Jump

Jump, first off, is a verb. How can you go wrong with a positive verb?

--David Lee Roth, talking about the Van Halen single, Jump

Jump was a huge song. I loved the big-hair bands of the eighties--Van Halen, Journey, Deep Purple, Scorpions. That was my golden age of music.

Ah well.

Quick, what do we tell the wife?

Let Haneef return with self-respect, says wife

I feel bad for her.

Large and organized religions can sometimes be a very sweet deal for men, aye, but I hold that women have been routinely shortchanged by religion. A fundamental wisdom of large religions has been that women are either auction-ready chattel or are to be avoided. Hardly a flattering assessment.

I am fairly certain that women have only a passing tolerance for loud religion-mongering. All the philosophical dickwaving about whose god has the bigger biceps leaves them cold. Religion is far more personal to women than it is to men; they might nod and smile at their husbands or boyfriends out of patient consideration, but I suspect that they mostly go along to get along.

I further suspect that they are faintly amused when they see the reflecting on deep cosmic questions by someone who on any given day cannot reliably locate his laundry.

There is a reason why there is little empowerment of women in deeply religious societies. Otherwise it would be a huge problem for the men there. Because then, when we start going on about global Jihad or bringing the light of Christ to the world or banning Orkut for its anti-Hindu messages, they would tell us to shut the fuck up and take the eight o'clock to work.

Most religion is, to put it simply, anti-women, and I think that quite a few women have the smarts to instinctively latch on to this truth.

This is why I am amazed when I see the occasional woman come down violently on the side of Allah, or the laws of Manu, or whatever-the-fuck. I am amazed because I find it hard to reconcile myself to the sort of denial and obtuseness that this requires.

A woman coming out and marching for religion is like fattened beef-cattle handing out flyers for Outback Steakhouse.

But I ramble on so.

To repeat, I feel bad for Firdous Ashriya. Indeed, I feel bad for all women who put up with the shite that we put out in the name of our respective sky-genies.

Pratibha, Pritam, Putli Bai... what's the difference? What the hell do we need a President for? Show me an Indian who likes rolling up his money and smoking it, and I'll show you someone who needs a President.

Idiocy enshrined in the Constitution is still idiocy.

Empty Rashtrapati Bhavan and turn the fucker into a creche or something.

And after all the violence and double talk
There's just a song in the trouble and the strife
You do the walk,
You do the walk of life.

Simply beautiful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdDHsehW01M

Art can be additive or subtractive. Layering oil on canvas is additive. Sculpting a figure from a block of stone is subtractive. This one here seems to be both.

Just breathtakingly beautiful. Watch it.

I knew it

Khafeel was brainwashed with Gujarat riot tapes

I knew it. It's our fault.

Is there a man in manmohan?

Don't target any community: PM to UK

Why does this insect not miss the slightest opportunity to go and grovel before foreigners, just so he can mollify a militant vote bank at home?

Why do I cram a question and an answer in the same sentence?

I'm swearing off Rediff

Glasgow attackers were resigned to death: Cops

That's it. No more rediff for me. When a newspaper starts printing boldfaced lies, it's time to take your business elsewhere.

Stop lying to us rediff. Stop calling Khafeel Ahmed an Indian Muslim. What exactly are you smoking?

Even a particularly slow child knows that Indian Muslims don't do that. The bruthas just ain't down with that terrorism shit, man.

Dontchoo also know that it is required learning in High School Dhimmitude 101 and therefore common knowledge today that it is mostly lack of education and poverty that drives ordinary Muslims to have this sudden desire to turn uninvolved bystanders into charcoal? Educated, affluent Muslims just don't do this shit. So stop calling him an engineer. He can't possibly be. Where is your journalistic integrity?

Besides, Islam itself, having had a peaceful beginning and having been spread through a rough sort of homebred loving kindness, quite naturally does not sanction this sort of tomfoolery. I challenge you to show me one verse--just one--in the Quran that says: Thou shalt, with some regularity, bring burning trucks to the infidels. Can you? You can't. I knew it. Case closed.

Khafeel Ahmed is not Indian, not a Muslim, and not educated. I, for one, refuse to believe any of that bull. So stop with the lies already.

Wankers.

Pardon the Morbidity

There are certain expressions that I have never understood. One of them is: unnatural death.

What is an unnatural death? All death is natural. As a matter of fact, it seems to be mandated by nature. No exceptions. If you know of an exception, I would suggest that you publish.

Some people consider a homicide to be unnatural death. Do you consider that human death caused by another human is somehow more unnatural than death caused by bacteria? A human being is as much an agent of nature as is a bacterium. So what is unnatural about this? It may be sad, horrible, or illegal; but it is not unnatural.

Maybe what people really mean by unnatural death is premature death. But premature how? What would cause maturity in a person so that when he dies by whatever means, people no longer consider his death unnatural? Age? Reaching some sort of a goal?

What age makes a death natural? Or what goal does a human need to get to which will no longer make the rest of us classify his death as unnatural?

Getting to have sex?

Having children? (How many?)

Landing a good job?

Gathering wealth? (How much?)

Having made the world a better place? (Too vague; what makes the world a better place?)

So this entire business of what is natural or unnatural about a death seems to boil down to the question of some sort of a purpose of a human life, which when completed, makes us a little less uncomfortable about its end and stops us from calling it unnatural or unreal or whatever. So what is the purpose of a human life?

And no, "42" is not a good answer. And yes, I need a meaningful hobby.