Sempre im Excretum Altum

Marks dead...

2010-04-13T13:14:00.002+05:30

Take a bow, whoever came up with this headline.

Why Doesn’t The Indian Media Blog More?

2009-10-24T02:17:00.004+05:30

If you live in India and have been using the internet since we had access to it (circa the 90’s), blogs and blogging might seem like old hat! Experimenting with blogspot or wordpress, you must have, at some point, spilled your guts to an indifferent blogosphere, the details of a failed romance or inflicted your friends with fiendish poetry. But seeing how popular blogs are as a means of communicating news and views, it’s funny to see how the Indian media hasn’t quite taken to it.

Every newspaper in India has probably seen the success of the NY Times’ blog site. From the The Lede, ArtsBeat and At War, the blogs are rich and diverse in content; frequently updated, with a lot of events being live-blogged. The blogs generate massive page views and feedback for the site.

Thanks to the Times’ online success, India’s largest newspapers and TV channels now have a prominent “Blogs” section on their websites: The Times of India (TOI), Hindustan Times, CNN IBN,Mint, DNA and NDTV all have their “bloggers.”

However, except for the blogs at Times Of India and Mint, the story seems the same everywhere: blog sections are started with great fanfare; lots of noise is made about how that particular channel/newspaper is “connecting with the youth” and the phrase “web 2.0” is tossed around. But, within a few months, all is forgotten.

For example, on the Hindustan Times’ blogs page, everyone seems to be posting exactly once a week. Coincidence? Most definitely not: some poor intern down the line must’ve been assigned the task of putting up their weekly op-ed for print, onto the blog. How does that even qualify as blogging?

CNN IBN is pretty much the same story: opinion pieces written for print are picked up and put on the blogs page, and that too quite irregularly.

TOI.com and Mint’s blog sites have some excellent and rich opinion pieces – but still lack the live updation and frequency that might draw television news viewers to news sites on the internet.

Compare this to the NY Times’ blog page: daily multiple updates on virtually every blog, and very different content from what is seen in print. In fact, it’s easy to spend hours a day just reading updates to the blogs.

Even Time magazine is known for its rich online-only content: The Page and Swampland are two of the best sources of information on the white house.

It is time that Indian media empires understand that the internet is not a broadcast medium like television or print, but an excellent means of offering more value and interacting with readers.

Disclaimer: I used to work for The Times of India.

Cross-posted at http://indiejourno.com/2009/10/23/why-doesnt-the-india-media-blog-more/

Jingo lo Blah

2009-10-21T08:39:00.005+05:30

So this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded “for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level.” Excellent, India’s newspapers say, and carry on with more pressing issues, like asking their readers who the hottest Bollywood Bombshell is – and life goes on as normal.

Except no – the wires mention three recipients of the award (the Nobel, not the Bombshell), and one of them happens to have a distinctly South-Indian name! Suddenly, reporters from the length and breadth of the country who, till October 6, could probably not have told us the full-form of DNA, are talking about how an Indian has changed the face of chemistry. Personality analyses are carried out, old acquaintances are dug up and inter-state comparisons are done to track which state has given us our most luminous.

Never mind the fact that our friendly neighbourhood professor left our neighbourhood 38 years ago, is currently a US citizen, and lives in Cambridge, England. “So what”, our editors tell us, “He has not forgotten his roots – he visited Madras in 2002 and delivered an excellent slide presentation”!

The fact remains that jingoism sells – specially when it comes in the form of foreign acceptance of anything even remotely connected to India. Our news media, apparently mirroring what the famed “common man” thinks, derides anything that presents India to foreigners as being anything but a land of perfect happiness, warm and friendly people and of course elephants and palaces. “Poverty porn at its worst” and “Defaming Hindus”– remember Slumdog Millionaire? In an ironic twist worthy of the “It happens only in India” motif, we shower the movie with laurels exactly a month later, when it wins multiple Oscars – because we then see it as foreign acceptance of India having “arrived” on the international stage. What happens next? Our single-largest national political party buys the rights to use the movie’s title track in their general election campaign!

So what’s wrong with whipping up a little patriotic fervor? Actually, quite a bit. Feel-good stories about the Nobel Laureate’s college days in Baroda 40 years ago only serve to distract from the fact that the best bet for an Indian to get close to a Nobel is to head for foreign shores early in his/her career. A lead story on how a Facebook app is “offending” India by not featuring the Indian flag – the day Naxals gun down 17 policemen in a brazen attack – grabs attention from the fact that our chief ministers are utterly clueless on how to prevent this senseless loss of human life. "We will do whatever is required", indeed. We could do well to listen to the Laureate himself: “Science is done for the pursuit of knowledge. It is not done to represent your national team. It has no national boundaries whatsoever....Science is a great international mixer, so the idea that it is a sort of cricket match where our team won — that simply is a wrong way of looking at scientific discovery.” Till we are all as enlightened, let’s hope Jennifer Aniston’s Indian connection keeps us entertained.

Cross-posted at http://indiejourno.com/2009/10/20/indian-like-you/

Mobigloat period...

2009-07-09T21:55:00.001+05:30

...The amount of time people keep the "Sent from my iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia Phone" email signature, before removing it for good.

Why are our Cricketers exhausted?

2009-06-18T16:31:00.002+05:30

Exhaustion is being cited as the main reason for the Indian team's abysmal show at the World Cup. Personally, I'm not much of a cricket fan, so the loss didn't bother me that much - in fact, seeing how we were playing against England, we most definitely did not deserve to win that match.

But why exhaustion? How much cricket are these guys playing - about 5 or 6 matches in the World Cup, and before that, in April/May, about 12-15 matches. So that's 20 matches (of 4 hours each) over 3 months. Even given that each match is a highly physically taxing exercise, and there's net practice daily for a few hours, why is everyone that tired? Don't people work 60-70-80 hour weeks continuously for much less money/travel/comfort/fame/glamour?

To quote a blogpost from my ex-employer, The Times of India, "After six gruelling weeks, the IPL ended on May 24 in South Africa. Within a week, the team was playing practice games in London. Which is why the team looked jaded." Well, most people I know work 5-6 months straight before they can take a week off, and it's considered to be a decent break. Why is it so less for our exalted cricket team?

Other reports say that the team, after playing so much cricket continuously, had lost the will to win. Oh please. Pace bowlers citing physical exhaustion is one thing, but players saying "Sorry, playing for our country, earning all this money, getting all this exposure, traveling to all these places and staying at the best of hotels is not enough to make our job interesting. Please do something to spice it up a bit" is a bit much, isn't it? Why do we feel the need to blame extraneous factors for the team's lack of motivation? I can't ever recall a time when I was able to quote "Lack of sufficient motivation" as a reason for screwing up at work!

Once again - this is not a rant about the team's dismal performance at the World Cup. I haven't heard anyone in the team give this reason as an excuse for their failure. (Though obviously they wouldn't - they can't afford to be seen as critical of the IPL - but that's another story). This is merely befuddlement at all the people citing fatigue as the main reason for our exit!

The New Ten: Louder.

2009-04-15T22:51:00.002+05:30

Pearl Jam's highly awaited reissue of Ten is out. And I have to say...I was hoping for better.

The album mostly seems like Brendan O'Brien (the producer - though maybe the sound engineer is a more likely culprit) just boosted the master volume by compressing the audio, then boosted Vedder's vocals to make them stand out a bit more, and a slight increase in McCreedy's guitar - and that's it.

To quote Wikipedia:

The loudness war (or loudness race) is the music industry's tendency to record, produce, and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness to attempt to create a sound that stands out from others.

This phenomenon can be observed in many areas of the music industry, particularly broadcasting and albums released on CD and DVD. In the case of CDs, the war stems from artists' and producers' desires to create CDs that sound as loud as possible, or louder than CDs from competing artists or recording labels.^[2]

However, as the maximum amplitude of a CD is at a fixed level, once that level has been reached, the overall loudness can only be increased by a combination ofdynamic range compression and make-up gain. This is done by applying an increasingly high ratio of compression to the dynamic range of the recording and then increasing the gain of the recording until the peaks have reached maximum. Certain extreme uses of dynamic range compression can introduce distortion or clipping to the waveform of the recording.

Seems like Pearl Jam's the latest to follow suit. Pity.

New use for refrigerators...

2009-03-26T09:25:00.002+05:30

...as a unit of measurement.

Update: Everyone's doing it now. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289961,00.html

Paul McCartney's Dance Tonight

2009-03-06T23:42:00.002+05:30

Such a brilliant song...and mostly just a mandolin and a simple beat.

Wish I could compose like this.

The best Road Sign ever.

2008-11-19T19:04:00.002+05:30

Spotted in Sikkim.

Tip for McCain: How to become an expert on the economy

2008-09-25T18:59:00.000+05:30

Quite simple, really: he should just buy a house next to Wall Street!

See? And I won't even charge as much as Steve Schmidt.

We also work at Night

2008-06-29T19:13:00.006+05:30

Has anyone noticed the "Advocate" sticker on way too many cars in Delhi - possibly the one sticker more abused than even the "Press" sticker?

Well, it looks something like this:
Now apparently this is supposed to signify the robes that lawyers wear..but am I the only one that thinks that the logo looks like, um, pajamas hanging out to dry in the moonlight?

Don't answer that; it's rhetorical.

Atlas Shrugged...for real?

2008-05-08T00:01:00.002+05:30

Check out Paulville.org - a community of Ron Paul supporters that aims to set up co-operatives full of libertarians:

"The process is forming a co-op of people buying shares in the community and these people would be granted land use at a minimum of 1 acre per share, for as long as they homesteaded the land. The community would be privately held by the co-op to establish private property for the general community thus preserving the community is 100% freedom and liberty lovers. The community votes on all community efforts, such as utilities etc. However no one is forced to consume these utilities and or pay for them, AKA people can be off grid on their share of land. This is in line with the ideals that you're free to live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for other people's life styles you may not agree with."

Somehow I doubt the idea will last very long...but a worthy experiment indeed!

"If you can't control your things, then pls close your eyes"

2008-05-04T21:35:00.001+05:30

The comments here ... are priceless.

Well, comments on Rediff forums are always good, but Mallika Sherawat seems to bring out the best in everyone. True princess, she is.

Bharat Nirman...and IPL?

2008-05-04T21:25:00.002+05:30

Why is the Bharat Nirman Yojna being advertised so heavily on the IPL matches?

This is valuable taxpayer money. I work very hard (you at the back...stop snickering!) to earn this money. So, I'm sure, do you. This is not to doubt the relevance or progress of Bharat Nirman - but why does my money need to be spent on some very expensive advertising on television to tell people the benefits of the scheme? Why not just spend the money on the infrastructure building? What am I, as a citizen, gaining from this advertising? If the scheme leads to more jobs and better roads, isn't that great advertising in itself?

What is anyone (besides the Congress) gaining from this advertising? In which case, the cost of these ads should be borne not by the DAVP - but by the Congress. A simple as that.

Ban the Drug Ban.

2008-03-14T13:28:00.004+05:30

First, read Jug Suraiya’s excellent article on the perils of the drug ban.

Then, read the comments following the article, most of which look like this:

"Stupidest argument I have ever seen in newspapers. Legalising drugs means preventing some deaths of hedonistic souls who defy all bans and take huge risks when they buy drugs, just for their highs. Legalising would mean adding millions into their category."

The comments posted here actually show that if you keep repeating something, even without presenting the reasons behind it, people will eventually start believing it. We seem to be going into a cycle here - half the junta believes that drugs are illegal because they are bad, and the other half believes that drugs must be bad, because they are illegal - otherwise why would they be? Circular reasoning, if ever I saw it.

Firstly, as Jug says, it's been proven often enough that most forms of dope have fewer "bad" effects on the body than do alcohol and nicotine. Secondly - I'm an adult, fully able to realise that what I'm about to have next isn't exactly the best thing for my health, but that's MY decision to make, not the government's. Too much chocolate is bad for you. Why don't we make the government ban that too?

When will people lose this useless patronising attitude (We must think of the poor, backward masses and the children who might fall prey to drugs!!! They obviously can’t make up their own minds for themselves!! They fall prey to the Eeevul Guys!! We must make up their minds for them!!! OMG Think of the children!!!!) and realize that the government can never make a better decision for us than we ourselves can?

If I don’t want to dope, that’s my decision. If I do want to dope, that’s also my decision - you shouldn’t be bothered by it. If I dope, lose my senses and go out and kill someone, jail me for murder, not for doping.

Disclaimer: I work for the newspaper that I just quoted. These views are my own.

Smo-o-o-o-o-ke on the Waaahhterrr...

2008-01-29T11:13:00.000+05:30

I can't even begin to describe how much this video rocks.

Rather insightful comment.

2008-01-28T09:58:00.000+05:30

From http://qdb.us/111830 :

'What annoys me a lot is idiot media crying "oil price up!! 80 dollars now!" instead of "dollar down! 1/80th barrel now!"'

Insightful.

So who says TV doesn't give you intelligent Insights?

2008-01-19T16:34:00.000+05:30

Just saw this on Most Funny Pictures:

Shruti says they should've considered the other options too...and I agree...the next headline could just as well be:
"This just in: Osama Bin Laden is now a zombie in Wisconsin. If spotted, you must pop his head with a fire extinguisher"

Scary Thought: Marilyn Manson, without make-up, looks just like...

2007-11-04T00:44:00.000+05:30

...Marilyn Manson!!

Yikes!!

(From a most interesting Rolling Stone series on musician mug shots at http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/17061977/face_the_music_rock_star_mug_shot/1 )

How NOT to Manage an Event: Filmy / Synergy / Bollywood ka Boss

2007-10-23T02:31:00.000+05:30

Win 50 Lakhs, they said. A show to be anchored by Boman Irani, they said. Produced by Synergy, to be aired on Filmy – well, I had reasonable expectations from the event when they sent me an SMS saying I’ve been shortlisted for the written test of this new Bollywood-based quiz show on Filmy, Bollywood ka Boss (I was shortlisted on the basis of a short-ish SMS quiz).

“Congrats! Your roll number is xxxxxx. Please turn up at Siri Fort Auditorium at 5 PM on Monday, 22^nd October”. Well, I reached at 5 sharp – to find a massive queue of god-knows-how-many people outside Siri Fort. No problems, I thought, the gates should open soon, and got in line. Person behind me told me that the event is at *6:30 PM*, and I confidently told him that that’s not possible, they wouldn’t call us 90 minutes in advance. Must be the next batch, I thought.

Well, guess what – it was due to start at 6:30 PM. They did call us 90 minutes in advance. And it gets better – the gates didn’t open at all till 6 PM – which means that they made hundreds of people (that they had invited through an SMS, so they knew precisely the maximum number of people that could have turned up!) wait outside, without so much as a word of instruction or apology. At about 6:05 someone wakes up and goes around telling everyone that women can jump the queue and enter first.

I finally get in from the main gate by 6:15 – and the scene inside the compound is no better. Some 5-6 youngish chaps are sitting in one corner with a laptop, ostensibly to handle registrations (I wonder why…they have my mobile number, they’ve assigned me a roll number already – what more do they need to do? ) So anyways, registrations are excruciatingly slow. It’s 6:35 PM already, I’m still in line outside the building, and the people in front of the registration desk are getting so bugger-all pissed that there’s lots of shouting and cursing, people are jostling against each other, the staff is looking totally confused, and a couple of people look like they’re going to fall off the landing. The guy with the laptop now climbs onto something and holds his laptop high above his arms – I wonder what the crowd there had threatened to do to his laptop to make him do that, but a rather funny sight it was. Then another staffer picks up a laptop case and starts flailing it around- I think he was attempting to throw it across the crowd to one of his friends. And every time he would lift his arm to throw the case, the crowd below him would start shouting. Also at the same time, the extremely irate crowd has started throwing whatever they can find into the air. Plastic bags that were being distributed (to keep mobile phones in?), and even straws. I swear I am not making any of this up.

6:40 PM – I’m in front of the registration desk now, I can see inside the building, and what do I see from the distance? Another long line inside!! But what happened next totally takes the cake: All the staffers there, poor confused souls, grab their sheets and head off somewhere. Without a word of explanation. As it is, all of them looked like college kids hired for a pittance – I couldn’t spot a single senior guy handling the event, and these people definitely did not look like they worked for Filmy, or even Synergy. Even these staffers disappeared, leaving the crowd in the hands of the security guards…who were obviously clueless to begin with.

6:50 PM: What else could possibly happen to add to the chaos? At least the lights are still…uhh…wait a minute! Why’d it suddenly get so dark? The lights inside, the lights outside are working – but the lights in the foyer, where the remaining crowd is, are out. A vague attempt to disperse the crowd still left outside? Or simply some random thinking on the part of the college kids managing the event?

6:55 PM – The lights are back on. I’ve had enough though. The staffers are still missing, and no one is around to tell anyone what’s happening, or when it’ll begin. Also, given the horribly mismanaged affair so far, no ways can I trust them with handling my (sweet!) mobile phone and actually returning it to me later. Time for me to exit stage left. Filmy – where’s my refund for the cost of the SMSes I sent? Actually, chuck that. Where’s my written apology?

Update: Wow, that's the fastest I've ever gotten what I'd asked for...maybe I should've asked for a BMW:-) Filmy's responded in the first comment...Shailesh, I must admit I wasn't expecting this kind of response from the organisers! Kudos to Filmy for at least owning up to what happened...haven't seen too many big organisations that are willing to do that...I hope next time is more fun for me:)

Who/what is a Terrorist?

2007-05-31T16:02:00.000+05:30

What makes a Terrorist? What exactly is the Global War on Terror all about? Wikipedia throws up the following nugget:

"Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur in 1999 also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the "only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence""

Not very useful, is it? According to this definition, if I punch my brother in the face, I'm a terrorist. Surprising, given that this word is splattered all over our newspapers and televisions - I've always wondered what a headline like "Terrorist shot dead in Bombay" means. At what point in your life do you become a terrorist? Upon having committed the act of violence, or even when preparing for it? What if you're just a trainee? What act of violence qualifies - does it have to be a bombing? Specifically a suicide bombing? Do you have to be a Muslim bomber to be called a terrorist? If it is a shooting, what kind of gun do you have to use? An AK-47? What if you shoot someone with a pistol? Does the violence have to be communal?

Another way of defining the word could be by looking at the motive of the offender. The word itself then presents a possible answer: "Terrorism" could mean "attempting to spread terror". Sorry - too vague again. Is a high-school bully also a terrorist, then? What if I'm trying to scare a witness into not deposing against me, and kill off a couple of his family members - the motive is clearly to spread terror. Am I a terrorist, then? Or does the target have to be more than one person - if so, what's the threshold?

Also - does membership of a "Terrorist Organisation" make you a terrorist? what kind of membership - what if you handle accounts for the JeM...or make lunch for the cadres? Does membership automatically make you a terrorist, or do you have to actually kill a few people before they bestow the epithet upon you? Is there a fancy certificate involved?

Too many questions - and till I get some answers for them, I'm going to be rather skeptical every time I see a headline talking about terrorists being gunned down.

What's the Difference between...

2007-05-24T13:44:00.000+05:30

...saying "I give a Damn" and saying "I don't give a Damn"?

Politics at Work

2007-05-15T12:32:00.000+05:30

The lower the average workload-per-employee in any company - the greater the amount of politics played there.

Le Blog est Mort, Vive le Blog

2007-05-15T12:27:00.000+05:30

(With due respect to whichever language I've just butchered above)

The blog, whatever there was of it, is mostly dead these days, since I've turned into a restaurantrepreneur. (I thought I'd invented a word, but turns out Google already throws up 6 results for it..bah!) So if you're ever visiting Sector 110, Noida, do give me a shout and come visit for some great food.

What makes a Poem a Poem?

2007-05-07T11:28:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I wonder if
I'll ever understand what makes
a poem a poem and
an essay an essay.

I wonder if there is a
set of rules that defines
what a poem is. It us-
-ed to be simpler in my t-
-ime. Stuff like rhyme schemes
made it easier to understand.

abab, ababa, abba and the
like, and I instinctively knew that
it was a poem. But what if there's
no rhyme scheme? Is there
a fixed number of words per
sentence? Or is simply pressing "enter"
midway through whenever I
feel like it good enough to make
this blog-post a poem?

Someone
educate
me.

Such Idiots...

2007-03-26T20:16:00.000+05:30

...in such high positions of power. Check out this BBC Hard Talk interview of John Bolton, US' former ambassador to the UN. I would comment, but Bolton's words are better testimony to his moronic nature than anything anyone can say could ever be.

My Problem with The Departed

2007-03-16T17:12:00.000+05:30

(Warning: The following post contains spoilers about Reservoir Dogs and The Departed)

I loved the movie. It featured some brilliant acting, a great story and great direction. I just…hated the ending. The movie was going great till about ten minutes from the ending, at which point everyone started going plop-plop-plop. Everyone except for Mark Wahlberg, that is – but given how everyone else was disposed of, I’m more inclined to think he was kept alive either for a sequel (which is on its way, apparently) or simply because there should be one person left alive at the end to shoot the second-last person.

The last movie I saw with an ending that was remotely similar was Reservoir Dogs (only Mr. Pink survives). I saw the movie a long time ago, so I don’t remember it well enough - but I do remember being rather impressed by the shock ending, because till then, I hadn’t seen any movies which chopped off all the main characters within a span of some 20 seconds. With The Departed, however, I felt somewhat cheated at the end.

The better movies are those that bring alive their characters – that make me watch every scene wanting to know what happens next to these people. Which is why I expect proper closure for every major character in a good movie – I’d rather not see a character say “I’ll be right back”, never to be heard of again. The directors and story writers need to decide what to do with every character by the time the movie ends. Mostly, deaths are integral to the storyline – but sometimes killing off a character becomes a shortcut, a way for the director to finish off the movie without having to decide what to do with that particular person.

A lesser director and a simpler storyline would’ve made things simpler, because most movies still fall into the “Good vs. Evil” category – villain goes around doing evil stuff, good guy goes around doing good stuff, and in the end the bad guy dies because it’s the righteous thing to show. Some movies go to extreme extents to make the contrast obvious, for example Ghostrider, which actually shows Nicolas Cage, complete with flaming skull, leather jacket and chains in hand, stopping his bike to save a lady from a mugger. But that’s a different story, and one better left unsaid. Who should die and who should survive isn’t even a question in such movies – it just boils down to how the bad guy eventually dies.

The Departed, however, made things interesting by making every character a different shade of grey - barely any character was Surf-Excel-white. While watching The Departed, I was wondering at several points at what the ending would be – would the weasely guy (Matt Damon) kill off Leonardo and secure his own future? Would Leo get Damon sent off to jail? And if that happened, what would the law do with Dicaprio, given that he was a plant himself? Would Wahlberg resurface in time to tell the cops that he had sent Leo to infiltrate Nicholson’s gang?

The story, however, eventually ended up taking the “Ek-tha-Raja-Ek-thi-Rani-dono-mar-gaye-khatam-kahani” route….killing off everyone. No tough moral decisions to make, no problems.

And that’s the problem I had with an otherwise brilliant movie.

271 Arrests in Pune at a Rave Party last week

2007-03-11T17:04:00.000+05:30

...reminds me of this old Doonesbury strip. Don't the cops have any real work to do?

Music Review: The Decemberists: The Crane Wife

2007-03-06T16:49:00.000+05:30

It might seem somewhat late to review The Crane Wife, given that it released more than four months ago - but it passed by largely unnoticed in India. That’s a shame, considering that this is the best album I’ve heard in 2006. While the album is full of catchy, melodious tunes, it’s the lyrics that make this record the masterpiece that it is. Each song is more like a short story, told more-often-than-not in the first person, and singer Colin Meloy manages to immerse himself incredibly well into the skin of the characters he creates.

The songs are mostly about war and personal loss, but the tunes are upbeat, sounding even happy at times – which is nothing new to The Decemberists, but is a technique used so well in this album that it switches the mood of the songs from melancholy to aggression to optimism, and seamlessly at that. Even when Meloy sings “I will hang my head, hang my head low” in the first song, you’ll find yourself singing along sooner or later.

The album is held together by two “concept” songs – the sixteen minute title track in three parts, and “The Island/Come and See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll not feel the Drowning”, a 12-minute track in four parts about a kidnapping and murder. This second track is the highlight of the album, starting off with a short progressive instrumental piece and then heading off into folk-rock territory, full of some very quick and very effective finger-picking, that is the mainstay for most of the album.

The most ambitious track, however, is the title track, The Crane Wife, based on a Japanese folk tale about a man who heals a wounded crane, only to find it return to his doorstep in the form of a beautiful woman – who he marries and subsequently loses because of his greed. The song’s third part, which ironically is the first track on the album, is one of their best tracks till date, sung so well that Meloy seems obsessed at times.

Another song that stands out is O Valencia, a story about the Romeo-and-Juliet premise of two lovers caught in the middle of a gang war. The chorus itself is enough to put vivid images in your mind as Meloy sings “I swear to the stars, I’ll burn this whole city down…”

Poetry set to great music, backed by very good instrumentation is how I would define this album. Definitely worth hearing.

How does one Convince a Dog...

2007-03-06T10:28:00.000+05:30

...that any car is, uh, "fair game" when out on a walk...unless there's someone cleaning it right then?

Airtel's SongCatcher service...

2007-02-28T00:02:00.000+05:30

...is such a letdown. I tried it with songs no. 7 and 5 from my previous post ...but all it says is that the songs do not exist in the database. what's the real point of the service then? If the songs had to exist in their database for me to use them, why wouldn't I just check on their website?

I Thought it was an opportunity for me to use whatever sounds I wanted...but, yes, in hindsight I guess it wouldn't really fall under "Fair use", since they're clearly making money off it as a commercial service...and thus would lead to all sorts of copyright entanglements. Sigh.

The Ten Funniest Songs I've ever heard

2007-02-22T12:46:00.000+05:30

While people have been writing “funny” songs forever, few of them last in public memory, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, lyrics alone might be enough to make people listen to a song a few times and laugh out loud, but for them to remember the song and listen to it over time, the music has to be great too. This combination of good music and lyrics becomes more important here than in other genres.

For “spoof” songs, however, the music is similar to the original song, so focus shifts solely to the lyrics – which is why they had better be really, really good.

Also, if you’re spoofing a song, the original has to be a really big hit, since your audience had better have heard the original one enough times to identify with your song. Which basically means that you’re pitching your song to fans of the original – making it very important that your song comes off as a “tribute” and not as a low-brow satire, or worse still, a knock-off. The song that’s number two on my list is a perfect example of how to tread this fine line of paying tribute and extracting humour, but let’s start from No. 10:

10) I Will Survive – Cake

One of the funniest cover versions. Ever.

9) The Bedrock Anthem – Weird Al Yankovic

Musically, this song was a spoof on Give it Away and Under the Bridge by RHCP, accompanied by brilliant lyrics based on the Flintstones. And, of course, a hilarious video, specially the “Bee Girl” intro, a spoof/tribute to Blind Melon’s No Rain:

8) Peaches – Presidents of the United States of America

For some reason, the line “Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man…in a factory downtown” just never gets old for me.

7) Thanda Thanda Paani – Baba Sehgal

So who said this was an English-only list?

Whether this song qualifies as a “Spoof”, “Tribute”, “Inspiration” or “Rip-off” is beyond me – I just love the free-flowing lyrics: “Main five-star hotel pehli baar gaya, maine dekha paani se bhara swimming pool aaya manager, bola baithiye please sir sir sir, aapki seva mein main haazir hoon, kuchh farmaiye, kahiye kya aapko chahiye?”

I don’t remember there being a video for this one – so no clip on Youtube, unfortunately.

6)Volcano – PUSA

Flowing, funny lyrics, a very catchy tune and a crazy video. Great recipe, well cooked.

5) You are my Chicken Fry – Bappi Lahiri (Rock Dancer OST)

One of the corniest songs I’ve ever heard, but what lyrics. What lyrics. What lyrics. And put to some really good music!

“You are my chicken fry,
You are my fish fry,
Kabhi na kehna kudiye bye-bye-bye…

You are my Samosa,
You are my Masala Dosa,
Main na kahungi mundeya bye-bye-bye…”

A search for “Bappi Chicken” on youtube yields no results. Ah well.

4) Baby One more Time – Travis

Yes, you got the name of the song right. The Britney song, this is – done by Travis on one guitar. It actually sounds really good, in fact – but just the fact that the source material is what it is, also makes this one very, very funny.

3) Bobby Brown – Frank Zappa

It starts off sounding like a regular, feel-good “I Love America” song – but that’s just the first two lines. Then it swings into action.

“Hey there, people, I’m bobby brown
They say I’m the cutest boy in town
My car is fast, my teeth is shiney
I tell all the girls they can kiss my heinie!”

2) The Saga Begins – Weird Al Yankovic

This is the closest thing I’ve ever heard to a perfect spoof song. Musically it’s a spoof/ tribute to a cult song – American Pie. Lyrically, it’s a tribute to a cult film franchise – Star Wars. Yankovic wrote this song, based on The Phantom Menace, without even knowing the actual story of the movie – he got everything from internet spoilers. And he followed it up with a video that has to be seen to be believed.

Don McLean:
“Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie,
Drove my Chevy to the Levee but the Levee was Dry;
Them Good old Boys were drinking Whiskey and rye,
Singing, this will be the day that I die…
This will be the day that I die…”

Weird Al:
“My, my, this here Anakin guy,
May be Vader some day later, now he’s just a small fry;
He left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye,
Singing, Soon I’m going to be a Jedi….
Soon I’m going to be a Jedi…”

1) Quite a few Monty Python Songs.

This one just had to be a tie. I can’t choose between Always Look on the Bright Side of Life , The Knights of the Round Table, The Lumberjack Song, the Philosophers’ Song or even I Like Chinese. I would heavily advise everyone to hunt for this album called Monty Python Sings – It’s the biggest laugh you’ll have all month.

Obviously, I’ve missed out quite a few songs that should be there on the list – some which I’ve temporarily forgotten, and a whole lot that I haven’t heard. Do let me know!

Why Global Warming is not a Threat

2007-02-09T13:25:00.000+05:30

From a comment left here by "Lukewarm the Snowman, professional debunker" at the Huffington Post:

"Nature always achieves a balance. Assuming that rising global temperatures are and will continue to lead to rising sea levels, nature will find a way to restore balance.

Here's how: As sea levels rise, the excess water will drip off the edges of the Earth. This dripping water will then cool the sun as it passes underneath the Earth at night.

Problem solved."

Hey, works for me!

(Discovered via The Conscious Earth)

Who do I blame...Kotak or Indiainfoline?

2007-02-05T16:54:00.000+05:30

It's been 4 months since I returned to Delhi and got myself a sparkling new mobile number. Four months of bliss, uninterrupted by any pesky credit card salesmen.

Friday (all of three days ago...or rather...one working day ago) I called up Kotak and Indiainfoline, enquiring about opening a demat account with them.

And in the last four hours today, I've received *three* calls from HSBC asking if I want a credit card.

I wonder which of the two, Kotak or Indiainfoline, is the sleazy lowlife.

The “Death of the Album”, or the Revival?

2007-02-02T13:24:00.000+05:30

Ever since Apple’s iTunes Music Service has become successful, I’ve been hearing opinions from all over bemoaning the “Death of the Album”. Here’s what people say: since it’s become easier to pick up music one song at a time, rather than having to buy an entire album of 12-15 songs, the album will lose relevance and die out, and singles will thrive. I’m not talking about the distribution model here (downloads vs. CDs), but the album as a concept. These people say that since I can download, say, “Vertigo” for 99 cents off an online music service, I don’t need to spent the 400-odd rupees that I would’ve paid otherwise to buy the CD of “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. This, somehow, should worry the industry. To quote a Tribune article from December 2006:

‘Bob Merlis, a long-time executive with Warner Bros. Records and now a Los Angeles-based music industry consultant, said the iTunes phenomenon of purchasing individual songs "is not healthy for the music industry."

"It doesn't address something that albums and full CDs did, which is having a body of work from an artist," he said.

"It's so fragmented now. You get the song you like but you don't get to know the artist anymore. It encourages this rapid turnover," he added, pointing out that a band like U2 achieved its popularity because fans came to know them through a substantial body of work.

"If U2 came along right now, would they have the staying power? It would be very difficult to maintain that ongoing interest," Merlis said.’

I think they’re wrong – I think it’s great for the music industry in the long term. Somehow, when I think of the ability to download single songs off the net, I don’t think it’s the “Death of the album as we know it” – in fact, I believe the exact opposite is true. We’re in for a renaissance of the album as we know it – which is great news for music listeners.

The CD model as such promotes laziness on the part of the artist and the RIAA. Off-hand, how many albums can you think of where every song, or nearly every song, was great – and, given a choice, would’ve been worth buying stand-alone? The first few names that come to my mind are Dark Side of the Moon, the Wall, OK Computer, Ten, Dream Theater’s Scenes from a Memory…but a bulk of the albums I can think of from the last 20 years seem to fall into the following formula:

a) 2-3 “Star” songs – These get the most promotion, get videos made, etc, and are essentially meant to “carry” the album;

b) 4-5 mediocre songs;

c) Padding. After all, any CD has to have at least 12-13 songs, right?

So basically artists would sell $15 CDs on the basis of 3 songs, and everything was hunky-dory. Till iTunes came. Now, the Star songs will definitely sell – and fetch the band/RIAA $2-3. The mediocre songs will sell, but in fewer numbers. And the padding stays. Net income from the sale of the album: way lower.

So what happens? Bands are forced to innovate. They can either be satisfied with the $3-5 that the aforementioned formula would likely fetch them, or they can start working on making every single song good, so that people *want* to spend money on all 14-15 songs on the album. More concept albums will come in, with a theme tying together all the songs – and more concept albums, in my opinion, is definitely a good thing. There will also be more albums where nearly every song is a joy to hear.

I think the renaissance is already within striking distance. I can think of a whole lot of 2006 albums that I like listening to start-to-end, and not just a song or two: Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit, The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife, The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America, RHCP’s Stadium Arcadium (coming after two very inconsistent albums, “By the Way” and Californication), Pearl Jam and quite a few more. Partly because of the reasons above and partly because of the rise of Indie bands, 2006 was a great year for music.

I’m hoping for even better in 2007.

Brilliance, sheer Brilliance....

2007-01-31T17:16:00.000+05:30

Lies here. This site is one of my favourite sites for the kind of creativity I get to see unleashed in the form of Photoshopped images. How could a site which shows you movie stills like the one above ever go wrong?

The Height of Patriotism...

2007-01-30T09:51:00.000+05:30

... this headline.

Of Big Brother, Racism and Undercooked Food

2007-01-18T13:12:00.000+05:30

989 articles on Google News today, talking about racism on Big Brother targeted towards Shilpa Shetty. More than 19,300 complaints received by the Brit (sorry, is Brit an offensive word?) TV regulator. An issue blown so far out of proportion that Gordon Brown, currently in India, has to talk about it. Tony Blair has to defend his country. The Indian high Commission in London has to launch an enquiry. And, of course, the inevitable…effigy burning in Bihar. To quote from this Time article:

“About 25 people, most of them men, marched down a street in the city of Patna in eastern India on Wednesday chanting, "Down with Big Brother." The protesters, who said they were members of the Shilpa Shetty Fans Association, burned a straw-and-paper figure representing the program's producers in effigy before being dispersed by police.”

Over what?? Let’s take a look at the offenses:

a) Calling her a “liar and a fake”;

b) Calling her a dog;

c) Asking her if she lives in "a house or a shack" – well, it’s the new-age version of misinformed foreigners asking if we ride to work on our magic carpets, innit? (Sorry, is my use of “innit” offensive to anyone?)

d) Refusing to eat chicken cooked by Shilpa Shetty, calling it “spicy” and “undercooked”. Ouch. My ears are still hurting from those grossest-of-gross racial slurs. They should ban the word “undercooked” – then we could always call it the “U-word”, never to be used except in crass rap songs.

e) Telling her to “go back to the slums” – that’s just a stupid, misinformed opinion. Should we be launching enquiries based on stupid people’s stupid opinions?

f) The Guardian:

‘Danielle also weighed in - but out of earshot from the actress - saying: "I think she should go home."’

How racist of them to want her to lose the competition. Hang them, I say.

This one’s my personal favourite, though – people are complaining that they call her “The Indian”. Since when is being called an Indian an insult? Let’s face it – how many of us have never referred to a foreigner as a “firangi”? I’m definitely guilty of that one. Am I a racist?

Imagine that there are fifteen people in a room, fourteen are British, one is Indian, and you’re so thick-headed that you can’t pronounce the Indian’s name correctly, so you call her “The Indian”. That might be stupid behaviour. It might be an attempt to show derision for her and for her entire country. It might be an attempt to somehow prove yourself superior in everyone’s eyes – whatever it is. It’s just a stupid woman and her stupid opinion. Grow up already – must we go crying to the principal every time the class bully calls us names? I’m calling that Brit woman stupid. I imagine someone from the UK must be filing a suit against me right now for being racist.

Since when did the whole world become such a crybaby? Do people think that screaming at people for voicing their true opinions will make these opinions go away? Will Jade Goody suddenly become a better person now, with all traces of slums and undercooked food removed from her outlook of India? Yes, I can see that working - "If people stop voicing their true opinions, their opinions will all change for the better and the world will be a happier place". Am I missing a step in between?

More from Patna: a BBC article has this to say about the fine, cultured people there:

“The comments provoked a small protest in the northern town of Patna and prompted the country's junior foreign minister to comment on the issue.

"Surely such racist slurs have no place in civilised society?" Anand Sharma asked.

"India has throughout firmly rejected all forms of discrimination and racism.''

Of course. We have no racism in India. No discrimination on the basis of caste, class, economic status, anything. We’re the perfect society. Enough said.

The iPhone, and what it could've been.

2007-01-11T12:58:00.000+05:30

Here's what it finally looked like: Everyone's seen it by now, but there were some interesting mockups floating around, by "insiders" and random fanboys. Here's my favourite: This would certainly be a fun thing to put in the drawing room! (Pic courtesy www.engadget.com) Lots more available at the Gear Factor iPhone Mockup Gallery.

Update: Here's a photo from the Macworld conference:

Michael Crichton is Pissed. Be Scared, Y'all.

2006-12-26T16:47:00.000+05:30

People have different ways of taking to criticism. Some get defensive, some ignore it, some refute it. Some people, however, choose to take the term "responding to criticism" to new heights.

Remember Michael Crichton? I loved some of his earlier works like Jurassic Park, but gave up on him after "State of Fear", his rant about the "massive hoax" that is global warming. (Read the book for his point of view... and go here or, of course, here for some of the better, detailed rebuttals I've seen!) Plus, of course, his writing's been become rather cliched by now, generally sticking to the same old "Marvelous new scientific discovery goes horribly wrong" pattern.

Which brings me to his new book...or rather, just two pages or so of his new book. You see, there's this political columnist in Washington called Michael Crowley who, after State of Fear came out, wrote a stinker of an article saying that Crichton was basically pushing anti-Science propaganda which was playing right into the hands of the Republican government - which has been talking about the perils of too much technology (think stem cells) for quite some time.

Well, Crichton's out with a new book, "Next", that talks about (surprise surprise!) biotechnology research gone horribly wrong. And in this book is a character who makes an entry for all of approximately two pages, is apparently quite irrelevant to the larger story of the novel and is a political columnist in Washington called (I wonder what made Michael Crowley so suspicious!) Mick Crowley. And guess what - Mick Crowley's character just happens to be a child-rapist, on trial for raping his two-year-old nephew. To top it all, "Crowley's penis was small". As Crowley (the real Michael, not the fictional Mick) himself writes, "In lieu of a letter to the editor, Crichton had fictionalized me as a child rapist. And, perhaps worse, falsely branded me a pharmaceutical-industry profiteer."

For an author whose novels have been prone a whole lot of mud-slinging...he seems surprisingly scared of criticism himself.

Dhoom 2: Attack of the Slow-Motion Scene

2006-12-09T23:11:00.000+05:30

I saw Dhoom 2: Attack of the Slow-Motion Scene (D2ASMS) yesterday. I'd really liked the first one; Dhoom was relatively short, fast-paced, to-the-point and the music was decent so the songs were bearable on-screen. D2ASMS...ugh. What a bad, bad, bad movie.

WARNING: the rest of the post might contain spoilers about the wafer-thin plot of Dhoom 2. If you're exceptionally eager to watch the movie and don't want to ruin any of the non-existent suspense, kindly skip.

D2ASMS has about ten minutes of actual story line, stretched to over 2.5 hours using a slo-mo sequence at the start of virtually every scene (you know the kind, used in Hindi movies to introduce the hero, with the fancy music in the background!). The difference here being that they slo-mo every. time. Hrithik. does. anything. at. all. It's. like. reading. a. book. with. a. fullstop. after. every. word.

Not just Hrithik, in fact - they also do it with Aishwarya, Abhishek, Bipasha and Bipasha's twin sister...who suddenly turns up out of nowhere (co-incidentally, the original Bipasha's character suddenly disappears into nowhere around the same time!)

Irritating, pointless songs keep turning up at regular, way-too-many intervals, and they all sound similar to the original Dhoom theme - not really a surprise, seeing as the music comes from Mr. "Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai" Pritam…

The movie has quite a bit of comedy, unfortunately unintentional, in the form of some hilariously implausible crime scenes. Imagine 7-8 guards circling a huge diamond, failing to notice a small book-size robot that walks between their feet, steals the diamond and replaces it *with a holographic image*. The main point of all robberies seems to be to say, "Hrithik's toooo cool…see, he can get away with robberies that no one else could get away with!". Which I agree with, primarily because anyone else would have to battle not just the cops, but also common sense and logic - Hrithik obviously doesn't have to face those two in the movie!

There's some bewildering character development also happening side-by-side. Bipasha the cop, incredibly angry with Hrithik, tears up her flight ticket to show that she's not going anywhere till she catches him. And guess what? That's her last scene in the movie. Hrithik robs by formula - attacking on specific dates, at specific places according to where he wants to leave his signature next. Somehow that formula never gets mentioned or applied after the first twenty minutes of the movie...sigh.

Aishwarya's done a great job in the movie - for the first three minutes or so. Then she starts speaking. Ouch. Aishwarya saying "Are you checking me out?" to Hrithik is enough to make anyone wish that the multiplexes would just put all of New York's rejected TransFats into the popcorn; it's a less painful death. Someone please teach this woman acting, it's been long enough.

And, of course, the other attractions: rib-tickling comedy (how could anything with Uday Chopra in it be without?), and a "sizzling" romance between Hrithik and Aishwarya (with enough holes in the development to give swiss cheese a serious complex)…leaving about fifteen minutes for all the action sequences. And about thirteen of these fifteen minutes are in, you guessed it, slow motion.

But Mommy, all my friends already have one!

2006-12-09T23:04:00.000+05:30

...A blog, that is. So here I am, too, out to Save the World from Terrorists, one Blog Post at a time, as it says up there. Don't ask me how and why. If I knew that already, this guy would've been in the slammer a long time ago.