My life My Movie!
Hehehe
Sameer got me doing this pretty good TP kinda test on who's gonna do my film ... seems my life is gonna be a slapstick comedy where i might end up dating a bill cosby or maybe even robbie williams dad! *gulp* a senile desperate humour substituting frustoo!!
he's luckier getting sofia coppola to direct his *sniff*
HAHAHAHAAA!
Richard Linklater
Your film will be 57% romantic, 60% comedy, 38% complex plot, and a $ 33 million budget. |
| Filmography: Slackers, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, School of Rock, The Bad News Bears (2005), Dazed and Confused. Very romantic, very funny, very complex, and under-budget. Be prepared to have your whole life take place in Austin, Texas and to have a lot of great dialogue with pithy observations. Hehe ... Dazed and Confused ... yeah, MAN! |
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another one of those early morn posts
(STATUTORY WARNING - This article contains extremely extremist insanely insidious rabidly radical diabolically demented naturally nonsensical positively preposterous yet true tomfoolery! It's upto your discretion to read it)
Off late, me and many of my women pals have had conversations on that three letter world. All of us have been talking bigtime on the word, the relevance of the existence of that word, the disparities caused by that word and the consequences of having that around. Mmhmm any guesses yet, well let me not be an annoying fucktard and just go ahead by telling you that the word is indeed MEN!
Yes, MEN! Those so called simple beings as compared to us "complicated" ones. How untrue is all I say! As politically incorrect as I may sound, I'd definitely say (most) men are tougher to understand than the very stereotypical assumption of complicated women. Men I would go on further say (at the risk of being stoned) are more moody than a menopausal woman.
Men today I'd say are definitely far away from the classical notion of being only macho and chivalrous, with that sturdy thick skinned stone like outlook. With ideas like metrosexuality creeping into the open space, men today come with a lot of strings attached. Extremely sensitive, overtly parasitic, commitment-oriented, emotionally distraught, compulsively obsessive manic depressive beings, these men are!
Where is that creature that was that goofy shoulder punching moron that used to be? Where did that partner in all those innocent little crimes disappear? Where is that little nuisance that used to challenge on small dares claiming supremacy? Where is that Calvin-ish other-worldly clown? Okay, that is quite a lot of questions I presume, but could anyone give me an answer.
Yet men, probably God's greatest challenge after a dyslexic crossword puzzle, are such an integral part of our lives, where we have to resign to that cliche "men - can't live with them, can't live without them." All I could do is to wish for eternal childhood! Growing up... you don't want me to get started on that do you?!
Sweet children alright!
At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynist, and violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit, "Sweet Child o' Mine," showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city. Meanwhile, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler were a limber rhythm section who kept the music loose and powerful.
Guns N' Roses' music was basic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty, and honest — everything that good hard rock and heavy metal should be. There was something refreshing about a band who could provoke everything from devotion to hatred, especially since both sides were equally right. There hadn't been a hard rock band this raw or talented in years, and they were given added weight by Axl Rose's primal rage, the sound of confused, frustrated white trash vying for his piece of the pie. As the '80s became the '90s, there simply wasn't a more interesting band around, but owing to intra-band friction and the emergence of alternative rock, Rose's supporting cast gradually disintegrated, as he spent several years in seclusion.
Guns N' Roses released their first EP in 1986, which led to a contract with Geffen; the following year, the band released their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. They started to build a following with their numerous live shows, but the album didn't start selling until almost a year later, when MTV started playing "Sweet Child o' Mine." Soon, both the album and single shot to number one, and Guns N' Roses became one of the biggest bands in the world. Their debut single, "Welcome to the Jungle," was re-released and shot into the Top Ten, and "Paradise City" followed in its footsteps. By the end of 1988, they released G N' R Lies, which paired four new, acoustic-based songs (including the Top Five hit "Patience") with their first EP. G N' R Lies' inflammatory closer, "One in a Million," sparked intense controversy, as Axl Rose slipped into misogyny, bigotry, and pure violence; essentially, he somehow managed to distill every form of prejudice and hatred into one five-minute tune.
Guns N' Roses began work on the long-awaited follow-up to Appetite for Destruction at the end of 1990. In October of that year, the band fired Adler, claiming that his drug dependency caused him to play poorly; he was replaced by Matt Sorum from the Cult. During recording, the band added Dizzy Reed on keyboards. By the time the sessions were finished, the new album had become two new albums. After being delayed for nearly a year, the albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II were released in September 1991. Messy but fascinating, the albums showcased a more ambitious band; while there were still a fair number of full-throttle guitar rockers, there were stabs at Elton John-style balladry, acoustic blues, horn sections, female backup singers, ten-minute art rock epics with several different sections, and a good number of introspective, soul-searching lyrics. In short, they were now making art; amazingly, they were successful at it. The albums sold very well initially, but while they had seemed destined to set the pace for the decade to come, that turned out not to be the case at all.
Nirvana's Nevermind hit number one in early 1992, suddenly making Guns N' Roses — with all of their pretensions, impressionistic videos, models, and rock star excesses — seem very uncool. Rose handled the change by becoming a dictator, or at least a petty tyrant; his in-concert temper tantrums became legendary, even going so far as to incite a riot in Toronto. Stradlin left by the end of 1991, and with his departure the band lost their best songwriter; he was replaced by ex-Kill for Thrills guitarist Gilby Clarke. The band didn't fully grasp the shift in hard rock until 1993, when they released an album of punk covers, The Spaghetti Incident?; it received some good reviews, but the band failed to capture the reckless spirit of not only the original versions, but their own Appetite for Destruction.
By the middle of 1994, there were rumors flying that the band was about to break up, since Rose wanted to pursue a new, more industrial direction and Slash wanted to stick with their blues-inflected hard rock. The band remained in limbo for several more years, and Slash resurfaced in 1995 with the side project Slash's Snakepit and an LP, It's Five O'Clock Somewhere. Rose remained out of the spotlight, becoming a virtual recluse and doing nothing but tinkering in the studio; he also recruited various musicians — including Dave Navarro, Tommy Stinson, and ex-Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck — for informal jam sessions.
By 1996 Slash was officially out of Guns N' Roses, leaving Rose the lone remaining survivor from the group's heyday; rumors continued to swirl, and still no new material was forthcoming, though Rose did re-record Appetite for Destruction with a new lineup for rehearsal purposes. The first new original G N' R song in eight years, the industrial metal sludge of "Oh My God" finally appeared on the soundtrack to the 1999 Arnold Schwarzenegger film End of Days. Soon after, Geffen issued the two-disc Live Era 1987-1993. 2000 brought the addition of guitarists Robin Finck (of Nine Inch Nails) and Buckethead.
2001 was greeted with Guns N' Roses' first live dates in nearly seven years, as the band (who consisted of Rose plus guitarists Finck, Buckethead, bassist Stinson, former Primus drummer Brian Mantia, and longtime G N' R keyboardist Dizzy Reed) played a show on New Years Eve 2000 in Las Vegas, playing as well at the mammoth Rock in Rio festival the following month. — Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Greg Prato
Discography
1986 Live! Like a Suicide
1987 Appetite for Destruction [Edited]1
987 Appetite for Destruction
1988 The Lies, the Sex, the Violence
1989 G N' R Lies
1991 Use Your Illusion I
1991 Use Your Illusion II
1992 Use Your Illusion I [Bonus CD]
1993 The Spaghetti Incident?
Of rural welfare and simplistic living
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or popularly Mahatma Gandhi, is known to the world as a renowned pacifist and a very effective politician. But, little does the world know what a remarkable economist he was, probably one of the most sensible economist of the 20th century.
In this world, where people look for alternatives and substitutes in the ways of the functioning of the economic systems, form the flaw-filled socialist and capitalist systems, Gandhian economic theory is a very welcome and suitable substitute. While Gandhi did not apply rigorous economic theory to give structure to his thought, he formulated very clearly the basic principles. Gandhi's basic advice was "don't rush into technologically oriented development; first make sure what impact it will have on employment and through this on the well-being of the poor people." This principle completely stands as a juxtaposition of the usual assumption of capitalist economics, namely that the primary aim is to maximize the efficiency of the production of goods, almost regardless of whether the goods produced are basic necessities for the poor or luxury goods for the rich.
The basic principle of Stalinist and the socialist economics was to maximize the production of capital goods, such as heavy machinery, so that future generations could enjoy a plenitude of consumer goods. Both capitalist and socialist economies were based on technology-intensive rather than labor-intensive production. Gandhian economics reverses this preference. (Incidentally, if looked into in a totalitarian manner, technology also tends to increase environmental damage.)
The basic aim of Gandhian economics is to provide full employment for the poor, and also for all potential members of the work force, so that these workers can provide for their own necessities by their own efforts, in dignity, without depending on charity. Gandhi was not opposed to technology, but advocated a proper mix (depending on prevailing conditions) of technology-intensive and labor-intensive production. According to him, the economist's task should be to determine what the proper mix is; econometric calculations based on existing facts can help determine this. In short, the amount of available resources for investment must keep pace with the population increase of employable workers. This is the basic principle, on which the economist must base his/her other recommendations, e.g. how much external trade the country should engage in.
Capitalist economics does not care about the fate of the unemployed. This is because they cannot buy the luxury goods being produced anyway. If there are not enough people buying the luxury goods, which could happen if too many are poor, like for example the case of developing countries which blindly follow the economic systems of the developed western countries, leaders of capitalist businesses mask their luxury goods with the help of expensive and wasteful advertising campaigns as goods of basic necessity and hence try and mislead the people. Many, especially in experienced young people, fall for this, and get themselves deeply into debt. This also applies to countries, which acquire debts so horrendous that they can never hope to repay them, and bankrupt themselves just keeping up with interest payments.
In the case of the socialist economy, there seems to be an underplaying of the production of the consumer goods, because there exists a very deep emphasis on the large-scale production of goods, rather than looking at the exact necessity of the consumers. Thus comes in mismanagement and inefficiency in the production of the goods in large-scale. This is very much visible in the public sector units of developing economies like India, where there seems to be a lapse between the estimate and the actual during the production.
While capitalism leads to very skewed distribution of goods and services (some get too much and most get too little), and real-existing socialism tends to under-produce consumer goods because of the inefficiency of large-scale planning and the postponement of consumer goods production, Gandhian economics would strive for income and wealth equalization by providing productive meaningful work for every one, even if the full use of the latest industrial technology is provisionally postponed. This leads one to rationally question when taking the entire population in mind, ‘after all, what is the benefit of being on the cutting edge of technology if it increases human misery?’
Under Gandhian economics, fewer luxury goods would be produced, because the emphasis here would lie primarily on producing enough basic necessities for everyone rather than looking ahead futuristically or looking at enhancement of the goods that one already has. This would simplify life styles, which could be of benefit in causing people to focus on the real values that produce happiness, such as family solidarity, devotion to the arts and sciences, and spiritual pursuits. Gandhi defined "happiness" as the ratio between want satisfaction and the number of wants. We only increase this ratio (and therefore lessen our happiness) by increasing want satisfaction (as we are doing under capitalism).
This kind of simplistic living was what Gandhi propounded in his simple theory of economics, which though being simple, proposes to bring in much more social mobility and justice than the most complex ones, say Gandhian economists who have been studying it closely.
They opine that if this kind of a theorizing is put into implementation to a predominantly rural economy like India, there definitely will be visible a greater rate of progress in the economy.
kirkit fever!
with the ashes takin' center stage... i couldn't but help look into some old writings of mine that used to be bigtime musings!
diggin' them out ... i publish them here :) (pray don't laugh!!)
Women and cricket! (my erstwhile colum lol! this was the first write up)
Why the differenceThrough my life, being from a country like India where cricket is celebrated as a religion, and from a home where cricket is an in-built passion, I’ve been a cricket aficionado, if I could call myself that. With watching all the important matches that have been played in my lifetime till now, and keeping myself updated with most of the facts that i could gather, I’ve kept up my bit of being loyal to this interest of mine. Being a quizzer through my school and college life, I’ve taken part in various sports quizzes where it came first to my notice of how I used to get a raised eyebrow when it used to come to me winning and speaking, because of my being a ‘girl’.
This led to me questioning whether it really is very ‘un-girlly’ if I could call it so, because of my interest in sports and games more than the commonly regarded hobbies for girls. But, I do not know whether it was I, or just a casual growing-up attitude that made me not look at this as a big deal.
Whatever this case was, I did not give it its trifles worth and just carried on with this interest of mine in life. It was later this interest in the sports which introduced me to the cricket room in yahoo chat, which brought me close to many individuals, including girls who did share a similar passion like mine to the sport. So this room became a getaway of sorts to me where I could speak with people who liked cricket and also getting to know more about their other interests as well.
Here I met people, who led me on to different sites online that gave more info on the sport, which was ‘neat’, as I say casually. And here again I countered a raised eye-brow many a times among the guys especially, who would give a second thought especially that of a condescending look as if I had invaded their private sphere of sorts. A sceptical, yet sincere question would always be that of what exactly are you doing in this room, are you interested in friendship because I know a girl cant like cricket. Which is according to me, valid because of the stereotyping of the so-called appropriateness of choosing interests and hobbies according to your gender. Also another common fallacy taken is that of the girls showing interest in cricket only because of them finding a particular cricketer hot. I do not deny that there is fondness or attraction by the part of women to good-looking cricketers. But hey, that’s human, and we can’t deny our human senses can we. (Haha!)
When in one of the trivia’s set up by my friend ‘exclusively for girls’ I scored 8 on 8, he exclaimed that you are different, usually girls don’t do well. I question, is this inborn premise that girls are supposed to be genetically dumb in their knowledge and interests towards cricket and other sports valid? How much of this suppositioning can be questioned as arrogance? Is this arrogance valid as our social trends are supposed to be in this way where we women are to show no interests in sports and even if we do have interests, they should not be stated openly? Why is this so-called difference in interests supposed to be blindly followed even today as we have entered a new millenium?
Simple complications :)
bah! identifyin to lyrics, even the most soppy ones, we all do! time and again...
once again bah! one of those times
Used to be so easy to give my heart away.
But I found out the hard way,
there's a price you have to pay.
I found out that love was no friend of mine.
I should have known time after time.
So long, it was so long ago,
but I've still got the blues for you.Used to be so easy to fall in love again.
But I found out the hard way,
it's a road that leads to pain.
I found that love was more than just a game.
You're playin' to win, but you lose just the same.
So long, it was so long ago,
but I've still got the blues for you.So many years since I've seen your face.
Here in my heart, there's an empty space
where you used to be.
So long, it was so long ago,
but I've still got the blues for you.Though the days come and go,
there is one thing I know.
I've still got the blues for you.
of kumbh mela in an auto rickshaw
mmm last night... probably the most hilarious incident i've had since quite a while beckoned me!
ammo and me meet up at bangalore central where we pick up groceries et al for ammo's place and reach baybee's aapis right in time for his deadline of 7:30, when he was to come down and join us to ammo's place...
out on residency rd, we end up getting 'rejected' by every rickshaw driver...
finally this good samaritan accepts to take us to ammo's place in cox town, but for 10 bucks extra on the meter... exhausted us, especially post the rejections, accept readily! mmm little did we know that this was the beginnin' of a whole lotta revelations
this old gentleman suddenly takes us all by surprise when he questions ammo and baybee, if i am their daughter! haha! well knowing cox town was a long way away, we decided to play on... and they said yes! this is where he began his talks of worldly experience...
firstly, he says we are a very happy family and should stay this way, but the kid is 'happier' and needs to have 4 spoons of honey as well as hot water every morn! to this i with a sullen face replied to auto driver grandpa, how can i dream of having all that when mommy and dada just indulge in callin each other honey all thru the day...
exit advice master enter now worldly wise amitabh bachchan wannabe auto driver grandpa
he says "bill gates, osama bin laden and sultan of brunei, all of them have a lotta money and come to us and say we'll give you all the money provided we give them 3 things. what are they?"
stumped all three of us don't answer and insist he answers, partly cuz his talkin was a whole lotta entertainment. after a lot a banter, where he says i answered a lot right and momma and dada fought over my intelligence being from either ones, we insisted he give us the answers. so mr. smart alec says they are time, experience and parents.
finally we get off the rickshaw, ammo all embarrassed, baybee bemused and me completely bawling with laughter (right usage?)
an interestingly hilarious experience, but it did make me ponder at the poor man's innocence. he actually meant a lot of sense, and the three things that he wanted, though seem all selfless and intelligent choices, are words from a naive mind. naive and untouched form the rat race, this driver seemed so childlike!
all in all another one of those "think-hard-about-life-before-life-leaves-you-with-nothing-to-think-about' moments...
making sense...
Like every organizational head sends out inspirational write-ups and encouraging insights, the head of the organization I work for also decided to send across a mailer with similar stuff. At the face value, it seemed verry pseudo to receive such a mailer, but the moment i started reading, it made so much sense, and I definitely found it very helpful.
His words of wisdom and experience, like any man of his stature and status, came with a lot of weight, which wasn't that hard to digest eventually.
I do not know if I am breaking copyrights etc, but I thought i should share his words with the junta who frequent my blog :)
So here goes
...The first thing I have learnt is that we must always begin with our strengths. From the earliest years of our schooling, everyone focuses on what is wrong with us. While it is important for us to know what we are not good at, we must also cherish what is good in us. That is because it is only our strengths that can give us the energy to correct our weaknesses.
The second lesson I have learnt is that a rupee earned is of far more value than five found. I have found that nothing gives as much satisfaction as earning our rewards. In fact, what is gifted or inherited follows the old rule of come easy, go easy. I guess we only know the value of what we have if we have struggled to earn it.
The third lesson I have learnt is no one bats a hundred every time. Life has many challenges. We win some and lose some. We must enjoy winning but not let success go to our head. If we do, we are already on our way to failure. We also need to treat any failure we meet along the way as an equally natural phenomenon. We need to accept our own share in the problem, learn from it and move on. The important thing is, when we lose, we must not lose the lesson.
The fourth lesson I have learnt is the importance of humility. Sometimes, when we get so much in life, we really start wondering whether we deserve all of it. This is the value of gratitude.
The fifth lesson I learnt is that we must always strive for excellence. One way of achieving excellence is by looking at those better than ourselves. We must never let ego prevent us from learning what others do differently. But excellence cannot be imposed from the outside. It must become an obsession, involving not only our mind but also our heart and soul. Excellence is not an act but a habit. Ultimately, our only competition is our self.
The sixth lesson I have learnt is never give up in the face of adversity. I am sure you would know more about this than anyone else. Persistence is what is required to keep going. Once you have made up your mind that you will work towards your target, your vision, the adversity just crumbles.
The seventh lesson I have learnt is that while we must be open to change, we cannot compromise on our values. Mahatma Gandhiji often said that you must open the windows of your mind, but do not be swept off your feet by the breeze. We must define what our core values are and what we stand for.
The eighth lesson I have learnt is that we must always play to win. Playing to win is not the same as playing dirty. Playing to win is stretching ourselves and others to the hilt. It is about discovering our own potential and using it to the fullest....Do let me know your reactions :)
