So about the conservative cause

Rules must be obeyed. Agree? Except, of course, when they shouldn't be. Most of what we think of as advances have happened because some cocksure renegades decided to run some verboten experiments. Before Werener von Braun, there was Goddard. But these mavericks, these intellectual outliers, these geniuses can only survive in contrast to a general population who they prolly find dull and soporific. The price that society pays for every genius is prolly a serial killer - but that is a price that we cannot not pay. Somehow, we have to structure ourselves that the smart ones, the game changers can be identified early and nurtured - and that the violent ones can also be identified early and helped. And of course, Gawd help us if the two are the same. But this has to be done, for all of progress depends on the really smart ones. The rest of us usually work to fill in the blanks. So there we have it - society needs to make room for its geniuses. Our survival depends on it.

Which brings us to the conservative agenda. Nowhere are the two anchors of conservatism tied together more deceptively than in the US of A. For some reason, economic conservatism appears to be linked to social conservatism. I say appears to be, for the relentless upward flow of capital is not being conservative. What it is is counter-thermodynamic, and very, very pernicious. But forgive me, for I have not the correct technical vocabulary to talk of such matters, just feelings about what is right and what is not.

I am more concerned by the social conservatism that appears to be lumped together with the economic package. This is a throwback to simple village-tribal societies which exist at the subsistence-farming level. Certainly, in that context, an immensely authoritative central figure is not a bad thing. Yes, you must obey the village elders, for they constitute the sum total of generational wisdom. But mankind as we are today is somewhat far from such a model of governance. What works, and works well for small communities in isolation is scarcely a viable structure for a globe girdling civilization with powers which would appear indistinguishable from witchcraft in the eyes of those early village elders.

Today, humans have the economic surplus needed to support investments in endeavours which may or may not have a tangible return. Some such investments are the immediately useful, such as the Three Gorges. Some others, less so- but serve as cheerleaders for much greater things to come. Case in point, our favourite new explorer - Curiosity. Indeed, we have the capacity to sit back and be entertained by the likes of reality TV stars. The question of survival is moot - barring another asteroid, or a bloody huge methane burp from under the Tundra - we will most likely make it. 

But in order to make it, we do need those smart ones. And to identify them, we need to loosen up as a society. The resilience that comes from a large and diverse population will help us survive where smaller and more homogeneous groups would not and did not. That is a lesson worth remembering. 

So the prescription: let people be.

Removie

So here I was living through the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul - when Removies popped into the mind. What are Removies, you ask? Simple - pick a film title, remove one letter, make up a caption for the new title. So.. here goes:

1. Wall (from Wall-E) - a docudrama about the reunification of Germany
2. Cap Fear - a terrifying tale about the truth behind Bodmin's (bonus points for Ukridge and Wodehouse) 
3. SumDog Millionaire - a canine with wicked math skillz brings untold riches to his master.
4. U Forgiven (from Unforgiven) - a man commits a heinous crime and his victim texts him to say that everything is cool.
5. Mad Ma (from Mad Max) - pissed off ex-suburban mom drives a muscle car in post apocalyptic Australia (largely indistinguishable from Australia)
6. Raveheart - all this rebellious Scottish youngster wants to do is party!
7. Fat Five - Enid Blyton's Famous Five finally get a big screen adaptation, except that they move to the States and subsist on a diet of burgers and soda - with sad, but predictable results, proving yet again that the colonies know shite all about running their own affairs.
8. Dawn of the DEA - when the cartels had too much power, the Man sent in the Feds!
9. The Princess Ride - this one, unfortunately is not for minors.
10. Carface - Chris Bangle makes a movie.
11. Kill ill - a documentary crew accompanies the brave people of Doctors without Borders on a humanitarian mission.
12. Oodfellas - Doctor Who must stop an interplanetary crime syndicate.
13. Even Samurai - a meditation on how much it sucked to not be rich and powerful in feudal Japan. Often compared to Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai'.
14. Rear Widow - NC17, enough said.
15. Toy Tory - action figure of a British Conservative Prime Minister rounds up the other toys, imposes a poll tax and attacks Argentina.
16. Rainspotting - a NatGeo documentary about some wishful people living in the Kalahari.
17. Transformer - a PSA about power thievery by ConEd.
18. Transformers2: Revenge of the Allen - when octagonal screwdrivers attack!
19. Transformers3: The Dark Side of the Moo - a documentary about the fast food industry.
20. The Evil  DEA - this time the cartels make a movie.
21. Spider Ma! - a kid has arachnophobia.

Doha: the travelogue continues

So turns out that all these years of staying outside the vatan have made me.. umm.. somewhat racist. Allow me to explain. Frankfurt airport is full of sweaty white people. Most of them don't even speak my language (apart from that one awesome security bloke who turned out to be an old, chainsmoking Trekkie who turned out to be an expat WestCoaster who claimed to be from the Republic of California - go look at the Cali state flag.. but that is a different blogpost). Anyway, I found myself drifting through the swirling palefaced masses in Frankfurt completely unfazed. As if it were my (Gawd-help-us) comfort zone. This is the same me - which would have suffered minor panic attacks if set down in the middle of Dilli. You know what, I would still panic if I found myself in Dilli. So Frankfurt was so very normal to me.  Right down to the hick in front of me who couldn't quite work the Euro system. Said hick was also wearing a stylized Confederate flag shirt, so well... 

But then I ended up at Doha. As you, dear reader, have been following my travelogue with barely concealed impatience, you obviously know of the circumstances which brought me here. In comparison to Frankfurt, this place was alive. Western European airports are marvels of clinical efficiency, throughputting millions of jetlagged people with calm thoroughness. Now what does that put me in mind of? Nevermind, moving on. Doha terminal is this huge agglomeration of sweaty, tired humanity, complete with spilling baggage and squalling children. And somehow, this puts me in mind of Ashtami nights out near Ekdalia (that is a Durga Pujo reference to you Awbangalis). The point, of course being that being up close and personal with your fellow human being, such a basic, not-even-thought-of criteria of survival in our part of the planet, has been largely turned into a memory by the West. Even to me. 

And that was a rather frightening realization.

The travelogue, continued

So where were we? Ah, yes, landing at Doha. The city-state of Qatar is floating on a sea of oil. Much like Dubai. It is the perfect jumping point for the whole of Arabia, midway between India and Western Europe, an important Persian Gulf seaport, and so on. Quite naturally, it is the jumping off, and landing point for the many, many people who come to work in Greater Arabia. But, before that, a recap.

I was traveling to Kolkata via Doha because I had missed a flight, and sharing my adventures was a wonderful miscellany of brown people. We shall start off with my friend the unnamed geophysicist. The plane took off from Frankfurt. We had already bonded over dinner, so we found neighbouring seats. Qatar Air, like Emirates has this odd practice - the stewardesses have their headscarves on when the plane is on the ground. But once it reaches cruising altitude, they take the headgear off and you would never know that you were on an airline that is based in the MidEast. (Except that the plane was clean and new, the food was excellent, the service was fabulous, the cabin crew, as jetlagged and jaded as they might have been, smiled at all comers, including the inevitable passenger with the oversized carry-on).

Anyhoo, so my friend, after regaling me with stories of working in the oil biz, decided to get hammered. And get hammered he did. The booze kept coming, and he kept chugging it down. I went from smiling indulgently to being embarrassed for him to finally just praying that he does not puke his guts out.

Thankfully, he didn't, although he expressed his utter contempt for Shahrukh Khan rather vociferously en route to the terminal. I led him off the bus and into arrivals, where we were promptly selected for the "random" entry point security check. Apparently my mojo also works on  transit security in the MidEast. No matter. I steered the drunk oilman into the security line where he promptly refused to part with his shoes an' all, and decided, at that point to launch into his pet tirade about personal freedom and airports. 

I saw a grim faced security wallah rather pointedly snapping on gloves and decided that my own personal freedom was in imminent danger of being unceremoniously curtailed. So I turned to the oilman and hissed "Dilli vapas jana hai? to fir juta utariye". That worked, and a few minutes later I found myself in the midst of a huge stream of brown coloured humanity, being swept into the cavernous arrivals lounge. The chattering flow eventually deposited me in front of the transfer desk, where I turned around to see the rest of my cohort from Frankfurt, all tired and disheveled, several of them with bawling kids in tow.

The Guahati girl and the average Indian bloke

Sometime in late summer 2012, a girl was molested in the heart of Guahati - which is the capital city of the north-east Indian state of Assam. A viddy did the rounds - apparently there was a photojournalist nearby and he captured the entire shameful incident for posterity. Following the ground rules of the society of bloodsucking leeches, he did not stand up for the woman or do anything at all which would require testicular fortitude.

A couple of weeks later, and other news items have displaced this in the public consciousness: the Olympics, the Great Indian Load Shedding (contrary to what you may think, this has nothing to do with our national habit of mass defecation: this merely refers to the rolling blackouts that have plagued North India in late July, ya' know - population, summer, India, power thievery, a superannuated powergrid, yadda, yadda.) But I digress.

So, the Guahati incident. What are the things which we know?

1. Girl molested, video out there.
2. Cops and politicos say that she had been drinking and that she was not properly attired. Observe that such comments are now considered normal when such incidents happen. Such incidents are also quite normal. The video makes this one special.
3. Some people (NGOs?) capture stills of the faces of the offending men from said viddy and put them up all over the city of Guahati.
4. Furore.
5. Some arrests.

There is of course, much regretful shaking of heads and well, that is pretty much it. So let me try to articulate my feelings about this. GENTLEMEN AND LADIES, YA'ALL NEED TO GROW SOME BALLS.

Allow me to explain. Women are not chattel. They are not unpersons. You know what, forget it. This stuff is so basic that everyone should know this. It shames me to think of the many Indian blokes I know who have this deep rooted and sometimes quite well hidden hatred for girls. Eff-ed up, right? I mean, horny bastards on one side, future wife-beaters on the other. And all these fabulous medieval prejudices nicely coiffed up with an MBA (or a PhD, lets not discriminate) from some fancy school.

Takes a lot more guts to look a girl straight in the eye and risk your ego getting shot down. Much better trying to cop a feel as she tries to squeeze past in a crowded bus, amiright? And when its a (slight sloshed) girl dressed with (gasp) some leg showing, then (whee!) its like Diwali, Christmas and a winning lottery ticket rolled into one for our courageous Desi Boyz! C'mon ya'all, titty grabs an' everything - and we don't even have to pretend with flowers and chocolates. For shame, you sods. For shame.

I can't talk much sense into most Indian blokes. They have their heads shoved so very far up their own arseholes that they are deafened by the sound of their stomach gurgles. That is, they are not listening. So let me put this to the (unfortunate) women who will end up marrying my peers. Firstly, commiseration. Secondly, if you are to beget boy children, will you please, please try to bring them up to be decent men? To not be insecure douchetards who get their jollies from hurting women? Please, won't you try?

Stuck in Franfurt and other travails

The plane landed at Frankfurt and then spent a good 45 minutes chillin' on the apron. Of course, the airline was too cool to provide us with any connecting gate information. So upon deplaning, I ran like the blazes (not always a good strategy for a brown skinned bloke in Western Europe), got to my departure gate to see the flight pulling away. They had overbooked the flight as a matter of course, so it wasn't as if they were ever tempted to stick around for another two minutes for just one coach passenger. Oh wait, but it wasn't just one bloke in coach - it was more like 50 odd people. This was the line I found when I made it to the transfer desk. Most of us were desis, most of us returning to the Desh and most of us on United (bless their little hearts). They started giving people options:

1. Take the next flight back to the States, and then...
2. Here, follow this agent to the hotel booking desk, you have been chosen to receive a three night stay in Frankfurt, biergartens and nightlife not complimentary.
3. Of course, we can send you through Heathrow (rumour has it that Arrivals at Heathrow had a ginormous sign that said "Payekhana" in the good ol' Bengali script), and since you are a US citizen/greencard holder that is totally cool and you don't need brown people documents like a transit visa.
4. You, good sir are staying in this airport tonight. Since your three year old son appears to be sick, we will be sending him and the mom onwards to Chennai. But via Bangkok.

They took one look at my passport and told me to wait. More doors do open when you are in possession of a greencard. I got elbowed by a scrawny bloke and I was about to do some serious elbowing back when I spotted the anxious wife in tow, complete with infant. Had to back down. Bloke was going to UlanBator. The counter lady was delighted. Finally, someone she could route onwards with a minimum of fuss! (I should mention that Air India was on strike, leading to, umm.. complicashuns.) Anywhoo, by the time I got to the counter (again), the lady had been yelled at, had snot nosed kids dribble snot all over her desk and their sweaty, angry parents yell at her (again). So she sent me on to Doha, Qatar, with an effin' 14 hour layover and then Kolkata. I hid my grin as I asked for a mealvoucher and pheuncards. 14 hours in Doha would be fine. I fucken' hate overnighting at Mumbai or Dilli airports. They ship you to the domestic terminal which quite literally goes dark, apart from the one shitty fast food stall where the price gouging is done with a certain vindictiveness that I cannot account for. As I said, Doha was fine. My meal voucher got me some nice pork chops and a truly wonderful doppelbock. 

In the meantime, I had made some travel buddies. Most prominently, this one desi gentleman who was in the oil business and spends three weeks in the Gulf of Mexico and three in Mumbai. Hell of a life. Anyway, toasted his good health with the doppelbock and hopped on the Qatar Air flight to Doha.

The trip out

Ya' know, I had planned to write this, and several other blogs while in India. Leetil did I know that vacations can be so strenuous. So here I find myself writing up the collected experiences of a midsummer trip to India, where amongst other things, I got hitched.

But before all that, way before all that - the trip outbound. 

Drrr Kovalskyy and his family had very kindly agreed to drive me to Houston - a rather longish trip. The conversation veered to the study of English and its comparison with various European languages. And somehow, I found myself frantically googling Past Perfect Participles and Gerunds. I have managed to spend half my life steering clear of the nuances of grammar (having studied at CBSE schools helped), and being asked such perplexing questions were causing me to have Vietnam-like flashbacks. Of primary school, that is. 

I must mention Dr. Dan Streetmentioner who had compiled the most comprehensive and authoritative handbuch of grammar - one equipped to deal with the very complex situations arising out of time travel. There was, I believe, something called the "Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Subjunctive Intentional". Grammar Nazis, or Gnazis (the 'G' is silent, just like the 'P' in Psmith) as I like to refer to them can rarely be reasoned with. Flamethrowers are recommended.

Anyway, we made Houston in excellent time and the plane toodled off. Shortly after take off, I found out, to my deep disgust, that United (and apparently most other US based carriers) have now begun charging for the booze on international flights. The shame of it all! Will airlines never learn? Here is a simple lesson. If you are an airline exec, please take it to heart:

1. Free booze makes people happy.

2. Free booze makes people sleep on flights.

3. A flight full of sleeping passengers, dreaming nice dreams is a good flight. People will not loiter around the walkways and the restroom.

4. So please serve free booze on international flights.

Ok, enough with the booze. When you fly long distance, I recommend the "Hindu meal". Hot veggie food, and it is always served before anyone else gets their meal. Alright, so after hopping over the pond, we finally made it to Frankfurt. Where the plane landed and then spent a cool 45 minutes chillin' on the tarmac. Of course they didn't bother giving us any gate info about connecting flights, 'cos that would have been too convenient. So I ran a brief obstacle race to my connecting Lufthansa flight to Mumbai which was pulling away from the gate even as I got there. 

Things were getting interesting.

Style/engineering

Citroën has always been a very different kind of automaker. Their styling has been like nothing else - its is a very love it or hate it thing. Even the best of those impeccably engineered autobahn cruisers has always looked businesslike. Serious. Prolly with no sense of humour. Have you ever tried telling an Audi a joke? No response, none at all. Even a lowly Civic-si whinnies in delight if you show it something slightly risque.

A Citroën though - something different. You have the sense, even when all you know of it is a medium res press photo, that this is something truly special. A Citroën is prolly female. The kind you wouldn't mind waiting hours for. The type who will let the wine breathe a bit. Who knows which live cheeses to look for - by smell. The one with the poster of Alain Delon on her wall. Which brings us to the new Citroën No.9. Shooting brakes are not a very practical design, but then if you wanted practicality, you would be looking at a Swedish wagon. While they didn't make the Metropolis - the No.9 is something to lust after. It reminds me of the art-deco lines of the Hispano Suiza Dubonnet Xenia. Will they ever bring this across the pond?

Every monkey with an SLR

The muddied streams of the interwebs brought this demotivational up to the surface. And I was inclined to agree - yes, today every monkey with a few hundred bucks thinks he is a photographer. And surely, it isn't limited to just SLRs - these days, apps like Instagram can make wonderfully filtered and bokehed snaps out out whatever duckface you and your drunk mates posed with after the seventh round of tequila shots. All of which is utterly despicable.

Oh, wait, it isn't and I am being a colossally silly prat. Similarly uncomplimentary thoughts were undoubtedly aired by serious photographers who looked askance at the AsahiPentax's silly mirror-flippitty thingy way back in the fifties. I mean, serious photogs use 120 film and wonderfully machined Rolleiflex TLRs, or at the least your less exalted Mamiyas - built to take punishment like the battleship Yamato.

But the mirror- flipping shenanigans continued, and gasp - outsold every other respectable camera type almost into oblivion. Yeah, yeah, there continued to be a small group of enthusiasts (read middle aged rich white dudes with OCD) who clung to their Elmarits and Summicrons - but every photo that made it to the cover of Time came from a 35 mm SLR. And then digital happened.

The same noses were raised high in the air and angry proclamations were made that it would never, ever be the same. True enough, for a while semiconductors lagged behind film emulsions and serious magazines like Arizona Highways would accept only film (and prolly 120 film at that). Yet, times have a-changed, Kodak has gone belly up and Arizona Highways now has a Flickr photostream. Hah.

The latest wave of development is being driven by instant capture, instant processing and instant sharing. In the time it would take me to unlimber the pack and swap lenses, someone with a fancy Nokia 800 series has taken the picture and applied a Holga-ish filter on it and sent it winging off to Facebook where his three hundred pals have liked it. Yes, of course, much of what is being shot - prolly most of it will be crap. But crap to you and me - not to the person who snapped it - and her mates pulling duckfaces in it. And by that account - the click-n-share crowd has already got what it came here for - their memories. But in the midst of this giant digital trash heap - there are undoubtedly gems. You merely have to sift through it - and there are plenty of people and their fancy apps doing just that. So stop whining about how a beautiful medium has been plebianized.

Also remember the unending horror that came from sitting through your aunt's friend's family album? Yes - now picture that, magnified a millionfold. With duckfaces. Yes, the future does look somewhat rosier now. Perhaps even instagrammed.

So I ruined my co-worker's childhood

That is NOT what it sounds like. This is what happened - her brand new laptop is adorned with a purple snapcase. This, obviously, reminded me of the Phantom - you know, The Ghost Who Walks. This naturally led to a brief discussion of classic cartoons and after I was done explaining my views on some Disney and other classic creations - she told me that I had ruined the better part of her childhood. You snicker in mild disbelief? Well, then we must talk about them cartoons, right? Here goes:

1. Beauty and the Beast - Stockholm Syndrome
2. The Little Mermaid - where do we start with this - bestiality, perhaps? Also, once said mermaid has forsaken her kind and gone to live with the lung-breathers, do you really think that the mer-people are going to be okay with one-way sexual trafficking? And when they find out that nubile land-dweller princesses are not okay with the whole living underwater deal - it seems logical that the next CNN report will be on the ongoing war between us and the mer-people. Sure, we will depth charge the ever loving shite out of SOME mer-cities. But remember, 70% of the Earth's surface is water - and every new Hummer sold is giving up a wee bit of the land that remains. And also, that oceans are effin' deep. With lots of room to hide. To hide and rearm. And possibly awake the sleepin' pet Kraken. That should be fun. All because some arse couldn't find someone in his postal code to date and had to get the hots for a bloody fishchick.
3. Snow White - let us leave aside the central issue that beauty is apparently the ONLY qualification for being a central character in this universe (and many other fairy tale universes - but more on that later) - but Snow White is effin' dumb. Dumb like the lovechild of a Kardashian and a concussed troll. She could have lived a moderately happy life as a Dwarf housekeeper - but noooooo.. given half a chance, she has to walk straight into traps like poisoned combs and supertight corsets. Saving her gets to be a full time job for the Dwarves (seriously, when do they go about their daily jobs like mining Mithril, or whatev?) But what the hell is wrong with the Prince. He sees a dead chick in a glass coffin and has to have it/her. I mean - did your Mommy never teach you that necrophilia is a bad thing?
4. Cinderella - I leave it to your imagination to figure out what a society is like where a woman's worth is her beauty - easily measurable in how tiny and dainty her feet are. If you are unburdened with an imagination this NPR article about Chinese foot-binding should do the trick. Njoi!
5. Sleeping Beauty - Not necrophilia, but more like that scene in Kill Bill where the Bride sleeps in a coma for years while her body is used as a sexual plaything by all comers (My name is Buck. I am from Huntsville, Texas and I like to f**k). Yes, so Princess in a 100 year coma and a Prince has to go get the hots for her. Dude, that is gross. She prolly went to kindergarten with your great grandma. Also, for her, the wurlde has moved on - for generations worth. Will she ever be able to use a smartpheun?
6. Rapunzel - prolly created by Aveda's PR team

This is enough for now. But I must share my views on the Lion King - perhaps later.

Hybrids and suchlike

Confession - I learned driving on a Prius and loved it.

Hybrids are cool. In the same way that Macs are cool. However, people who get all evangelical about hybrids (or anything else) are profoundly uncool. Just like Apple fanboys (and linux people - except that linux people actually have a valid point or two). And regretfully, some of their uncoolness also reflects on the product that they adore. And guess what - that sucks! Hybrids are here to stay, and possibly change the wurlde for the better. If only people who dominate Priuschat did not come across as so blinkin' smug all the time. But they do.

However, there are hybrids and there are hybrids. All of them are not exercises in comfortable beigeness - and they are making their way into motorsports. First off, there is the obvious Formula1 push-to-pass battery system. And this potent stuff is making its way into endurance racing - from none other than what-is-it-nine-time Le Mans champions, Audi. But the stuff that makes me sit back and whistle, is of course from the masters are Zuffenhausen - the new GT3R hybrid from the 911 stable. Because this hybrid system uses a flywheel to store the braking energy - not some battery. I vote mechanical engineering over electrochemistry.

Home Alone is a prequel to Die Hard

Ok, item 6 on this list by my esteemed friends at Cracked tells us that Home Alone (1990) was a remake of Die Hard (1988). More power to them for figuring this out. BUT THEY ARE WRONG!

See, they have this wrong way around. Home Alone is the origins movie for the Die Hard franchise. This is the film in which Kevin MacAllister (Culkin) is shown to a be a slightly maladjusted attention-whoring kid who just happens to be the last person standing before those two inept burglars. But this is also the film which shows him developing all the traits which we have come to associate with John McClane (Bruce Willis) - he is resourceful, has a never-say-die attitude and has an instinctive dislike for authority. Of course, during the process of growing up, he gets into more shenanigans, changes his name to McClane, switches his Scottish heritage for the more believable, and equally aggressive-as-fuck Irish, acquires a slight drinking problem, a wife and a reputation for being an effective cop; but a loose cannon. And then, Nakatomi Plaza happens - and before you can say "Now I have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho!", all of those skills developed years and years ago are put to the test, by none other than Professor Snape!

See, the theory fits perfectly!

Why I haven't logged into Reddit for over a year

This is not a rant. This is NOT a rant. Understand? Ok, lets continue.

I loved Reddit. Loved it with the impassioned zeal of a nerd who just stepped into a room full of nerds - who were different. Different in delightfully strange ways. I seem to remember some poll which came up with results that said that Reddit was mostly male, white, late 20s and large your sysadmin. I did see it turn into something more diverse, but still, delightfully quirky. But you know what the deal with quirky is? It eventually begins to pall. At some point, you ask the question - is being quirky merely a phenotype, or is it the be all and end all of this person (or club). Hence, Zooey Deschanel. Seems, somehow, that quirky is her main stock-in-trade. Hence, also, Reddit's abiding unidirectional love affair with said Zooey.

But this aside, Reddit appeared to be this fantastic place where people can be fanboys with no fear. Where "The Hero of Canton" is a real song and you cannot say River Tam without half the thread bursting into sobs. Where, also, inexplicable mediocrity like Arrested Development becomes gold. I do not effin' get this obsession with Michael Cera. Why?

And the smarts. I remember a random post about the Depression Era with Studs Terkel referenced in the very first comment. Yes, the Redditors were smart. They were funny too - what with the narwhal bacons at midnight and much, much, more. And then there was Bozarking... dear Gawd, there was Bozarking.

But the plain fact of the matter was that it was turning into a 4chan meme repeater more than anything else... and a gigantic time drain into the bargain. So one day, I pulled the plug on this delightful bad habit and never logged in again. I was mostly a quiet lurker with very leetil karma. So the withdrawal symptoms were minor. But I do still have my weak moments. Anyway, Redditors, hope ya'all are having a good time of it.

Danger words

I am compiling a list of words which sound the warning bells. Whenever you hear someone use such words, you can tell that they have been, or would very much like to go to business school. Further assessments about their character, legitimacy of birth and suchlike might follow, but that is mostly up to you. My job is to present you with the words. Here goes.

1. Leverage: should be used in a context which involves pulleys, chains, and machinery. Not in finance. Especially not in finance. If you use it in daily conversation, chances are you might have brought on the Great Recession.

2. Incentivize, also incent: an example: "we should cherish the for-profit college model because when executed well, it can incent a much greater focus on learning outcomes." Makes sense, in a certain perverse way. Only people espousing for profits are likely to use words like "incent".

3. Synergy: a douchebag word if ever there was one. Interestingly enough, finds its roots in Greek.

4. Team Player: a circle jerker. Also one with no responsibilities and a 401k.

Red Tails

A film by George Lucas about the Tuskegee Airmen - the first US Army Air Force unit made up entirely of African American. Does anyone remember the mid 90's made for Tv film - "the Tuskegee Airmen"? Yeah, didn't think so. I remember Laurence Fishburne putting up a bravura performance in it. Far superior to what I saw in Red Tails.
Also, while we are at it, why does Terrence Howard always look as if someone kicked him in the nadgers, took his lunch money and his 401k and buggered his aunt for an encore? I mean, has that man ever played a happy role?
So, back to Red Tails - fantastic action. Fabulous sequences of aerial combat, but completely let down by one dimensional characters and dialogue that sounded like it came straight from the Commando Comics. And the music - dear Gawd... remember Glory? Remember the rousing music. Well, now imagine the opposite. Amateurish, at best.
All in all, a rather mediocre effort. Probably put together with the best of intentions. But hardly worth your time.

Of bootloaders and boiling seas

Bootloaders. What, pray, is a bootloader? Oh you are not sure? Here, read this. Now, in the normal course of events, when your Windows system does something terrible, you usually pray that your backup DVDs are not lost, or your trusty passport drive is still alive and well and thank your lucky starts that its just the last week worth of porn (sorry, work) which is lost. You might buy (beg/borrow/steal) an install disc and voila! Back to lolcats! With a Mac, well if you have Applecare, good for you. Or else, it might just be a 1500$ hit. Now with most flavours of linux, there usually is a way.....

That way goes through the bootloader. This is something that makes strong men curl up and cry. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to rid my computer of the unused Ubuntu partition, and extend Win7 to the liberated space. I also have a Kubuntu partition (totally useful, with tonnes of data). Anyhoo, I did something horrid to the MBR and it refused to boot into anything. Back in the day, I would have enlisted the expert help of mah boys Padala and/or Nandi, or gone seeking the sage advice of Tony the Wise (our sysadmin, a person of Godlike powers). These days, well.. I was forced to walk the path alone. Until helped by Kamerad Kovalsky! Another one of them Wizards.

So... short story shorter - hard disc recovered, and I think I am slightly better equipped to do this myself the next time around. Woot!

Dream sequences

I dreamed last night that I drank a small quantity of some sweet wine, very viscous. I remember wondering if it was Imperial Tokay, and whether in my previous life, I had been a dawg. Rather appropriately, this dream seamlessly segued into my father instructing me in hushed tones that some high personage in the Imperium, possibly the Queen - had passed away. And that he was convinced that there was a mole hidden deep in the heart of the Geological Survey - and I had to bring him some files from Registry so that we could make sure. It was rather trippy. There might have also been something about a gangster driving a Mercedes W140. Although, it should have been a W201. I might need help. I am dreaming of Tokay and Cosworth engines.