Absolutely brilliant execution. Shame about the concept.

I caught a glimpse of this on television a few days back and was intrigued. I saw the full ad film today and I groaned.

Ironman meets the Transformers in a Nike ad? Why are the motorcycles playing basket-ball? Hasn’t ‘machines come to life when the guard isn’t looking’ been done to death? Did one of the bikes do the fucking moonwalk?

Have I been transported back to nineteen hundred and nintey two?

P.S. While on the subject of time travel, I just started reading H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and it is freakin’ amazing, like most books that I read totally fuck-all abridged versions of when I was in school as part of the curriculum. No wonder kids don’t read.

Books, Films, Rants Bajaj, HG Wells, New Bajaj transformers TV spot, The Time Machine

So. As I’ve said before, I don’t read anymore. At all. ‘Teh internets’ came in the nineteen hundred and nineties but in ‘03 or so I discovered broadband and tabbed browsing with the Opera Browser and my attention span was forever fucked.

Now, I don’t open a new web page with my coffee in the morning, I open a session. Thats right. About 25 tabs in all, which I flit between and use the Cmd+Shift+Click shortcut many, many times to ‘Open New Tab in Background’ so by the time I’m halfway through my coffee, I’ve got about fifty tabs open. So what does this have to do with my reading habits? Lots. Tabbed browsing has reduced my attention span to a few seconds, a minute at best. It’s pathetic really.

As a child and a young adult (hate the term) I would regularly read at least five books a month. I’m not boasting, other kids my age were getting to second base while I was reading Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra for the third time. <hangs head> Its true..

Nowadays I have a really hard time even getting through a leaflet or those BS little ‘Nutritional Facts’ tables on the back of bags of chips. I don’t need a table to tell me what the nutritional value of a bag of artificially coloured, artificially flavoured chips is! ZERO! That’s the nutritional value!

Anyways I just went off on a tangent there as I am wont to do these days but that just illustrates the point I am trying to make.

So. Quickly. Before someone jangles a set of keys in front of me and I go all “Oooh! Shineee!”

My Attention Span: Fucked.

AudioBooks though: Good.

Somehow the only way I can really ‘read’ now is with an audiobook. It takes a bit of getting used to and it has it’s drawbacks but when your back starts hurting just as you get to chapter two its time to give an audiobook a try.

So. Here’s a list of four great audiobooks (with links) that I’ve just finished ‘reading’, am almost through or have just started. I can’t even read a book at time now. I have to be reading at least two. But I digress…

Read more…

Books Alistair MacLean, An American Addiction: Drugs, and Counterinsurgency in US Intervention in Colombia, David Sedaris, Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook, Guerillas, I Am America And So Can You, Ice Station Zebra, Noam Chomsky, Opera, Scott Adams, When You Are Engulfed in Flames

A recent conversation about a Panopticon (wiki page here) led to a 4 A.M. urge to listen to Eye in the Sky, the 1982 hit single from British prog-rock group The Alan Parsons Project. The Orwellian sounding song was inspired by George Orwell’s book 1984 and front man Alan Parsons’ fascination with CCTV cameras. He ought to be thrilled with the current state of the Britian where (according to the BBC) there are over 4.2 million CCTV cameras or one for every 14 people. Geez. Do it to Julia!

P.S. Alan Parsons was the sound engineer on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. How is that for a claim to fame?

Get the MP3 Here

Books, Music 1984, Biritian, CCTV Cameras, Dark Side of the Moon, Eye in the Sky, George Orwell, Panopticon, Pink Floyd, The Alan Parsons Project

This week the world celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ which put forth his Theory of Evolution.

When I say ‘the world’ I’m not talking about ‘The Creationists’, people who think Mr. Darwin’s supremely logical explanations are all BS and live in the belief that God put Dinosaur fossils in the the earth to fool human beings and that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time.

I am not kidding. People actually believe this to be true. Creationists have successfully campaigned against the Theory of Evolution and now Creationism is taught to children in many schools! Still, they are really upset that the Theory of Evolution is still taught in most schools and ignorant dolts like me grew up believing this bile.  

To appease them, in these troubling times of reason I have posted this picture that I found on the internet. Click on the image to see similar images from Google Search. Enjoy! 

I also recommend two excellent books….

Read more…

Books, Random Charles Darwin, Christopher Hitchens, Creationism, Creationists, Dinosaurs, Google Search, Jesus, On the Origin of Species, The Portable Atheist

A lot of papers have called the Satyam scandal India’s Enron (just like they called 26/11 India’s 9/11, really? Do we really need  the validation that badly?)

So it is interesting to watch the documentary about the huge original scandal at Enron that I watched on new year’s eve this year. (No really. Long story about trying to balance out last new year’s eve which involved telling my boss ‘I quit’, flying to Goa to try to save a doomed relationship, getting wasted, swimming out to sea, twice and a whole lot of generally very out-of-character behaviour.) 

Back to the film. It’s all on Google Video (which has become a great source for PBS documentaries) and it’s called ‘ENRON: The Smartest Guys In The Room’. It’s about Enron’s rise and fall, the web of dummy companies that were set up, the dirty dealings, the creative accounting, the crazy schemes and best of all it has a lot of actual recordings, audio and video, of Enron Management making shady deals and Enron traders openly screwing over the American public so they could make a quick buck.

Once again, one of the Big Five accounting firms, Arthur Andersen was involved and despite clear, well documented malpractices and sheer criminal activity like shredding documents relating to Enron’s accounts, the audit firm has (from what I understand) got away scot free after their felony conviction was reversed because of a mistrial due to some technicality. Crap.

In one of my favourite books ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide’, one of the lead characters, Ford Prefect remarks

‘They’ve re-introduced the Death Penalty for the CEO’s of insurance companies.’

To which Arthur Dent says ‘For what crime?’

Prefect replies

‘What do you mean for what crime?’

Priceless.

Books, Films Arthur Andersen, Arthur Dent, Enron Scandal, ENRON: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

On the front page of ‘The Times Of India’ today were many articles about India’s ongoing war of words with Pakistan about the terror attacks in Mumbai but one little sub-article made me laugh until coffee came outta my nose. 

Here’s the text:

Indian dossier credible: Mulford

    A day after authorities in Pakistan rubbished India’s dossier linking Pakistani nationals with the Mumbai attacks, US ambassador to India David C Mulford said the evidence provided to Islamabad by New Delhi was ‘‘credible’’. Mulford told TOI on Wednesday that the dossier had been prepared with help from the FBI. “The US is not in the business of compiling evidence that is not credible,” he said when asked about Pakistan dismissing it.

The US isn’t in the business of compiling evidence that is not credible? Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone remember the ongoing War in Iraq? Does anyone remember that they never found any WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction,nukes) in the country? None. Not a single one. Zilch. Zip. Nada. (Proof of nukes was the US’s reason for invading Iraq.)  

And the US now admits it fucked up. I still remember watching the press conference a few years back where then CIA chief George Tenet said that the US had ‘SLAM DUNK EVIDENCE’ that Iraq had WMDs.

SLAM. DUNK. EVIDENCE. Repeat those three words aloud to yourself. This is the Chief of the most important, most powerful intelligence agency of the most powerful country in the world. An agency that has shaped world events either openly or behind the scenes like no other. Read more…

Books, Rants At the Center of the Storm, Bombay, bombay blasts, David Mulford, Dick Cheney, douchebag, George Tenet, i love america, i love you america, iraq nukes, Iraq War, Legacy of Ashes, mumbai, mumbai terror attacks, Nukes, SLAM DUNK EVIDENCE, The History of the CIA, The Times Of India, Tim Weiner, US ambassador to India, WMDs

I recently read Animal Farm again. Actually I listened to it as an audio book, which I am really beginning to like. I am so done with paper books now. I lose my page, people borrow them and make dog ears in them or worse still don’t return them. Once I am done with them they sit around and collect dust and since I am a secret pack rat at heart I never throw or give them away and now I have tons of them. Also I am growing old now and sitting in the same position for hours on end nowadays leaves me sore. My ass goes to sleep and my feet get the tingles. (Man, I sound antediluvian)

But, as usual, I’m going off on a tangent here. So. Lets turn this car around (Which is a brilliant Tom Petty song from his 2006 album ‘Highway Companion’)

Animal Farm. The more I read this book the more parallels I find between it and Orwell’s Magnum Opus, 1984. Read more…

Books 1984, Animal Farm, George Orwell, HIghway Companion, Tom Petty

I bought this book about a month back and it makes interesting reading, especially at a time like this. It talks about how we decide how much we are willing to pay for things, in terms of money, effort and time. It also shows how arbitrary and easily manipulated these decisions are.

Why are we cool with paying a hundred bucks for a cup of coffee at Costa when a few years back half that amount was considered a lot? How do we decide how many years we are willing to pay back a loan on a car? What about a loan on a college education?

It’s quite interesting and makes you really think about how you decide to spend your money, what you spend it on and what that says about you and your priorities, which is probably a good thing in these confusing times.

It’s not a recession. Oh wait, maybe it is.

Hooray for Capitalism!

Right up to the time it goes down the toilet.

Books Dan Arielly, Predictably Irrational

A couple of weeks have gone by since the terror attacks in Mumbai and I thought I’d just write about the reactions of various groups of people to what happened.

This is a follow-up to my previous post. Bombay. How I loved you.

Lets start with the ‘media industry’. A lot of people raised a huge stink about Barkha Dutt’s grating coverage of the events and the huge cock-up about whether the hostage situation at Nariman House was over or not. There is even a group on Facebook called ‘Get Barkha off air’ or some such crap.

Please. Get Barkha off air? She may look like a dog, sound like nails on a chalkboard and ask the most inane questions but people who say that she used to be great but has sold out, ought to get a clue. Also, part of essential reading for all students of journalism and mass communication, especially all the wannabe Barkha Dutts doing piece-to-cameras for news channels ought to be this book.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media – Noam Chomsky

Books, Rants barkha dutt, bombay blasts, douchebag, facebook, gandhi, India, indian press, indira gandhi, manmohan singh, mumbai, mumbai terror attacks, namrata siviya, narendra modi, NDTV, priyanka gandhi

So. I consider myself something of an animal lover. I have on occasion thought of going vegetarian but then I am faced with the simple reality that cows are in fact, very tasty animals. Don’t even get me started about pigs, with applesauce.

So I am a huge hypocrite. I love my dogs, hate people being cruel to animals and once shot a film about snakes and how misunderstood they are but I have eaten monkey brain soup.

But you know who’s ‘Animal Rights Activism’ makes me seem like the freakin’ Pope? (Not the current one that looks like a thug and says all the gays are going to hell, though)

PeTA. Thats right. Fucked up capitalisation that all the cool kids love, PeTA.

Where do I begin? In Mumbai a few years ago I called them on a Sunday and found out that their animal emergency help-line only works on weekdays, during business hours but I could press #3 and speak with a PR person. (PR emergencies must be very common in the city then)

But if there’s been an animal emergency, say a dog has been run over on the street or a bird flew into a wire, tough titties. Read more…

Books, Rants Doublespeak, douchebag, Eva Mendes, Fast Food Nation, Fuck Peta, Pepperoni Pizza, PeTA