gre SHAMBOLLIC: September 2006 gk

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Things that made me laugh-splutter recently:

1. Jug Bean's Menagerie a Trois or How to Review B'lore's English Theatre Scene

2. Slogan's Ant in the pant: Adventures with Krishnappa

3. Maciej's wary descript of Kundera's 'Unberable Lightness' as sexually-transmitted book
posted by Finny Forever at 6:26 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Delight

If orgasms fail you completely, maybe youre like me. I'm convinced that a woman is better off with a book between her hands as someone else grunts between her legs and over her face (blocking out the light).

In the last year, my most memorable orgasms by external agent, came from books:
Derrida (for beginners)
and now,
Ya. Perelman Physics for Entertainment (1,2)

So if anyone thought they would pick up the Ya. Perelman 1+2 sometime in the future from Blossoms, they can forget about it. They were cleaned out yesterday. :)
I intend to gift the Perelman to my nephew on his 5th birthday. Or maybe wont. Man, it's gold. This was the USSR.
posted by Finny Forever at 7:19 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Yes!


My thoughts exactly. Particularly the part where he advises Americans to read Chomsky instead of wasting their time on Batman and Superman movies that "make people stupid." Ok, so he slipped on thinking Chomsky was dead, but let that not take away from the point. US government officials like Condy, say his language was unbecoming of a head of state, 'comic-strip'. Really judgement is the right of the makers of a language of diplomacy and an institution of mockery , so they're right. But the clearest indication of US Government as Bigot of Privelege, is ambassador Bolton's remark that Hugo's speech didn't warrant the presence of anyone higher than their junior notetaker.
posted by Finny Forever at 9:13 AM 0 comments

Friday, September 22, 2006

Serendipity. The word doesn't sound right for what it's trying to say. It sounds like it means 'to sip coffee in serenity'. So i'll say a lot of things are coming quickly together in my field of idea vision. It's important to say 'quickly' because if all these related things happened over a year or even a month it wouldnt be remarkable enough. The most notable of these is when i put together oriana fallaci with the pope vs. islam thing and then I see a few others had done the same thing. Then 2 days later, I attend a bookclub meet and their book was a kundera. and all that week before kundera was the theme. I had had a great chat with vij on kundera's 'unberable lightness'(debates Neitzsche) in the previous week and then the day after the guy i meet is reading Neitzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Anyway, the day after the book meet, where I had decided not to pick up the recommended book, I decided to revisit bookworld and pick up a friendly copy of kundera's 'immortality' which I had left reading 2 years back. It's pretty and just my thing. Then I find before arriving there, that he has a mention of Fallaci in Immortality:
“…who is the pioneer of modern journalism? Not Hemingway who wrote of his experiences in the trenches, not Orwell who spent a year of his life with the Parisian poor, not Egon Erwin Kisch the expert on Prague prostitutes, but Oriana Fallaci who in the years 1969 to 1972 published a series of interviews with the most famous politicians of the time. Those interviews were more than mere conversations; they were duels. Before the powerful politicians realized that they were fighting under unequal conditions–for she was allowed to ask questions but they were not–they were already on the floor of the ring, KO’ed.” And truly if anything, this lady stood for courage.
Then before I had even begun on Immortality, I thought I saw this whole Pope-Islam thing as sibling rivalry. This is what Kundera explores in the world of the protagonist, Agnes.

***
Location Envy: I remember all those people I got to befriend in my time in Bangalore, whove left for other lands, states, places, contracts. Something so natural just happens. People move on, they do it all the time. But the mist of wist cracks you sometimes.
***
posted by Finny Forever at 12:54 PM 0 comments

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Some bloggers are picking on the Naxalites. Why? They must stop. Really. :) Let it be known that it's only the presence of humane mallus in the city that calms the otherwise indistinguishable Naxalites. *beam beam*
===
In other news, C K Meena disappointed me for the first time with her last piece on names.
===
In other news, gay men turn me on liek nothing else. Guess hwhy.
posted by Finny Forever at 10:37 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

I'll tell you what the Pope vs. Islam thing reminds me of - the thing between siblings. The elder sis: pontificating, berating, high-minded, triumphalistic; the younger sis: brooding, petulant, agressive and dangerously tantrum-prone. I was nearly done with this huge piece on "Courage vs. Caution. When do you speak your mind?" worthy of publication in The Economist. Then i realised this: Big sis-small sis. Tant piss. And I should know.
(And i think Madeline's article in The Guardian was narrow. And might just publish my piece)

But we can still have a great debate on this over soda at koshy's ok?
posted by Finny Forever at 7:51 PM 0 comments

Monday, September 18, 2006

Crazy Crazy.
Finds made in the last 2 weeks :
2.AfriGadget
3.Architectures of Control in Design
4.Figarospeech(for my students)
5.Rebranding Africa
6.I love Track 6. It's mine.
***
4-year-old Mita danced on the smelly park grass in her brief pink frock. She twisted in circles with the other mindless children of the park time. 5 times she turned breathless in a deathly pleasure run and nearly panted back to mother's bench. At last, tired and smiling, she finally drifted to her mother's bench. Mother looked up freshly and pleased to receive. They looked happily at eachother. Then Mita asked,"Ummy. Explain the role of breasts in lovemaking."
posted by Finny Forever at 5:07 PM 0 comments

Can a cartoonist help me on this?

[Pop at pulpit delivering speech in speech bubble]
Pop: "Φαδρον μν τοιοτν τινα λγον φη επεν, Hops are doctrinally irrational μετ δ Φαδρον λλους τινς εναι, ν ο πνυ διεμνημνευεν..... Παυσανου λγον διηγετο. επεν δ ατν τι· ο καλς μοι δοκε, Φαδρε, προβεβλσθαι μν λγος, τ πλς οτως παρηγγλθαι γκωμιζειν..."[3 pages]"...and to conclude Hops are intrinsically unreasonable"
[Looks around for a reaction]
[Long silence]
[Hops look at each other blankly briefly. Before rising in arms]
Hop: Apologize right now!
Pop[rubbing his hands]: Ok. Here's the apology: ...
[Hop is delivered a scroll statement by an outside hand]
[Next frame shows close-up of typed statement that starts: 'I am deeply sorry...']
Hop: That's better...o yes...
[Next frame shows rest of the sentence: 'for the reactions in some countries ...']
Hop: Heyyy, wait a minute .."

***
While gratificants are purring with pleasure over the apology, one guy* gets the message over what exactly the Pope is aplogizing for: the reaction and not his statement.He's apologizing on behalf of reactants for their bad behaviour.
This thing is hilarious.
***
*Turkish State Minister Mehmet Aydin said the pontiff appeared to be saying he was sorry for the outrage but not necessarily the remarks themselves.
posted by Finny Forever at 11:32 AM 0 comments

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Violence in the name of religion

In all fairness to his intense thesis, if anyone should take issue with this, they must be scholars themselves. It would be wasted on anyone less.

If diplomatic language means not saying what you think, it chaffs at freedom of speech, progress in communication and discourse. Which is a pity because, done earnestly, discourse is the most brilliant intercourse possible, with a willing/earned transforming agreement as climax. Some arguments rightly say that Ratzi's overlooked the Church's own fallible history of violence, which others responded to rightly pointing out that the CC delicately enough always inflicted violence through the State never through own hands. The clarification ofcourse being: this is about a religion's doctrinal stand on 'propogating religion through violence' and not ground truth which may have been a regretted failing.

However, this confrontation is not between equals but 2 very different creatures because Islam is decentred, and however mythical, the CC can put a pagentry of one centre, one voice. But for anyone to issue an apology after expressing studied statements, is a failure. The contest here is really between rational discourse and reflexive protest/violence(objectivity vs. the positins that offer a characterization of objectivism). And only because violence holds the threat of death, violence is the possibility of death of discourse.

I only wonder that one can more easily accept lesssons learnt within one's 'civilization', than those by others. Who defines civilizations? History? Should I have the right to repeat the horrors of history because it was never part of my past? She-did-it,-so-i-can- do-it-too? Should there be a lenience for this complex.
Or is the resolution: All history IS civilization ?

***
What would Oriana Fallaci have had to say? The kind of woman who caught my eye, I regret I didn't get down to write about her when I meant to. There was nothing elegant about this lady. This is a woman who asked Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, “How do you swim in a chador?” His reply was that she was not obliged to wear one, because it was a garment for proper Islamic women. She tore off her chador, and Ayatollah Khomeini stalked off.
posted by Finny Forever at 12:53 AM 0 comments

Friday, September 15, 2006

Bad Poetry



They came together in an apartment
and found they all contempted sf.
and laughed their balls out
at a satire on the very thing.
Brazil. "The kind of thing I would make",
they spluttered over milk.
Later that night they knocked about.
And at least one climaxed.
posted by Finny Forever at 10:24 AM 0 comments

Thursday, September 14, 2006

posted by Finny Forever at 8:23 PM 0 comments

Sunday, September 10, 2006


Then there are those who are perfectly comfortable being their plain selves all the time in everything they do and everywhere they go. These are the greats and sometimes we never hear of them. 2 entries in Rajesh's blog, profile 2 such men who were also masters of their craft. I know they're both malayalee, but maybe it's for that reason, their modesty and simplicity touches me more deeply. John Abraham: "one of the major avant-garde directors in Malayalam cinema." and Kunhunni maash: Malayalam scholar and poet
***
Just found out John Abraham is from the same town as both my folks: Changanacherry. I feel like saying what he said when he visited the Vatican, replacing the adj with Changanacherrian. Below is a brief one of his films.
***
Donkey in the Brahmin ghetto (1977)
Agraharathil Kazhuthai

"John's second film, Agraharathil Kazhuthai made in Tamil, is a hard hitting satire on the brahminical bigotry and superstition, where a donkey becomes the central character.
A donkey strays into a village dominated by Brahmins. Prof Narayana Swamy decides to keep it at his house. The entire village turns against the donkey[for an incident] and the donkey is blamed and is killed. After the death of the donkey some miracles start happening in the village. The film won a National award but DD was forced to cancel a scheduled TV screening and the Tamil press ignored the film"
posted by Finny Forever at 1:22 PM 0 comments

Saturday, September 09, 2006

MUSIC MINUS MEMORY”: POPULAR MUSIC, CLASSICAL MUSIC AND MEMORY IN MILAN KUNDERA by Tekla Babyak.
Sent this to Viji after talk; who wouldn't be compelled by this engaging study?
posted by Finny Forever at 12:50 AM 0 comments

Thursday, September 07, 2006


Before and again i've been asked: why architecture? (why design?) and most of the time i cannot launch into the spectrum. But right now, here's the answer: it's the world. Structures dont stop at serving their purpose. They're letting on a world of aspects: the entity who commisioned it, the personality who designed it, the ethic(s) of the workers who realized it - unitarian?disparate? finally overcome by the mission?, their languages, their songs, the history they were born in, the culture they shared or didn't with those for whom the structures were created, the class divisions, who it inconvenienced, who it pleased, the materials used - were they from the area, impact on surroundings, how the materials weathered, how it responded to the sun and wind and elements soon after, how they appeared later, disaster contingent foresight, the detail and finishing, internally and externally, the living things and light and air admitted, excluded, tamed; if it harmonized or redefined at the line of vision, public or private, the imitation, originality, the recognition of the local, the disregard, the courage to pay obeisance to no culture but think newly appropriately, inappropriately? And for me above all the impression and at what removal it changes. Passionate, inventive, exotic, magnificent, assured, harmonic, euphoric, exulting, masterful, muscular, tame, daunting, frivolous, unconvincing, playful, flamboyant, thrilling.

This could go on for a long page that touches everything there is we know and are still finding out about as scientific humans. My architecture companion I blew my careful savings on is giving me great pleasure. But one of the featured modern works that caught my attention is the J M Tjibaou Cultural Centre, New Caledonia. By Renzo Piano. It gets mentioned twice, but not at much length. Meanwhile, take a better look at it. It's a celebrated example of what's called abstract vernacular architecture. Using slats (of local iroko wood) that respond to winds to ventilate the interiors, Piano was inspired by the local Kanak huts. Mike Austin has made some interesting points.
posted by Finny Forever at 11:24 PM 0 comments

posted by Finny Forever at 3:48 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 06, 2006


12-year Usi looked between the curtains.
Usi had her eye on the woman in brown, dressed neither here nor there. She saw the woman had deliberately pushed down the neck of her stiff salwar to flash a bit of chest. Fat, milky white cleavage, they didn't spill, they surged. Because they were as firm as elephants. How many men could she hold between them? The woman sat with her incongruous pantomime lipstick and glimmered with intentions only she knew. Her breasts were the twin icons of the room. Each could suckle a continent. Left for Asia, Right for America. And she would never go dry. Why were the men not looking at them? Usi wondered how this woman's 'man' must box these sandbags at night. She tittered behind the curtain, binding her chest in arms to keep her own buds in check.
(pic: art by fellini again; dont mean to rip it)
posted by Finny Forever at 8:46 PM 0 comments

The Cristo Rey network (created by the Jesuits)- seems to be working well. They are supremely strict "The dress code is strict, punctuality rigorously enforced, and students who lie about being on drugs are kicked out. So are any who promote, or recruit for, gangs." . But it is city-centric and presumes a Catholic number maybe? However, it works.
The Jesuits have set up a network of schools which take students from neighbourhoods beset by gangs, drugs and crime, and give them an intensive high school education costing $10,000 (£5,300) a year.

This reminds me of the debate on Liberation Theo - very hot.
posted by Finny Forever at 8:25 AM 0 comments

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Watched V for Vendetta. V for vapid. Soulless *. Hollow. Maybe the gnovel works better. But this entirely ruined a great day. Only one thing could undo the damage: a martial arts clap. If I had it, would have watched Enter the Dragon again. Instead picked Romeo must Die. A competent cure. Jet Li just right. Aaliyah charismatic. She died in 2001. But right now I'm thinking of the electric Bruce Lee.
posted by Finny Forever at 11:01 PM 0 comments