Blast from the past: Rein in these Hounds!

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Sunday, October 10, 2004

Rein in these Hounds!

Watched this awesome documentary called "Control Room" a few days ago... It's on Al Jazeera and the whole scenario surrounding the oppression of objective journalism in today's world... It really struck a chord...

Come to think of it what is this 'reality' that we speak of? Is it something tangible and universal or merely our perception of events? And if it is the latter, then shouldn't we be immensely worried about the rampant abuse of all the media around us which shape our perceptions?!!

I have watched FOX News butcher every notion of "fair and balanced" reporting that I had... I have seen the 'Times of India' turn into a dishrag, shamelessly furthering the cause of its corporate cousins (like Indiatimes and Times FM)... I have seen the political spin-masters weaving their webs merely minutes after a candidate has said something and trying to convert his message into something totally unrecognizable! But that's not the real shocking bit - the most frustrating part is that common people like you and me seem to be swayed by all this wand-waving!

With the media playing such a dramatic role in all 'our' views and opinions it really is a wonder that we don't do more to ensure that we indeed get ONLY the 'news' and not the 'opinions'... Infact to take it one step further, sometimes we get neither news nor opinions, but complete fiction! But then again, mebbe the reason we hear what we hear is simply because that is indeed what we WANT to hear! If more people took a stand and said 'enough is enough', these slaves of ratings would have to stop and take notice and change their errant ways!

And may I add that 'errant' doesn't really say it all - Misconstruing Kerry's pragmatic thought on measuring up to global standards of propriety and turning it into some garbage about 'global veto' is blasphemy and slander and not 'errant' behaviour... 'Errant' is what a 5-yr old kid is when he breaks the cookie jar!!! When TOI uses a quarter of the front page on the world's largest-selling English daily to harp on about some dating funda on '8888', it's bordering on cheap prostitution, not an 'errant' act!!!

Today's media needs to hear this loud and clear - We the people are adults...and are capable of independent thought! We DO NOT need you to tell us what message to draw from what we see! We are in a democracy goddamit - not some state-sponsored thought-sanitization program! Documentaries like 'Control Room' need to be seen by us all - if it doesn't make you erupt into a vicious tirade like this, it will atleast make you uncomfortable enough to stop and reflect for a while!

Blast from the past: Bob Dylan's coming to town!

Oh god, I remember this day so so clearly - I was so excited that I was going for a Dylan concert... Unfortunately, the show was one of the biggest letdowns ever! Dylan creaked and croaked through most of the songs, letting the instruments play on instead of doing much singing... But I guess one must make allowances for his age. In hindsight, I am going to find consolation in the fact that I got to see a legend that up close! :)

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Friday, October 08, 2004

Bob Dylan's coming to town!

When I was in eighth grade, some teacher of mine dreamt up the notion that I had a good singing voice! This delusion led her to make me sing a song (which I instantly took an immense liking to) in our annual school performances! While that performance is a memory best forgotten, the song has stayed with me through all these years... primarily because the words still resonate true even in todays day and age - nearly 45 years after the song was first written!!!!:O:O That song was Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"... a veritable classic...

Since then, over these past few years, I have grown to love and admire the work of the great Mr. Zimmerman... So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that Bob Dylan HIMSELF was going to be performing LIVE in UCSB's Events Center... Right here, in my freakin' university!!! Yippeee Doooo! So the tickets were bought promptly and now all I can do is count the days off till October 21st...

Here are those wonderful lyrics of the very first Dylan song I ever heard:

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BLOWIN' IN THE WIND

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

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For more such Dylan lyrics, here's a great site to check out: http://orad.dent.kyushu-u.ac.jp/dylan/default.html

Bob Dylan is the man who is said to have represented an era... a man who spoke for an entire generation... In 13 days when he speaks again, I will be right there listening with my ears tweaked:D:D

Blast from the past: Indians in the news... in weirdly different ways ;-)

Both these video links are dead, and while the first one is lost forever, I did manage to find and embed the Russell Peters' video below... Enjoy!

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Thursday, October 07, 2004

Indians in the news... in weirdly different ways ;-)

Well, this one's gonna be a real shorty...hehe. Over the past few days I came across 2 radically different examples of Indians in the news out here in the US and Canada!

The first is from the Conan O'Brien Show:

http://methodshop.com/tech/articles/conan/

Quite a hilarious take on the whole out-sourcing bizness... ;-)

And this second piece is by a Canadian-Indian (I think) stand-up comic who goes by the name Russell Peters... This one's a blast too!

http://jariwala.net/russellpeters.ram

I'm sure you guys are gonna have a blast looking these up...

Enjoy!

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Blast from the past: Cracking the Cherry ;-)

A long, long time ago - 2 years, 8 months, 14 days ago, to be precise - I had started another blog... I had been in the U.S. for just over 395 days, and I don't really know what I was thinking... I actually thought that I would be able to make time during grad school to write regular updates and posts - how wrong I was! Hehe. The blog 'died' after just 4 days... and only surfaced again this morning when a very dear friend reminded me of its existence!

So I went right back... looked through some of those posts... and it's all so funny! I sound like a different person... naive and way-more clueless than I feel today! It felt like I had put a piece of myself into a time capsule, forgotten all about it, and had now stumbled upon it most unexpectedly! Purely for academic purposes, I will now reproduce 4 of my posts from that ill-fated first attempt at blogging... Here's hoping my 'blog' has better luck this time around! Hehe :)

P.S. Btw, if the whole "calculating the days between two dates" bit amused you, here's when you can do some conversions of your own!

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Thursday, October 07, 2004

Cracking the Cherry ;-)

Well, my oh my... Look what we got here... My very first entry in Blogger... Lemme tell you why this is such a BIG step for me ;-)

Ever since I was a kid I've read these creepy books wherein the protagonist's journal entries somehow came back to haunt them in their later lives... Add to that the apparently ungainly fear that I might die tomorrow and someone I didn't want to would make millions by publishing these very private works (a la Anne Frank), and you had a potent set of reasons to stay away from writing journals of any variety! hehe. Besides, I never really saw any virtue in writing down one's thoughts on paper as a therapeutic device when infact similar or better results could be achieved by a simple 10 minute discussion with self (self-talk is what the shrinks like to call it, me thinks) while sitting on the commode ;-)

But then what's changed today? Why am I here? Why have I joined the ranks of those millions who identify with that exceptionally cheesy phrase "Dear Diary"...:D:D?? Very frankly, I donno... I guess I saw this somewhere, thought it was a cool concept and said "why not?"...

But that's the funny bit - this isn't really like the journals of yore... Here we very much expect that someone might read these thoughts that we put down... Infact some might be putting them down for that very reason... hehe. Who cares! It's an experiment, and I'm a scientist... And I'll be damned if I discount it without giving it it's fair chance to flap its arms around and make a bid at survival... ;-) With these words I embark... and I hope in the days to come, I have very good reasons to continue... But we are getting ahead of ourselves here - that's something only time will tell!