or im gonna hit you!'
'Who the f*ck are you to shut my mouth up you bugger? you shut up or im gonna f*cking hit you harder!'
'Hit me? your gonna f*cking hit me? do you know who you're messing with you garbage eating stray dog?
'Son of a bitch'
'HEY learn to talk to people okay? or im gonna smash you over the head you good for nothing piece of shit.'
'YOURE gonna hit me? so try, try u piece of stale bread, see if you can lay a finger.'

and then when its pretty apparnt they're heading nowehere,

'Okay fine fine so what do you want, what the f*ck do you want?'
What do I want? You tell me what you want, huh, little piece of money grubbing filth'
What? who the f*ck are you calling filth? Im gonna *whizza whizza blah blah mutter mutter whazza grinna guzza....*

And so it goes on, a battle of words. As far as i can discern, the objective seems to be to batter the other guy with strongly worded threats until he stops. The objective is to subdue him with the threat of a punch up, not a real punch up. Cos then the person who threatens harder would seem the one more eager to fight, even though he knows that fighting on the road in the middle of rush hour morning traffic will deifinitely mean getting punched up and spending time at the Police. Also losing the income from a whole day of running a bus or a days work. Which is no easy joke im told.

But of course, in an evenly matched situation, when nobody backs down, and nobody really feels it worthwhile to take things to the next level, shit can get a bit wild. Like in this post by Java Jones.

The bus guy and the cycle guy kept arguing until they both reached a level where each of their threats started cancelling out the others'. And with a final 'kariya!' and a 'huttho!' the cycle guy and we (the bus) buggered off, almost friends, but not quite.

Bus driver, to pal sitting next to him;

'Balapangko, munta giya rata, apine Sinhala'

'look at that bugger will you, acts like he owns the country, huh, we're the sinhalese'

That bike guy was a Muslim. And he was probably exchanging similar slurs with his friend. I didn't hear.

Are we built like this, always arguing in seemingly irrational ways about rational topics? or is the way we argue the way we are meant to do things as always, maybe the most indirect approaches are the most direct. Thought fodder for a monday morning.

Where have all the terrorists gone?

Ok now here’s a question for all you people out there who think Prabahakaran’s a terrorist. Does he not wank at night before goes to sleep? If you prick him does he not bleed? If you stole his lunch and beat him up, would he not cry? Is he but a man like you and me? Or is he really a woman inside like Boy George or Mervin Silva? Or is he, like many believe him to be, the illegitimate, discarded son of the devil himself? Illegitimate because the devil in a drunken stupor landed in Jaffna thinking it was LA and did it with a bush lizard of some type thinking it was Celine Dion or Donald Trump? And even though you might say all the devil’s children, like George Bush, are illegitimate since after all the devil leads by example, discarded because a bush lizard is still a bush lizard and even the devil has his standards?

Yes, yes it is very brave of me to sit safe in my room in an undisclosed location in the greater Colombo area and smugly type away vicious insults to the grand old boy of Sri Lankan terrorism I know. But that’s okay, I am not asking for any medals, just doing my civic duty as a roadblock loving Sri Lankan citizen who would think nothing of sacrificing about 15 minutes of the first part of his crucial CIM exams so that some power loving money hungry white shirt wearing deranged komodo dragon of a politician can wait for his wife to leave (through a different route, eliciting the services of other patriots and honourable citizens such as I) so that he can get his servant to suck him off in the kitchen and still get his nice round ass to parliament for the next power hungry bastard with something to gain to kiss in 15 minutes flat. Oh yes, I am all for efficient governance.

While retracting my rather tasteless comments about the devil and his dirty deeds above, for after all a lady is still a lady even though she may have been unfortunate enough to have a son like Prabhakaran, I am forced to ask, who is the real terrorist here?

One, gets people to die for him without even meeting them in the name of an ancient cause that frankly no one even knows anything about anymore. The other, revels in the war effort and uses it to consolidate his power by scaring the people making them bend over double and give him all their money. Probably half of which he uses to buy weapons netting a handy commission out of the whole deal. Some might call it a lost cause. But no one really knows anymore.

It’s like when Mr Perera snapped at Mrs Soyza’s dog and Mrs Soyza called Mrs Perera a drunken whorebag because Mr. Soyza who drinks every night, can’t resist looking over the wall to get a peek at Mrs. Perera’s extra large green cotton panties hanging on the washing line. And so begins a long drawn out battle between the Pererá’s and Soyza’s and including, among it’s many casualties, a cut down thambili tree for daring to drop its produce on the wrong side of the parapet wall, a surprised bas unnahey who chose the wrong side of the border to keep his foot on during some construction, a harangued local police officer sick and tired of dealing with petty complaints and who ultimately suffered a stroke, and even more harassed looking neighbours unable to sleep due to noisy arguments from both sides all through the night, and who went out and didn’t contribute positively to the workforce and spread the insomnia throughout their acquaintances and throughout over ever widening circles causing car accidents, bus accidents, moral degeneracy and a serious economic down turn preceded by a financial crisis in the US where the Perera’s stressed and vacation deprived son was working at Bear Sterns as an investment banker looking for a new high return, risk insurable investment opportunity.

Ultimately, the Soyza’s dog died from a heart attack and Mrs. Perera stopped wearing extra large green cotton panties due to having lost so much weight by fighting all day and through having developed an allergy to cotton that brought her out in itches and boils that her doctor said was due to stress and from not being able to stand the colour green anymore because it gave her traumatic nightmares about how it all started. And Mr. Soyza stopped drinking after a bout of extreme depression when Mrs Perera stopped wearing extra large green cotton panties and stayed sober in order to better focus on the fight at hand and trounce the opponent even though he hadn’t the faintest what it was all about, having been drinking at the time it all started. And Mrs Soyza wouldn’t stop fighting till Mr Perera stopped and Mr. Perera didn’t see why he should stop until Mrs. Soyza backed off and apologized despite the pleadings of the harangued police officer and his insistence that there was nothing left to fight over anymore.

And so they bred the same hate and ignorance within all their children who in turn proudly presented it to their children as a part of the great heritage of their respective families and the Perera’s and the Soyza’s continue to fight to this day and no one really remembers or cares that it all started over a long dead dog and a pair of extra large green cotton panties.

So who’s the real terrorist here I ask you again. If you were to ask me, I would say neither. There are no terrorists here at all, only angry people with weapons (and a possibly inherited fetish for alcohol and extra large green cotton panties), who have forgotten why they got angry in the first place.

And as for terrorism itself, well we are all unknowingly embroiled in it. It is an aura surrounding us that we can't shake off.



Disclaimer -The selection of these two esteemed Sri Lankan last names was purely random, and may have been triggered by the memory of two families in my former neighborhood that were constantly at loggerheads with each other. No offense meant to any individual bearing the names of Soyza or Perera, nor to anyone fond of green cotton undergarments of any size, and i sincerely hope no offense was taken!

Shagger on the beach!

You gotta realize now I am not using 'shag' here in the traditional Brightish sense of the word. Or, to put it in another way, I don’t mean by saying 'shag' that two people are going at it like a couple of dogs in mating season suddenly realizing that unbeknownst to them, they have moved to the middle of the high road in the heat of passion. Ok, them moving to the high road in the heat of passion is not really relevant to the explanation. But what the hell, It’s funny seeing those critters in mid-orgasm thinking WTF! When they suddenly see a full scale Ashok Leyland Viking bearing down upon them with all its fury. Screaming conductors probably don’t help the situation.

But getting back to the point, by 'shag' I simply meant a guy jerking himself off, in strict Sri Lankan singlo-english urban lingo. The same lingo in which saying 'fit' indicates that one is in agreement with something and tells nothing in particular about one's health. And where 'bugger' is idly flung around to describe anybody from your 4 year-old kid to your deceased English master and no forceful anal sex is even remotely implied therein. Remnants of a colonial age? Maybe the 'bugger', but the 'shag' I’m not so sure about. Anthropologists?

Anyway, getting to the interesting bit and to the root of all this dilly dallying on slang and the greater meaning of life, I saw a gentleman on the beach jerking off today. I mean like WTF? A guy goes for a peaceful run in the morning to stretch his limbs and kick start his day, and some chap standing with only a t-shirt on calmly jerking himself off with one hand while occasionally scratching his baby white butt with the other is NOT exactly something he generally wants to see. Add to that the whole ethical code of behavior thing. Don’t they have that kinda thing on Sri Lankan beaches? I mean sure, there are many people who regularly take an early morning dump, some of them calmly smoking a beedee or reading a paper (it's true, I’ve seen them) but that’s normal. See, I can handle (by handle i mean that my mentality can effectively cope up with) gnarled old Sri Lankan men doing a load on the beach ‘cos i know they probably dont have another option. And it’s only a few of them anyway. After the tsunami, the beach near where I live has simply turned into something almost from a travel guide to 'exotic third world locations' like. Lush greenery, wide, hardly polluted beaches, fine salty air, the occasional rabid dog, and a partly destroyed holiday home that the owners never got around to repairing.

Now there's something about seeing a chap calmly standing there looking at far off fishermen pulling in that big net (the name of which I forget) and calmly shaking his little white weener that is just enough to turn me a bit green. And you can bet it’s not with envy. He was just walking into the beach when I was passing the deserted bungalow. He was decently clothed then in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt yeah? On the way back though I was forced to witness the spectacle that I just went through with you.

I yelled 'Hey what the f*ck man?' while running past him. he just looked up, with a slightly surprised, affronted look on his face as if I was invading his privacy. Didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. Was working his hand up and down the whole time. I did the whole circling-your-index-finger-a-little-above-the-vicinity-of-your-ear thing that I know to universally mean 'you’re crazy' and ran on. Just hope he wasn’t spotted by any of the fishermen or tough beach dwellers living out there. They can get a bit sensitive about these things. You gotta have some cultural savvy you know. Damned foreigners.

Jujups

I'm sitting in the bus today and there's a lady sitting across from me to my right.

Suddenly she starts rummaging in her bag. The bus turns in from the bridge and i look up at the digital clock in the front. Its 8.20! gonna be a bit late to work again...

I look across at the lady, she's got a pack of jujups in her hand.

She starts eating them. One.. Two.. Three..Four..

I'm watching from the corner of my eye..Suddenly remembering that I need to try and glance through some notes while ive got some time. I look at the clock again 8.21.

My eyes are dragged back to the lady on my right. She's devouring the jujups like er, well, let's just say she was devouring them shall we?

Five.. Six..

She's delicately taking them out of the pack one by one and shaking them into the pack as if there are stray drops of sugary honey dripping off of them and she's afraid of them dripping on her shirt. In reality they are just regular sugary, colorful jujups. I imagine their rubbery taste.

Seven.. Eight.. Nine...

The pack finishes. she calmly puts the piece of wrapper ripped off when she opened it back inside. Wipes her mouth with one hand. I look at the clock again. it's 8.22.

I feel slightly pukish.

Religion Bashing

Calling religion ‘bullshit’ because of the actions of those who practice it is somewhat akin to denouncing democracy after taking one look at, for e.g. the Sri Lankan parliament. How many wars have been fought in the name of religion? Quite a few, yes. How many have been fought in the name of country and empire? Lots more. So why don’t we just abolish the existing world governance system and just stop believing it will work? Why don’t we let the world slip into anarchy and see where we end up?

We can’t do that. We won’t do that because in essence, we know, democracy is a good thing. Its fundamental concept, its basic idea, makes sense; The majority gets together and decides who should take care of the tedious job of ruling the land. That’s what it’s supposed to be. But factor in self centered power hungry individuals, vast legal infrastructure that is easily manipulated, unconcerned masses, and years and years of ‘doing the same thing’ and you get the melting pot of world politics that we still believe we can ‘fix’ without calling ‘democracy’ itself ‘stupid’.

We are living in a world where it’s cool to diss religion but for e.g. it is not cool to diss one’s right to an abortion. It is also not cool to diss the government, not very loudly at least, lest you get ‘white-vanned’, but it’s cool to turn a blind eye on hundreds upon hundreds of civilians being killed in the name of ‘fighting terror’. After all it’s the Americans and most of the Western world that are doing it, and they are not fighting in the name of religion are they? They are apparently, fighting in the name of democracy and sovereignty. Look at Vietnam, Iraq, Palestine/ Israel, Panama, Georgia etc. etc. etc the list is endless.

So does that mean we can call ‘democracy’ ‘stupid’? No I believe, and I believe that you believe it’s only certain practitioners of it that make it so and it would be extremely shallow and simply wrong to group everyone who advocates democracy (which includes us voters) and call them stupid too.

‘I’ve always said that God has been the leading cause of human death’ says fellow blogger Dinidu de Alwis. He, to put it simply, is plain wrong or has simply not thought out his statement properly. The leading cause of human death would obviously be natural causes. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, old age, disease etc. through the ages of human history. Blame it on lack of technology or knowledge, but to blame it on God would mean accepting He exists, and for a self declared atheist that would be unthinkable.

But in case he was talking simply about conflict. And God being the cause of human death as a result if fuelling religious extremism, then I’d like to have a look at his statistics sheet. For like I said, enough wars have been fought in the name of empire building alone to dwarf any other type of conflict in the history of the human race. World War II/I, The Roman Empire building spree (before Constantinople), Colonialization/ Invasion and I can go on. Sure, religion would have been used as an excuse in certain cases, but to brand these cases under the label of ‘religious warfare’ would be quite erroneous.

The collective human psyche is a complex thing. Wars and conflicts start when people get carried away with generalizations and when reason gives way to fear and anger. War (and as a consequence; death) happens, in most cases, when people stop thinking straight and start becoming, for the lack of a more diplomatic term, ‘Stupid’.

SPECIAL REPORT: Why Mervin Should Not Be Arrested

So the Supreme Court has released an arrest warrant for the notorious gangster Mervin Silva. Now we all know the gangster side of him. The side we’ve come to love and admire; friend of the poor, protector of the masses etc. But little did we know that he is actually the reincarnation of the great magician from Camelot, here to advise our very own version of King Arthur. Yes, his real name is MERLIN people, not Mervin. You read it first on The Whackster’s Lair.

Astrologers have been working on the mystery of Mervin for quite some time now and have no other explanation for his amazing deeds. Never before has such an exceptional level of thuggery been seen in this country, not even from the experts at the art that we usually get in the mob house honorable institution we lovingly refer to as the ‘parliament’. Such is the class of Mervin that he openly engages in public violence and gets away with it scot free. And never, not since medieval times has such blatant disregard for law and order by an official, meant to uphold the very values and ethics he breaks, been welcomed with so much ardor and love from his fellow goons members of the mob house parliament.

However, to get off the sarcastic tone and onto a more serious one, the very same astrologers have made a startling discovery in the process of their studies. They have discovered that the soul of Merlin the magician, originally full of virtue and goodness, had grown contemptuous and bitter after long years stuck wandering the cosmos, from sheer impatience out of waiting for the prophesied time to come. Merlin, only meaning to do good to the world and help the masses, had grown into a seething mass of hate and bitterness, out for the kill you could say.

For mystics speak of a prophesy, a prophesy whispered to Merlin on his deathbed so many years ago, by a mysterious sha-man from the Arctic. And as he lay there dying, he was told that his soul must wait till there was someone born who will be worthy enough to accept him into his body. A noble individual whose nobility was beyond comparison. So Merlin was destined to wait.

Centuries, no, millennia had to pass before the prophesied little boy was born with the bodily infrastructure suitable enough for the great soul of Merlin. And there, born out of wedlock to a cattle breeder, little Mervin Silva screamed his first note of defiance into the backside of a brooding cow, which promptly peed on him.

Such were his roots. But the corrupted soul of Merlin the magician took over our poor hero, who was meant to save us from oppression, and turned him to something dark. Very dark. I will not stress on what happened next. His meteoric rise to glory among the retarded political class. His open love for violence, his equally corrupt offspring etc.I am confident that you are aware of them. But a growing body of evidence is being discovered through various secret underground experiments carried out by famous astrologers working non-stop on the problem, that Mervin can actually be reformed, that the corrupt soul of Merlin can actually be exorcised from the body of this poor man; and made good once again.

In accordance with this, the astrologers and the powerful sponsors of these studies are ready to secretly provide concrete evidence to the Supreme Court that arresting Mervin Silva will only antagonize the soul of Merlin. It will only heap upon us destruction and oppression of previously untold proportions. The only way, the evidence strongly suggests, is to appease the soul of Merlin, to let him express his hate and release all the frustration pent up through millennia a little more, until he sees the good side of things, or is made to see it. Therefore, it is the belief of many that Mervin’s arrest should be vehemently avoided for his own good and the good of his countrymen.

So Sri Lankans are advised (chiefly by the anti-propagandist left wing media organizations) to be a bit more patient. A little less selfish. Who are we to mess with matters well beyond our intellectual capacity? Do not clamor for the arrest of Mervin, for that will only bring about more suffering upon you. Let our ignoble leadership handle him. They've done a splendid job so far. Put your faith in them just a little bit more.

Guys, the scum of the earth?

Reading the Messiah of Madness’s take on guys, at least her latest rant on the male species that was published on her blog (which she keeps changing the name of) a short while ago. I was a bit speechless, yet felt inclined to leave a comment to credit her masterful analysis. But I was quite literally stuck for words so all I could come up with was a quite subdued ‘erm..’

The Messiah outlines how a very good friend of hers was quite literally taken on a ride by this 22 year old ‘super-player’ who took it upon himself as a challenge to disprove her religious and conservative values and make her fall in love with him. Hmmmm.

She was of course, not trying to start an inter gender war of words or offend anyone. She made it quite clear that her statement was directed at only a certain part of the male species that acted like the afore mentioned guy and she admits as much when she says;

“ Guys are the neeking scum of the earth!!! K… not all… but most!!!”

That’s all very well. But her little post pushed my thoughts down a tunnel that I’ve been down before. So much so that I decided to sit down and write about it. All guys get a particular satisfaction when girls fall for them. It is flattering. It makes us feel good about ourselves. It gives you confidence in your battle at getting that elusive princess you have been chasing for quite a while. It tells you shortly, that you are an attractive and proud specimen of the male half of your species and that you have nothing to worry about in your ultimate quest to find a suitable mate. I suppose it is the same for girls as well.

The guy in question, at first glance, seems nothing surprising. For his kind is not rare. The kind that goes out of the way to get that attention. The kind that will do any unscrupulous thing in the book (and certain things that are not even in the book) to get a woman to sleep with him. I know few of them myself. They tend to waste an enormous amount of resources. Time, money, physical effort and tend to use all available mental capacities to accomplish it. They will go and meet their potential ‘prey’ wherever and whenever it is required. They will talk endless nonsense over the phone for long, long hours etc etc. but as far as I know, it is mostly in search of sex. But not always in a dirty way; mostly they are somewhat lost souls looking for satisfaction and fulfillment coupled with mental comfort and the sensation of being loved by a woman. Ego feeding I guess you could say.

But this guy strikes me as a bit different. The word ‘challenge’ and ‘love’ flash out at me. Apparently he wooed the Messiah’s friend as a ‘challenge’. To see if he could make her fall in love with him. He doesn’t strike me as your typical sex starved emotionally dependant individual. As a matter of fact, a part of me thinks maybe this guy actually likes her friend. Maybe one day he was walking down the road and he saw her, and he fell in love with everything that was her. Her eyes, her face, her hair, her voice, her manner, her walk, her feelings, her emotions, the very breeze that circles around her face, the very ground she steps on. Ok maybe not the ground she steps on. I have always found the whole concept of kissing the ground no matter who walked on top of it quite gross.

So maybe he considered himself such a hot shot and player and someone so special, that he couldn’t be going about falling in love with any and every single girl he meets. But he knew he had to have her. So what could he do? He couldn’t let her go. But at the same time he knew that he would not feel complete as a man if he couldn’t make her fall for him. He had to convince the world that here was man worthy of such a prize!

Or maybe the Messiah was right and he really is a creep. If that’s the case. Then he’s probably a real cold hearted sadistic pleasure seeker. A real conniving SOB, hell bent on self satisfaction and giving f*** all about other’s feelings. And we have had enough of those in the history of the human race to fill up hundreds of books.

Anyways, I hope the Messiah doesn’t mind this :). By the way, that girl can write, no matter how disillusioned she might be as to the extent of her abilities. And Lady Divine's raises a very valid point about women in her comment as well. so maybe the scum of the earth are just the scum of the earth. No gender discrimination involved? How politically correct.

Are YOU politically correct?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impossible is Nothing and the Egg of Columbus

No, this is not a pro-Adidas post (but I am a big fan btw). And this is not one of those despicable self help Guruji rantings either.

The word Impossible should not exist except to be used in a situational context. Because theoretically speaking, anything is possible. So if anything is theoretically possible then we are looking at infinite possibility which would abolish the concept of impossibility at least in our theoretical universe.

To start with.

The Impossible as we know it is a state of mind. Or a superficial concept. It exists due to barriers such as lack of knowledge, lack of resources, lack of intellect, lack of this, lack of that lack of foresight, lack of money, power, LACK of SOMETHING.

So given that we have anything and everything that we need to make something happen, it should happen because all we would need then is to just make it happen.

It irks me when people say this is impossible, or that is impossible, this is crazy, that won’t work. Some weird perfectionist part of me wants them to always say it Properly. I mean say; ‘This is not impossible. Be we can’t do it because of these and these reasons’

I’m kinda pricky when it comes to that. I don’t know why.

Anyways, getting a bit practical about it, the biggest lack that stands in the way of infinite possibility is human intellect. It seems to only be a gifted few who seem to have the ability to think around problems and discover new ways of doing things. Change is brought about by innovative thinking. And there is a potential revolution just waiting to be unleashed in all of our heads i guess, because it's only After the idea has come out that the genius is recognized.

So there is a genius waiting to break out in all of us! now doesnt that thought make you happy? :)

And if you haven’t heard about the Columbus Egg, It really is an interesting story.

Columbus was dining with many Spanish nobles when one of them said: 'Sir Christopher, even if your lordship had not discovered the Indies, there would have been, here in Spain which is a country abundant with great men knowledgeable in cosmography and literature, one who would have started a similar adventure with the same result.' Columbus did not respond to these words but asked for a whole egg to be brought to him. He placed it on the table and said: 'My lords, I will lay a wager with any of you that you are unable to make this egg stand on its end like I will do without any kind of help or aid.' They all tried without success and when the egg returned to Columbus, he tapped it gently on the table breaking it slightly and, with this, the egg stood on its end. All those present were confounded and understood what he meant: that once the feat has been done, anyone knows how to do it.

And hey, I just thought of something. ‘Pro-Adidas’ post? maybe a new source of blogger revenue? Granted it’ll probably have too much of a press release ring to it but subtly done? Hmmm. Or are they doing it already? Are we reading blogs that are subtly putting signals in our subconscious telling us to buy this and buy that on a daily basis? Like those extremely (blink and you will miss) things you see in the movies these days. Take The Incredible Hulk for exempli gratia, I was watching it yesterday and noticed a little pack of Pringles in a motel room and Norton antivirus on a PC (See of you can spot it).

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll write a post about it lol.