Descent to mediocrity

The thing with beauty; true, untarnished beauty, resplendent in its own glory,is that she can not be appreciated fully by the mediocre, and doesn't care a damn about it. Whereas the truly perfect is naught but an abomination, bringing destruction upon itself and its maker, in the manner of Athena and Arachne, beauty, as humans perceive it, is chaotic, mesmerizing in its asymmetry, which, while not immediately apparent, forms an inherent feature of its appeal.

The mystery also plays a part. We have always been intrigued, awed, frightened by that what we do not know. Figaro, yes. The arms of the Venus de Milo. Mona Lisa's enigmatic half smile. The crescendo that a concerto rises up to, the percussion beating against our hearts, synchronous in its solid thump, the strings quivering in its high notes, vacillating between ecstasy and torment, while our body responds in a thousand different ways to what we do not understand. The slow rise, followed by the near deafening music, yes, music, not noise, and ye unfaithful be damned. The rapture of rhapsody, the untold words of  a picture, the primal attraction of a dance, they speak to the soul, insofar as one exists, in tones of exquisite sensitivity, in a language made up in equal parts of thoughts and silence.

But this isn't for the mediocre. No, the mediocre have been cursed, to live in this world, of unparalleled beauty and unequaled horror, and yet, to go through life, either content in their ignorance, or suffering in the eternal torment of yearning to listen, not hear. To surrender, not understand. In the manner of birds that want to take to the sky, they wish to fly where others shamble along the ground, not looking up, and yet their wings are clipped. And so they live, nudging and shoving, fighting petty squabbles, concerning themselves with trivialities, wishing, but not truly knowing what they're wishing for.

The only thing that is worse, pain beyond all measure, that drives one to the brink of a cliff of sanity, then pushes them off, is the pain of those who have risen above the rest, who have seen, and heard, and felt, something that touched their souls and changed them forever, but lose their ability, either by quirk of a fickle fate, or the premeditated malodorocities of malcontents, and are, like Icarus, thrown down to the ground to live with the heathen, the hoi polloi, to have their thoughts drowned out by the incessant meaningless chatter that is the vox populi. Their silent screams rend the fabric of their existence, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to push themselves off the ground, to push off themselves the chains of an uncreative gravity that binds them to the maximal plane of the many.

What kind of a life is that?

Four shots

'Its more fun headbanging when you have long hair.', she says. A grin, bordering on maniacal, lights up her expressive features, cast into sharp relief by the flickering lights, before turning away again. Her body moves in perfect synchrony with the music. The light streaming through the volatile tangle of her hair frames a halo around her head.

I look at the stage, the crowd, feel the heady, inebriating atmosphere, laden with notes resounding and notes unsaid, with memories of laughing with good companions, of better times, of times alone, memories, some real and some false, of how it was, and how it could have been, of concerts past, and pubs, and singing off-note in the middle o' the street in the middle o' the night, of celebrations and consolations, of unexpected achievements and bitter disappointments, of melodies, moods and moshpits. As the music lifts me up, jerks me around, and clouds my vision, and invites me down a path I'm intimately familiar with, I let myself go.

----------------------------------------------First shot.----------------------------------------------

We sit at the restaurant, the sole guitarist plays jazz, a saxophonist beside complementing him, both of them going off into odd little solos in the middle, while the other one, with impeccable timing, drops into the role of the rhythm, both of them keeping the beat without the aid of any percussion, a telltale tapping of the feet all that shows the effort behind mastery.

Utterly mesmerised, we watch the tight pair, our drinks untouched, as they go on playing, in their own world, unhurried by the whirl of life moving half tilt, full paced, around them, drawing all of us along with them with the gentle tug of their music. I notice an elephant outside the window, deeply in thought as it listens to the performance. As the piece comes to a close, it trumpets. The time blurs, I jump again.

----------------------------------------------Just getting started.----------------------------------------------

'Breathe out into my mouth', the dude with the badge. I start, involuntarily, and step back. I've been standing in a line so long that temples had begun to sit up and take notice. All right, maybe not that long, but conventional virtues like patience had long since been worn to nonexistence in our quixotic crusade for international music, tinged with uncertainty of whether the promised land shall indeed be ours, and expectations shall be lived up to.

The fans that were initially so full of eager talk of past concerts, the foreign ones especially inexperienced of indian lines, have sullenly retreated into their music players, as the opening bands start their performance for the night, and heads jerk up. It appears as if the organisers have taken a note or two from the temples after all, as a television streams proceedings from the inner sanctum. Everyone crowds towards the entrance, and they finally start letting people in, but if you thought this was the start of something beautiful, then think again..

'I'm sorry, what?' I'm still taken aback.
'Breathe. You are drunk. I know.'
Me? A strict teetotaler, and drunk? How dare he? All right, I need to bluff now. Think, think.
'I've got a nasty cold. You know, red eyes, runny nose. You don't want it.'
This point seems to strike home. His resolution of my inebriation seems to waver. 'But you are drunk?'
'Nothing but cough syrup, bhai.'
The crowd from behind is pushing and jostling, and somehow this lends credence to my sincerity.
'Ok, ok. Go.'
In as close to a straight line as i can manage, i walk in, triumphant. The band up on stage performs a drumroll in my honour. I bow, to nobody in particular. I decline a joint from a passing acquaintance, for the time in the line has made us like brothers, and run up to the front, as much as i can manage. The scene changes, the time changes, with the song drawing to a close, to the dawn of a new day.

----------------------------------------------Second shot.----------------------------------------------

The bass starts the set. The guitars cry out, wail, scream, sing, and carry you through a bewildering multitude of vicarious emotions. I'm on my toes one moment, and on the ground the next. The crowd sways gently with the music, as the undercurrents in the music translate themselves into a surge of emotional release. Mobile phones and cameras light up the backs of the sea of heads. The set grows tight, leading up to the highlights.

The tempo increases gradually, the band does not speak much, it does not need to. The beat grows erratic, true to its progressive genre, and suddenly the calm crowd loses its serenity, its sync. Two concerts merge into one as the song gives way to a rougher tone, choppy and forceful, as the crowd begins to push and shove. Gentle nudges push aside the more passive observers as a rough circle begins to form in front of the barricade. Some people are already in there, their heads going up and down, fists clenched, oblivious to their surroundings. I stumble forward, my head dipping and weaving, and come to a stand, feet spread apart, From outside the circle, a form hurtles, clad in a metal t-shirt, and tackles one of the headbangers with his shoulder, rocking him around, and he responds in kind, a lining of people now separates the emerging pit from the outside, and tries to make sure that there are no unwilling participants. The pit is violent in its absorption, people push and get pushed back, fall down, and get right back up, the music being the sole object, perception overloaded to an extent that nothing else matters. The master of puppets increases the tempo to a climax, and slowly brings the song to an end, wherupon the enervated moshers gather their wits upon them, and raise their hands in the only salute that the situation demands.

The next song is smoother, softer, like the caress of a lover after the more passionate lovemaking has come to a sated close.He leads up to the solo, the crowd is awed. I am awed. I remember the solo that followed, but not much else. The lights psychedelic. The sound refined to a point where it cuts you like a finely honed rapier, leaves you utterly drained after the song. 'so now where?'

The lilting melody of the opening riff of Trains lifts you off, into utter bliss. You do not talk, you aren't capable of it. Your eyes are open. Or maybe they're closed. This experience is as ephemeral as an out of body experience now. You cycle through emotions you didn't think you were capable of. You reach dizzying heights of elation, then abjectly feel depressed, not knowing the source of your grief. you pine for the love of your life, or not. You sing along. You stumble forward, and realise you have a foot, on the ground, at that. You're a bit surprised. They start playing the interlude. The crowd's clapping, en masse. You look up, and find that you're clapping too.

----------------------------------------------*Hic, where were we?----------------------------------------------

It finally takes a jam session to get us started. Us of the timeless continuum of music. The keys go wild, bodomlike, the guitar acoustic plays ubiquitous. Silence reigns as a drum solo is attempted, and pulled off. For a moment there is silence, a warm, anticipatory silence, waiting for the first notes to float in the air. And it begins. Albeit a few dozen hours late, thank the soundcheck, not that they're to be blamed. Its a day of firsts. The small enclosure is packed, well, as packed as it gets.

The tracklist warms up slowly, with the food stalls demanding a desultory visit in the space between two songs, or one that isn't a personal favourite. As the evening progresses, and some metal finds its way into the audience's ears, a lone wolf goes to the centre, and begins to headbang, unmindful, unheeding of the eyes 'pon his back. Emboldened by his misplaced bravado, some more go and join in, and soon enough, the spiral does its work, and the whole place is a raucous, stoned, motley of jumbled bodies, arms around each others shoulders, as a single organism that breathes to the sound of the music, including the ones in front of, and indeed, around the players themselves, who are as much a part of it as the audience is.

As the song comes to an end, and the encore after that, the sweaty, pulsating, out-of-breath revelers disentangle themselves, and settle down on the grass for the ending credits.

----------------------------------------------I think i losht count..----------------------------------------------

Its chilly, and depite the warm clothing, there's a nip in the air. We rub our arms as the band, if, indeed you could call them that, for they're no more than schoolkids, frankly, get up on the small platform that serves as stage, and strap their guitars into the tangle of wires that seemingly impossibly leads to the assortment of old speakers behind the stage, the whole setup looking as if borrowed from the scrappers for the night, the ancient stage oddly at odds with the youth of the performers.

The kids start with style, they might not know tricks to woo the audience, or using the lights, but they know their stuff. They start with covers from the golden ages of classic rock, and go on from there, and most of the crowd hums along, the young, the old, the street peddlers, the cap sellers, and the little furry dog that always seems to turn up at these gatherings.

----------------------------------------------Third shot.----------------------------------------------

A concert in the land of cheap booze, I had thought. Why not? How bad can it be? And here we were, on a beach, a bottle in our hands, singing the chorus of Hey Jude. I try to recall what had happened in the evening, and skip back a few hours.

I'm at the entrance to the venue where the gig's at. I notice a few people sneaking into the stage from under the barricades without paying the customary tipple for entry, and full of righteous indignation, I approach the authorities, who show me the error of my ways, and the beauty of being in a miniature utopia like this,'Dude, look. If they're desperate enough to sneak in from under the barricades, then they deserve not to pay the entry fee. Chill, enjoy the show. Have a beer.' There are couples sitting on the grass, and a gathering crowd near the stage, the music is folksy, but not quite. It has a bit of rock in it, and a bit of jazz, and a whole lot of interesting stuff that the mind ventures to identify. Sitting down, standing up, that day, this morning, the tune is catchy, infectious. With a start, you realise that you're singing the lyrics of the song, a minute earlier you didn't even know you knew them.  The first band's a three piece instrumental affair, with the drummer supplying the occasional vocals. But its the second, who come on stage and blow everyone away. Who knew so much could happen with three guys and a quart-er?

----------------------------------------------I swear i'm not high.----------------------------------------------

I seem to have landed back in the present. As the blurry shapes resolve themselves, I realise, that the frontman's climbed up the scaffolding. A solo of epic proportions is going on, so much as to seem a jam, laying bare the essence of their unique style as a band.

----------------------------------------------Panic.----------------------------------------------

The band bows and walks off stage, before the crowd has time to react. A collective gasp. Hushed whispers, are they coming back? They can not be done so soon. They're yet to perform their big ones. Or do they not intend to do it at all? Is it really over? The collective cranes its necks to look at the stage, to see if they've missed anything, imploring it, in its blankness, to reassure them that its not over yet. Everyone's on their feet, and crowding near the stage. At the height of the suspense, they walk back, without a word, pick up their instruments, and start. You discover that the world spins. In addition, it also rocks. Hard.

----------------------------------------------Fourth shot.----------------------------------------------

There is a pause. The silence is defeaning. You close your eyes. A single note is played, it hangs in the air, as if unable to fade away. Another joins it. And one more. The crowd goes wild. The song finishes, but its not over yet. The band'll play halo next. You skip back to the present, as someone collides into you.

I'm tired. Bands, artists, entire philharmonics have rendered their performances, and it goes on. And at that one point, your head heavy, feet leaden, your neck stiff, the drummer caresses the hi-hat with a drumstick, and the bassist slaps his thing. The beat worms its way into your consciousness. You know this song, even if you don't. The music starts again, and you forget the heaviness, the regrets, the burdens of mortality and its attendant worries, as your body resonates to the rhythm of the song. All concerts are same, and different. The good ones, the bad ones, the small ones, the large ones. The ones playing metal, and the ones playing jazz. The sophisticated functions, and the hippie gatherings. They call out in you that primal component that has remained dormant under eons of evolution, and yet reaches out to the furthest tendrils of your sensibilities. Everyone is in their own personal universe, and connected to everyone else at the same time. In that one moment, music transcends genre, region, and indeed, time itself.

Its a little past six in the morning, and I can barely stand. I look around at familiar faces, all of them worn out, all of them content. As the first rays of the sun reach the stage from the distant horizon, the band plays Fear of the Dark.

----------------------------------------------

'thank you so much, we had a wonderful time playing for you guys.'

This extended rant is essentially incomplete, taken from my experiences at the concerts of the past four years. all resemblances are intended,
Dedicated to her, who happened to utter the line that got this article started.

Sometimes you get your wish

      'I'm bored of being depressed.', he said, grinning. 

The crowd paid him no attention whatsoever.

      'I'm going to get my life into whack. Straighten out my messes. Dust the cobwebs off those brains.', he persevered.

The crowd continued its demanding task of doing nothing at all. A small argument broke out between two card players, who had realised that the other had been cheating since the start of the game, six games ago.

      'I'm not joking this time...', he said, to nobody particular but the entire populace in general.

The crowd ignored him pointedly, like fungus-on-the-wall. The small argument had started to show all the signs of a not-exactly-sunny nature combined with a bad hangover. In anticipation, money on tables was being pocketed, tabs were being settled, floors were being cleared. 

The card players had pushed their chairs back, and engaged each other in a staring contest. The bargirl, shotgun in hand, was flirting with a douchebag who, oddly enough, happened to be dressed like a cowboy. The entire pub's attention inconspicously centred on the card-table, in the manner where nobody dares to look, yet everyone's watching from the corner of their eye. 

A silence reigned. In the reigning silence, a single fly buzzed over the polished surface of the bar, until someone thoughtfully swatted it with a beer mug. Silence reigned again.

      'Now look, young man, i'm talking here...'

Suddenly, he had the entire pub's attention. The two players advanced truculently, flanking him on either side. 'Whaddya want, twerp?', one of them ventured, in tones of carefully cultured menace. 

      'Er, forget it. I don't think you'd get it anyway.'

'Try us.'

random #4

Why is it that most of our predictably obtuse patterns are only predicated upon the assumption that rationality is the key to logic, to predictability and therefore, to determinism?

Piled Higher and Deeper

Epic-ness-ness. I had great expectations of the PhdComics movie. And considering that it ain't being screened anywhere in our li'l country, (and the fact that we're still undergrads, yes, i can hear you going #cough, cough) after pulling an all nighter (reading the entire strip from back to front, mind you. I'm a strict adherent of the universal law of procrastination), and really, really wanting to watch this, I somehow downloaded the movie in an extremely lucky freak ~750kbps accident that left me feeling dazed and more or less universally benevolent. Smileys all around, too. Or not.

Anyway, back to the topic. The Movie. Piled Higher and Deeper than ever before. I won't tell you about the plot, or the soundtrack, or the acting, or any of that. Its irrelevant. Prof Smith, and that crazy bicycle, Cecelia's 'um, i'm still in school', and  'can-i-get-an-extension?' (although the reunion series would've been nice), Tajel's protests, and advice, Mike Slakenerny and procrastination, Ramen noodles, and most importantly, free food. The whole deal. (The credits are another treat in themselves.) And the best part? It breaks the stereotype. Those who know what i'm talking about know what i'm talking about. And the unnamed hero of the strip? Well, his name is .

If you've read the comic strip, its worth the watch. If not, well, what are you waiting for?

Hats off to Jorge Cham.
To read the strip go to: www.phdcomics.com

The Filthy City

timestamp: 8:52am 23 Jun 2012
title: the filthy city

   I checked my hands. Yep, two of them. Still attached. Legs? Present and accounted for, too. Torso? Still holding it all together. Other assorted appendages? Internal circulation mechanism? Ocular, acoustic and olfactory equipment? All in a working or at least workable state. So far, so good. One can never be sure with these mass manufactured goods. I then looked at the shitty cycle, wheels high on air, rust in all the right places, and checked my footwear to see if the brakes were fine. It all seemed fair enough, and I set off.

   The city is a big place. Big, at least, for those who actually walk, or cycle, and look around you while doing it. Its Its a huge, winding, rambling, ramshackle organism filled with so many varied elements that it is impossible for a scrap of paper to describe. But then there are those who simply roll up their car windows and drive from point to point, ignoring the traffic, the crowds, the beggars and the eunuchs, the flower sellers, the kids peddling pirated copies of popular books and cheaply manufactured toys, the chana and shingdana peddlers, and the filth. To them, the city's just as big as the map tells.

   To a cyclist, the city seems to be in limbo. The petrol, diesel and other decomposed animal and fart powered vehicles whoosh by, not deigning to notice the humble two wheeler. The pedestrians, on the other hand, seem to be frozen in mid stride, as you pedal past. Occassionally, you slow down, sometimes by choice, as you see the sun go down between two enormous cranes busy creating yet one more floor for a high-rise skyscraper, or a kid struggling to climb a wall with one hand, a mango in the other. 

   You gaze, dumbstruck by any of the million things that make the city the place it is, a recalcitrant elephant urinating all over the sidewalk, splattering pedestrians, the poor mahout poking ineffectually at it with a blunt stick. You look at beggars pulling a rude passenger out of an autorickshaw, for in the city, they can be choosers. At a temple in the middle of a slum, surprisingly clean despite the surroundings, the idol gleaming yellow, bedecked with small sparkly scraps of colourful cloth. At the roof of the slum, where hundreds of digital television antennae receive the evening's prime time entertainment, so many, that they could all be interfaced to form a giant radio telescope, probably. At the trains. At the rains. 

   Sometimes, though, the choice to slow down is taken out of your hands. The highway is treacherous, to all those who attempt it under their own steam. It goes up, and you cycle up the incline, huffing and puffing, while tempos try to run you over and bikers make weird faces. You reach the top, and gloriously start the downward journey, determined to build up speed till you can breeze by the next incline, but no, at the bottom, where you're fastest, lies a fiend, cunningly disguised to look like a signal, that waits till you coast down and then turns red. Poof goes your speed, pop goes the weasel, and you look at the next upward slope and feel like your sphincter burst. Another antagonist in the general scheme of things for a cyclist, is the bus, the great equalizer. But that's a story for another time. And there are times when pedestrians exist solely to jump at you, as if suicide was the plan, but if not, a damn good fight will do just fine.

   But you sense that i'm not telling you what you need to hear. Only what you want to. I praised the city and insulted the buses, fueling your patriotic ego and giving you something to bitch about. But there's more to it, and this is the pill that's usually difficult to swallow, especially since you've got so many troubles of your own, so many worries. 

   There is a point where cycling is no longer possible. When the shanties are clustered so closely together that there's barely enough space to even walk by. These are the parts that you walk by every day, the parts that you pretend do not or should not exist. For once, imagine, that you park your cycle, and go in. These are grim, gritty surroundings, and by subconscious intent, you pat your pocket just to make sure your wallet is secure. You see the piles of garbage, and imagine that there once must have been a bin underneath it, if you look hard enough you can even see a corner sticking out. Dogs and crows scavenge among the litter, unmindful of the broken bottles and other pieces of glass. If there was a walkway above, people would throw their trash right off. There are kids playing nearby. The smaller ones run after tyres and sticks, making sure they don't fall with a surprising dexterity, the slightly older ones have already begun paying homage to what will most probably be a lifelong devotion to cricket. 

   You go in, and a riot of smells assail your nostrils, already overloaded from the stink outside, so thick you could scoop at it with a spoon. They say, that in the really big slums, you'll be able to find anything under the sun, ranging from imported car parts to women claiming to be your grandfather, to convoluted political propaganda. I don't know which is worse. A lot of stuff is cooking, fish is being fryed in cheap reused oil, vada's emit their particular scent, so does garlic, somewhere. Someone's using some cheap cologne, clothes are drying, they've been starched too much. There are a thousand cheap television sets and transistors playing, their individual noises blending in to the combined din. Traffic blares on, unheeding. You wouldn't hear a person screaming to death in this place, you realise. The thought makes you uncomfortable, and your initial curiousity begins to fade. But you feel that this is something you have to do, and you push onwards.

   Some housewives are washing clothes, and the entire ground is slippery. Others are taking a bath. The handpump has a well cared for look about it. You climb up a rickety spiral staircase, and come out on an asbestos landing, among some television satellites. You see where the cable lines are spliced together, where the phone lines are tapped from the mains running along the road, ditto for electricity. Although authorities are cracking down on this, its not really helping. Where one wire is cut off, ten others will spring, like the far reaching effects of an underground revolution. Or the hydra. 

   From here, you see some of the older children from up here clustering in groups, openly suspicious of your presence, yet not with the fear of the hunted, but with the desperation of the hungry. The ones who begin to realise the effects of being born in a country like ours in a place like theirs. The rapid disillusionment setting in, the way one feels that some doors are closed before they could get a chance to even reach them. That good and evil are but words and at the end of the day, one still needs to fill one's stomach. The thought that morals are only for the rich, and the poor need to do whatever they can to get by. The thought that all the childhood ideals are precisely that, stuff for children, the thought that there's nobody out there who cares. 

   There's one thing you need to realise before you get out of here, climb on your cycle, and go back to your life. This is real, all of it, and poverty is not going to go away just because you pretend it doesn't exist. But that's not even the worst part. The worst is the indifference. You may have realised a lot here, but unless you hold on to it, unless you cherish the thought of your well being, of your incredible luck, you will forget. If you do, come back and read this again.    

   The city needs help. Whether you choose to help it is your decision.

Fakebook Wisdom

timestamp: 10:33pm 20 Jun 2012
title: Fakebook wisdom.


The internet is the mother of all lies, and the social network popularly, and unpopularly known as facebook, is its lovechild. It is the gorgeous, ravenous, filthy, irresistible creature that grabs you by the neck and shakes you till you're to dazed to do coherently think of anything else. Most of you agree with this. To the people who think this is utterly, completely wrong, facebook is a website that you make an account on, and sit and wonder what to do, because you have no friends. Not even artificial, grown-on-the-pot ones. And to people who don't know what facebook is, well, its just one of the things 'this arrogant new generation' chooses to drug itself with.


Well as far as introductions go, i'm not sitting here to do PR, so you'll have to make do with that much. And if you need more, for god's sake just Google it. (Ah, Google, another of the net's lovespawn, but I'll come back to privacy infringement another time. I'm afraid you'll have to wait.) And as it stands, i can't afford to sit and write about facebook as a whole. There's simbly (imagine a Malayali accent) too much to cover. I won't be touching on how good, or bad, a publicity agent it has turned out to be, nor the meme culture, because that's way older than an upstart like fb, not the pron groups, or the hate groups, or the i-am-a-depressed-goth-kid-who-would-like-to-be-alone-because-nobody-cares groups, because by definition, those shouldn't exist, and as for those of you who post the pouted-lips-short-skirted-self-shots, you just wait, i'm getting my whores-of-babylon column ready. Today's just about those small snippets of valuable knowledge that fb-users so liberally dispense, in the manner of a monarch distributing his largesse among the needy crowds.

The world's grown smaller, and there's a new set of cool people in town. The new set needs new rules. It goes by a new dress code, one apparently aimed at uniformity across the globe. It has a new language, where messages are shortened, unnecessary vowels cast aside like vestigial appendices, and flowery turn of phrase scorned in the manner of the black plague. But above all this, it has a new playground. A social one, a virtual one, where the players and occupants learn the wisdom that will serve them for the rest of their life.


What better way to illustrate this than with stuff straight from the source, the spring of perpetual horniness, er, knowledge. Let's start with everyone's favourite, relationship advice, 'Son, someday you'll make a girl very happy, for a short period of time. Then she'll leave you and be with new men who're ten times better than you could ever hope to be. These men are called musicians.' or, 'Dear god, please turn me into an asshole so that i can be attractive to women.' or, 'friends are like potatoes. when you eat them, they die'. Moving on to ethics and conduct, we have, 'why kill them with kindness when you can use a hammer?', 'smile, listen, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you wanted to do anyway..'(Robert Downey jr), and a billion others. On every conceivable topic.


It takes all kinds to make a world. Some are doubtful in nature, some are misleading, some are blatantly false. These, i need not go into, it comprises most of what's out there. Some are political, ''First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.'(for Anna Hazare)', some are aimed at pop culture, 'i think lady gaga just puts glue on herself and rolls around in random items'(Orlando Bloom), and others at religion, 'Retards. We all know one'. Some are lame, 'wanna know what makes me smile? face muscles.', some are corny, 'birthdays are good for health. studies have shown that people who have more birthdays live longer.', and some, plain crazy, 'the ocean gets its saltiness from the tears of misunderstood sharks who just want to cuddle.'. Some turn up the corners of your mouth in a wry grin, 'destroy racism. be like a panda. he's black, he's white, he's asian and he's chubby.', some are so true they leave you feeling awkward 'the moment when you have so much shit to do, you decide to take a nap instead.', and some are truly inspiring, 'the important thing is not to stop questioning. curiosity has its own reason for existing.'(Einstein).

For a generation that increasingly seems to display the average attention span of a baboon on shrooms with a rectal infection (or, as i've been told, Bill Clinton), the only true knowledge is that which can be summarised in a hundred and sixty characters. That being said, there still remains the minority of the populace (this being you and other similar minded people who could at the very least read this entire column) who appreciate that there just may be more to it than that. Look for it, that elusive bit that completes the picture, that goes beyond the 'lol' that etches itself on to your keyboard after a funny message, the bit that makes sense. It lies just beyond the page.

You don't need to leave facebook and exile yourself to a cave in the misty mountains. You don't need to go on a world-changing-candle-march demanding that facebook make sense. All i ask, is that, at least some of the time, use your brains.

Writers' blok #1: It writes once again.

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bored at 4am #1

the ronald opus story. (incidentally untrue) | Rough model
(read about it on fb, or on wiki, or whereever.)

assumptions: no two factors have a correlation. if they do, then the prob. drops even further. i'll update this model someday, maybe, if i'm bored enough again.


suicide rate in america: 19.0(male), 11.8(total) /per lakh people

fictional story, assuming him to be middle aged, the sex ratio is  1.00(15-64), and 0.75(65+)
therefore, the probability that he commits suicide is 19.0/(2*10000)

now, the number of people on an average (civilians) who own a firearm in the states is app. 34%

the probability that a family member has access to this firearm is proportional to the trust they place in each other, from divorce rates, estrangement and breach-of-promise suits, and other such cases, an estimate of this would be roughly 79%

23,237 accidental shootings in 2000 (since no other data is available, i assume its remained roughly constant since then), where the population then was 281,421,906. => 0.00008257

last two things:
spatial coincidence(rough)
area of an average flat is between 900-1000 sq.ft
Wall height is between 9.5-11.5 ft.
hence, considering that the bullet could be fired in any direction (the bias towards the direction of the wife is ignored), the probability that it will choose a spot where the trajectory would take it in the direction of opus is (considering his area as around 1sq.ft -> fatal only)
total surface area => 30ft*10ft*4+900sq.ft
prob => 1sq.ft/tot.area = 1/2100 = 0.00047619

the last thing i could think of (i might be forgetting factors that could possibly reduce the probability even further, but i'm being unduly optimistic here.), is the time factor.

temporal coincidence(rough)
it was two weeks since the attempted motherkilling setup -> average manifestation time of depression is three days, so thats 11 days that he's been contemplating suicide. that's 11*24*3600 seconds
assume the father goes into a psychotic gun-threatening rage every two-three days for a span of about 15 mins, then the amount of time pointing the gun around is about 15*60*7 seconds
thus, the probability that the events will temporally coincide is
prob => 15*60*(7 to 4.667)/11*24*3600 = 0.006628788 to 0.004419508

from these, the probability that this incident would occur is approximately between, (considering that the time and place were exactly as is, for all time and space. read multiverse theories for more.)

0.210694*10^-7 to 0.261704*10^-7

factoring in spatial and temporal conincidence factors, the probability further drops to about,

P = [Plower,Pupper] == [0.47827E-14,0.82619E-13].

please do point out flaws/improvements if you can think of any.

References:
"U.S.A. Suicide: 2006 Official Final Data". American Association of Suicidology.
Lott, John, John E. Whitley (2001). "Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime". Journal of Law and Economics
"03: Housing space standards: a national perspective" Mike Roys, RIBA '08
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Opus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
http://www.americanfirearms.org/statistics.php
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2007.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/17/us-usa-crime-shootings-guns-idUSN1743414020070417
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/opus.asp

ps. i've an exam t'moro. i should probably go study now.