Quit bitching that I haven’t posted in a while and look at this.

Random

It gives me a great thrill to see that this image that I made for a previous post (by adding the caption FAIL to a photograph of Barkha Dutt that I found on the internets) has been used as the image on most of the recordings on YouTube of the famous Indian journalist Barkha Dutt’s conversations with UK based lobbyist Nira Radia.

These recordings have been at the eye of a storm with everyone accusing Ms. Dutt of corruption on an epic scale and NDTV and the ladies involved trying to brazen it out in a typically Indian fashion.

I just realised what the furore was about because in the past month I noticed a huge surge in traffic to this site that was looking for actual Barkha Dutt news and not just the regular wierdos looking for ‘Barkha Dutt Nude, ‘Barkha Dutt Boobs’ or other Barkha Dutt related pornography (I understand fetishes you guys but please, get a life!)

So I read Open magazine’s articles and listened to the recordings and call me cynical but I wasn’t shocked in the least. This is how the media has operated forever and anyone who is surprised by the level of complicity and just pure corruption for lack of a better word is truly clueless.

Listen to the audio recordings here and try to see if you can tell at which moment exactly the line of journalistic integrity has been crossed.

Also worth watching is Karan Thapar’s interview of Arun Shourie, a grand old man of Indian news who still makes more sense and has more dignity than anyone else in the fourth estate today can ever hope to achieve. I think it is very telling when the ex-editor of two of the leading newspapers in India encourages everyone to be highly sceptical of everything they see and read on or in the news.

Also, I said the words ‘Journalistic Integrity’  and ‘Barkha Dutt’ in a single sentence. Funny! Let’s try another one. ‘NDTV gives you balanced news and unbiased editorial.’ Bwaaa Haaa Haaa! Am I a comedian or what?

Some previous commenters on this blog have asked me why I despise the fine lady and my answer is the terrorist attack in Mumbai on 26th of November in 2008.

I watched a television in horror as everyone in charge seemed to be paralysed with inaction but also as Ms Barkha Dutt interviewed the distraught families and friends of the people hiding inside the Taj Hotel in Mumbai that the terrorists had laid siege to and in which they held an unknown number of people captive.

When the captives called their families pleading for help and told them which rooms of the hotel they were hiding in to save their lives, Barkha Dutt announced this information on live television to the world and I’m sure to the terrorists inside who were certain to have a television tuned to NDTV or at the very least have radio contact with someone who did.

The same thing happened when commandos tried to storm Nariman House during the same attacks to try and free the Jewish hostages. In her enthusiasm to get LIVE NEWS out not only did Barkha make a fool of herself by constantly contradicting the news she had just announced, she also gave the rescue team’s every move away.

Needless to say, NDTV got immense ratings for those two days and most if not all of the people hiding in those rooms at the Taj Hotel died and everyone in Nariman House save for an infant, met the same horrible fate. Wait, allow me to rephrase that.

MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO BARKHA DUTT RATTED OUT IN THE 26/11 ATTACKS WERE SLAUGHTERED.

Since Ms. Dutt was not put on trial for treason back then these new accusations are totally pointless and shall go nowhere in a hurry. Shut up slaves and go back to your televisions.

P.S. There are absolutely NO nude pics of Barkha Dutt on this web site.

(A thousand guys just read this and went awwwwwwww! )

Be good, eat fruit.

Random, Rants

So. The year has scampered by like a rabbit and the temperature has started to drop down into the single digits once again. With the transition to writing work as my bread & butter now almost done and an output of up to five thousand words or more on a good day to be able to keep body and soul together I just haven’t felt like updating this site. Also I have been travelling around a bit. (The photographs are on Flickr here) Recently the hosting and domain for this site were about to expire and instead of renewing both for a year I thought I’d go nuts and pay for two years at once.

Cuz it’s how I roll bitches!

In truth though, hard as it is to believe, this drivel has gotten me a few writing gigs, some of which might work out to be quite lucrative in the future, or at least that’s what they told me.. (Why do I feel like those cartoon characters that realise they’ve been had and then their head turns into a donkey head?)

So, I thought that since I’m paying good money for this damn site I might as well update it with more self-indulgent lameness that no one reads. So here goes….

First up is the song, Faster from the second album by American artiste Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid: Suites II and III released earlier this year. Inspired by the classic sci-fi film Metropolis, this has to be one of my most favourite albums of the year. With styles that are all over the place from funk to R&B and just flat-out pop songs, all brilliantly produced and with Monáe’s supremely confident vocals it just works, much like Outkast’s SpeakerBoxx/The Love Below album from 2003 did. A couple of the tracks like Cold War are distinctly Gnarls Barkley-esque which is high praise in my book. Other stand-outs include Wondaland, Tightrope and Locked Inside.

I thought ArchAndroid would just be something light and fun to listen to (and dance like a mad fool to) till Cee-Lo’s new album The Lady Killer came out but the more I listen to it the more it grows on me and when Lady Killer finally did come out last month it just didn’t measure up to his previous work with Danger Mouse as Gnarls Barkley. Or to this album in fact, not by far…

You win some you lose some I guess….

MP3 Courtesy of the interwebz is here.

Be good. Eat fruit.

Films, Music, Random

A friend recently revealed that she writes some pretty risqué prose that she would rather not be revealed as the author of. (So we shall just call her ‘Emm‘)

She has allowed me to post one of the more sober pieces that she wrote (which is still pretty racy and may cause some dryness of the mouth in anyone who reads it)

It also reminded of the equally hot song above. This is Use Me by Bill Withers. Fiona Apple did a cover of it that was perhaps even better than the original here but more on that some other time.

Get the MP3 for the song here. Hat-tip to ‘Emm‘, your talents never cease to surprise..

Feeler in Dreams.

There was life and it grew though the mold in the carpet.

The air in the tiny one room apartment hung heavy, reeking of musk and stale cigarette smoke that gathered around the cobwebs forming clouds. Tiny beams of sunlight that fluttered through thick, light retrenching curtains were a stage for dust particles to do their shimmy.

In spite of the revelry of gloom, she slept open-eyed, staring at the ceiling that was peeling away like her mind.

The bathrobe was worn so much it became her skin. Stripping it away meant peeling away her skin. Eventually, it meant death. She was a figure of doom that was rife and waiting to burst. The bed was her stagnant pond, she the algae. Floating silently, not wanting to reach shore, instead exist lifelessly through just breathing. She licked her dry lips like a serpent and swallowed her saliva and lit cigarettes.

She existed but only in space.

She waited for sleep, where the clown visited her with his cherub like face, painted in colours myriad. He changed his costumes to suit her fantasies and sometimes his soft elbows were cased in silk shirts like concierges. The services he offered to her were those of amusement, shock, anger and bitterness.

The choice was unlimited, like the colours on his face.

As sleep cajoled her today, he came to visit with boots and cape. He told her he liked how she smelled. Maybe it was vanilla, a flavour of ice cream she loved as a child. He then asked if he could hold her. Today the passion was not there, as it was occupied by surprise. She allowed, was weary and fell asleep. He then slowly started to pleasure her. He touched her boy chest and felt the ribs that knocked on the skin so sharp. He trailed his soft chubby hands over to her crab shell rib cage, which beckoned to rude hips. Then he felt her moist insides and touched them very gently. She woke up and didn’t want him to play the feeler in dreams today.

She protested, her struggle was soft against him, almost whimpering. He rocked her like a baby and let her wake up.

Books, Music, Random

Earlier this year, in the summer I did a project where I met some of the sweetest, most adorable kids I have ever seen. Here is a Flickr photo-set of some of these children. Click the photograph above to go the the slideshow.

Here is the link to the set if you’d like to forward it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samreth/sets/72157624791781738/

No snarky comments from me in this post. These kids quieted the icy inner cynic in me, if only for a while.

Also I got the Hackintosh AFP server up and running. The sarcasm will be back in the next post along with some thoughts and advice on the project.

Be good.

Random

So the other day someone’s tweet reminded me of the crazy/brilliant Prince (or the artist formerly named after a dog) soundtrack to one of the Batman films. The video above. Watching it fired some dormant synapses in my brain and unearthed a memory from my childhood that I had long suppressed.

As Mark Twain said, never trust anyone who enjoyed their childhood. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in my happy place during the last twenty years of the twentieth century, but I digress…

So, the memory. Many, many moons ago in the late nineteen hundred and eighties there was a hindi film I was taken to watch in a cinema hall and then since it was such a great picture that all the grown ups loved so much I was taken to watch it in a cinema hall again.

The film was called HUM and it starred among others, Amitabh Bachan, Govinda and my personal gold-standard of pure, unadulterated manhood, Rajneekanth. For those of you not familiar with the pop culture of this subcontinent think about Steven Seagall and Chuck Norris meeting and making sweet, sweet man-love. Now stop screaming and  retching and think of their love child. Multiply this love child by one hundred with a level bonus for coolness and you have South Indian Demi-God, Rajneekanth.

So normally Hindi film-makers copy songs but in this case they were like “Fuck it! Why copy a popular song when we can just play it on a jukebox and have Govinda and Rajneekanth beat the fucking Bejesus outta some bad guy to the beat?” and then they all gave each other high-fives and shot this video.

What you end up with is a fucking #EPICWIN for entertainment even though it is a #FAIL for originality. Please watch the clip and try not to hurt yourself from laughing too hard. Also because I love you I have scoured the internets and found a version with English subtitles because it has been scientifically proven:

Crap Hindi Film + Ludicrous English subtitles by someone who seems to have little understanding of either language =  DOUBLE THE FUNNY!

So, watch the original video above first and then brace yourself and click play on the hindi video below. Watch for:

1> Govinda and Rajneekanth holding hands and dancing while thrusting hips homoerotically at each other.

2> Totally not fake or pasted on looking moustache on bad guy.

3> Rajneekanth giving us the first clue of the impending ass-whooping the baddie is about to receive by saying to Govinda “SHOW THEM THE PROWESS”

Enjoy! You can thank me later….

Films, Random, Rants

So people constantly send me links to music and email me tracks that I am going to absolutely ‘lurrve’ (yes, spelt that way) and despite the fact that I am flattered that they took the effort for the most part my general reaction is Meh!

Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I just don’t get the music that those crazy kids are listening to these days but yesterday that changed. I was IM’ed a track that saved my frakkin’ lame-ass weekend and has been on single repeat on the iPod and the MacBook for most of last night and all of today. The big THX rated sub-woofer that sits at my feet has never been happier (Note to self: Stop anthropomorphising objects. They hate it!)

Despite its distinctly French sound it is actually by a German duo called Sirirusmo and Dana and it is called Gummiband, which means rubberband in some language according to the Google.

The first comment on the Youtube page on which I heard this song went something like ‘If this song went on for 12 hours I would never have a bad day ever again.’

I totally agree. If this track doesn’t make you want to get up and shake your ass then you are dead inside.

Be good, avoid assholes.

Steal the MP3 from the internets here.

Music

Jack Johnson’s new album To The Sea was just released and its more of the same mellow sounds, he doesn’t cover much new ground here and these tracks could just as easily have been off pretty much any of his previous albums. Some would call this album middle-of-the-road and non-offensive derisively and they would have a point. If you are looking for artistic progression you’re going to have to keep looking, there’s none of that here. This track in particular, ‘My Little Girl’ is indicative of most of the album, simple if jaded lyrics and all.

But it isn’t all bad and I’m just happy to have new driving music that helps keep thoughts of vehicular homicide at bay. Honestly.

Get the MP3 Here and enjoy!

I also got sort of suckered into going to watch the new action film starring Angelina Jolie, SALT and here are some things I would rather do than watch that film again.

1> Be kicked really hard in my nuts by every single person in the cinema hall that night.

2> Be slapped really hard in the face by every single person in the cinema hall that night.

3> Listen to an entire Black Eyed Peas song.

4> Listen to Bono spew bullshit about starving kids in Africa for the duration of a Black Eyed Peas song.

You get the idea…

Be good, eat fruit, avoid assholes.

Films, Music, Random

The first part of this post can be found here.

With the hardware part of my new/old desktop tower running I went to Ubuntu.com and downloaded the disc image for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Once the 700ish MB download was done was I proceeded to try and burn the disc image to a 1 GB USB drive I had lying around and this is where I ran into my first problem. I tried about 5 different ways to do this on a Mac without any success and finally I gave up and read the instructions on the Ubuntu site that said that this was not a ‘recommended’ method of installation. Windows apparently, was needed to create the USB installer. So a few days later I got hold of a Windows laptop and created a bootable USB drive from the image.

At this point I should clarify that in all fairness my inability to create a bootable disc from the image was due the fact that I use Mac OS X and there is apparently NO way to do this on a Mac except for some weird terminal commands that did not work for me. Also, I could have easily avoided the trouble I had with the disc image by just burning it to a CD but if you read the first part of this post you will have noticed I had a CD-Writer that I doubted was still working. Long story short, it wasn’t and I didn’t want to buy another drive for what I thought would be a one time use only. Read more…

Rants, Tech

That’s right all you free software loving losers and nerds. Send your hate mail to the address on the right. Also, if you don’t like reading about tech you should probably skip this post coz I’m about to get my geek on here.

So recently two things happened. Ubuntu launched, to much fanfare, the latest version of their operating system 10.04 LTS (Horny Heron or whatever lame-ass name the freetards gave it though in all fairness, Apple’s Snow Leopard moniker is hardly better) and I sold the Mac Mini, for three reasons;

1> I gave up the idea of ever buying a television and using the Mac Mini as an HTPC, there is just not enough content available to warrant my ever spending money on an LCD television. TV is dead to me. (The irony? I work in the television and film industry)

2> I needed/wanted a tower again, I want to buy cheaper, faster, higher capacity desktop drives and components to use in a system, no more pricey laptop components on a desktop system just because it is the size of a frakkin’ lunch box thankyouverymuch. The Mac Mini just wasn’t cutting it anymore as a file server and a back-up computer to the MacBook Pro and the other systems in the house.

And finally 3>Due to a recent unemployment (HIRE ME!) I had some free time on my hands and wanted to build a desktop computer again, something I had not done in almost half a decade and used to enjoy very much.

So, I sold the Mac Mini to an Iphone app developer on Craig’s List (I also dealt with a scammer who wanted to send the payment to me from the United Kingdom and have me ship the computer to and-I-kid-you-not, NIGERIA. I responded with a cordial, business-like BLOW ME!)

I then gathered the bits of computer hardware scattered around the house like pieces of flotsam and jetsam, mostly hardware abandoned by my brother when he got his first Mac last year (A white Macbook) and this is what I came up with

Read more…

Rants, Tech