Sea and you and me

The boat goes up, the boat goes down, it sways from side to side
'Tis the spring moon tide

Darkness comes, darkness comes, it comes from left and right,
From sea and sky and night

Feel the mist, smell the foam, taste the salty spray,
The boat shall float away

Hold on tight, hold on tight, on tightly to my hand
In distance there is sand

Close your eyes, close your eyes, i won't say a peep
Shall watch you fall asleep.

Drunkenness!

I was scouting around for a reason to justify my profligate wastes of time. I can sit around doing nothing but listening to music (sometimes 3 or 4 hrs at a stretch), play cricket with loads of stuff due the next day or watch absolutely immature TV (reruns of seinfeld included) with papers to write tomorrow. You might have heard of blackholes for matter - ever heard of such a thing for Time? You need to look no further than my laptop.

Why a reason?, you might ask. Because a sentiment well expressed cannot be denied its existence or something to that effect.. Well, whatever.

Get Drunk!

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

-- Charles Baudelaire


Okay, that was convincing enough for me. I need to take some time off to ask the clock what time it is.. :-D

YAPP - yet another political party

India boasts of as many political parties as there are deities in the Hindu pantheon. Of course, this is great for democracy, and all that - but the parties are growing at such a rate that the namespace has almost run out!!

Take a look at this political outfit.

What if the Governor invited the party to form a Union? Or if the party was unsatisfied with its election performance.? or for that matter what if the head of the party came to a meeting? What would the headlines be, then?

Any other situations come to mind?

Toon Trouble

I recently read an article (http://www.slate.com/id/2135661/) that said the issue was not about giving form to the Prophet, but about showing him in an unfavorable light. That made some sense, but then why didn't people make a big fuss outta this one? Im just curious... Maybe there isn't enough bandwidth in India to achieve critical mass for creating trouble?!

I am sure I've seen another cartoon on Ganesha with a Nuclear bomb. But then, don't you not find this funny? (The following image is by Daryl Cagle - cartoonist at cagle.slate.msn.com)

Tidal waves by throwing pebbles

In 1960, meteorologist Ed Lorenz was scratching his head over a piece of code that was definitely "buggy". When he tried to run the simulations again with the same initial conditions, to his surprise they spewed out totally different curves. Nothing like what he saw the previous day. After primping and ploughing around with his program, he found out that the only difference in code was in the level of precision he used to describe initial values. Apparently a small change in the preliminary conditions could change the results dramatically. He had stumbled into some serious stuff - the beginnings of chaos theory and chaotic systems. Since he was only a meteorologist and no condescending Caltech physicist, he came up with a moderately catchy phrase for his paper:

" One flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the
course of the weather forever".

"The Butterfly Effect" - A movie I recently watched - borrows heavily on this theme and it opened with a quote:

"the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon
halfway around the world".

[Cast: Ashton Kutcher (That 70's show), Amy Smart (Catch me if you can),..]

The typhoon causing butterflies are clearly more poetic than seagulls: butterflies flutter by from daisies to daffodils, whereas seagulls use their bowels to shoot smelly projectiles at people and statues. At this point, the movie had made me curious - an enigmatic opening statement, and the possibility of Ashton Kutcher in a serious movie. After sitting through it for about 2 hours, here's the story in a sentence: A guy visits his past to set things right, but screws up despite multiple attempts.

At the end of the movie, I believe the director wanted us to feel like Ashton Kutcher's character -- I think people would have left the movie wondering where in the story they could go back, change a bit and save the script. A good beginning, a good premise and a lot of promise. Unfortunately it did nothing more than make me write the following.

Conversation with a Killer Butterfly

I said to the bug:

Hey pretty butterfly, innocent thing
Hopping from bloom to bloom
Don't ever flap your tender wing-
You could send us all to doom!

It said:

[ why don't you speak for it? I'll put mine in some time?]

And flew away.

PhD quals!!

I am a venerated Ph.D candidate now!

When I suffered a bout of momentary despondency, I had made the following up.

A smart guy from Madras,
Went to THE univ of Texas,
To get a PhD,
But it wasn't to be -
For the Quals he did not pass.

I guess the limerick is past its expiry date.. Hoooray!

where winds talk...

Location: Guadalupe Mountains - 4:30 am, Thursday, 24th November.

I am sure u've heard the following joke on Sherlock Holmes - Mr.Holmes and Dr. Watson on a campsite, both are lying on the ground and staring upwards.
Sherlock: Watson, what do you infer from seeing all the stars in the sky?
Watson: I am not sure... Is it a rare eclipse or a comet or something?
Sherlock: No dear Watson, it is elementary - We have no tent.

That was exactly what happened. Having driven close to 10 hrs, my dear campmates let me in on a little secret. Well, it was going to become obvious anyway. We had forgotten the tent. Yes - it is possible! And to think I was ribbing that guy for forgetting his binoculars!!

I dont know how the planning happened, but it couldv'e well been along these lines:
Going camping? Yes. Coffee filters? check. Extra shoe laces? check. Nailcutters? check. Tent? Hmm... Let see.. No, but who needs a tent anyways, one can't carry everything??? Jokes aside, it turned out that way for the better - sleeping in the open chihuahuan desert was a GREAT experience. Nothing like it!

Lying on the open ground, (on sleeping bags that we had not forgotten) it was phenomenal to hear the primitive sounds of the wind. I want to say "that it was like an intimate exchange between the wind and the land that one felt almost embarrassed to be in the midst of it", but it sounds rather too cheezy.. I'll relegate the thought to the following..

Affairs of the desert
-----------------------

T'is the language of the land
And the Wind that draws its gentle hand
O'er the contours of the lass
Who wears skimpy gowns of grass

"Oohoo" says the silly breeze
And she remains a wicked tease
Their sounds of joy surround the place
I fell asleep in a happy haze

(To my excuse, I wrote this when I was really drowsy.. I am getting drowsier, so I'll add another blog on the same trip a little later...)