Little People Set Out To Return Lost Jewellery

(The title of this post, according to some, is the one-line version of The Lord Of The Rings.)

Have you noticed how a lot of fantasy books have similar themes? Magic, elves, dwarves, orcs, swords with names, and other sundry elements find themselves being repeated too often in the same genre, and there is one series that I have read which goes on a refreshingly different path.

That is the Gameworld trilogy (The Simoqin Prophecies, The Manticore’s Secret, The Unwaba Revelations) by Samit Basu. Dhoti-clad biker gangs, Bengali princes, Asurs, Rakshasas, assassins, The Unbelievable Bulk (!)… A very Indian take on the world of fantasy fiction, and a sometimes-acid, sometimes-humourous near-obvious spoof on fiction as a universe! After Tolkien’s universe, the Sandman graphic novel set, and the Wheel of Time series, my favourite fiction.

I just finished The Gathering Storm, by Brandon Sanderson, from the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. The book, as all others in the series, impressed me. WoT is a thirteen-book-long series, each slightly thicker than a standard novel, some much more so. If I were to sum up the series in one word, it would be “Detail”. The intricacies of plot, the attention to detail, even down to glimpses of the everyday life of the people, the beautifully complete treatment of the structure of magic, the careful building up of characters and stories, everything is so meticulously perfect and near-encylopaedic, yet there is enough to leave you wondering, dreaming of the world you are reading about. The most impressive thing about this series is that even with so much backstory, even with so much world background construction, the author (Sanderson is mostly following extremely detailed notes left by Jordan to complete the series) brings the plot up at the appropriate pace.

The Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan’s labour of love, in a sense. Despite his being in the advancing stages of cancer, he made sure that his dreams, his ideas, his world was given to us.

After reading Lord of the Rings, the Eragon rubbish, and the Wheel of Time, I noticed one glaringly obvious plot point. Innocent villagers with hidden strengths and secrets, a world of evil suddenly swoops down on their idyllic and peaceful lives, mysterious, hidden and secretly-famous Great People come rescue a group of the villagers (one/many of whom lose loved ones to the afore-mentioned swooping of evil), these villagers become Very Great People and save the world.

LotR, of course, is the granddaddy of them all, and has a right to this plot point as the Original Granddaddy.

Eragon, is a stupid series. Very childish, with glaringly obvious plot holes and idiocies. I did not like it at all.

WoT, though it started off with this plot point, went off on a tangent of its own, and grew up into a near-perfect series.

 

Currently reading: Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. Previous works of his I have read: The Sandman graphic novel set, Neverwhere, Stardust.

Queued up: Anansi Boys, American Gods, both by Gaiman.

Needed: More comics to read!

Horn Not OK, Please.

Sometimes I get this wild urge to stop a vehicle, drag its driver out, and force her/his head to spend some time near his horn as I use it as frequently as s/he blows it.

Twitter

I am now on Twitter.

http://www.twitter.com/tarantinofan

And yes, I like that crow a lot. <grin/>

RIP?

Jokes:

0. Since he was 99% plastic, he is going to be melted down so that little boys can play with him for a change.

1. Mattel’s buying his corpse and auctioning it off to his victims, again so that the kids can play with him for a change.

2. He is being shipped directly to Madame Tussauds, as a special (recession-induced) deviation from their standard usage of wax.

3. Greenpeace is setting up anti-plastic-burning protest teams in case his will states that he wishes to be cremated.

4. His survivors are setting up a booth at his graves. 10 cents per urination. Buyback of Neverland Ranch in the works.

These are some of the jokes I have heard from people / thought of myself, to my own shame.

The man was found NOT GUILTY by a jury of his peers. This is a classic case of “Guilty until proven innocent”. He lost so much of his money on some greedy little teenager’s money-making evil grabsmash scheming.

Cut MJ some slack. The verdict was NOT GUILTY. To hell with the media.

Some say that life is but a dream, and when you die, you wake up. MJ’s life was bittersweet; towards the end, it was a nightmare. May the earth welcome him into her last embrace.

“Cho, Children, and Google Abuse”

First: It has been nearly five months. It’s not that I have not been really lazy at blogging. It’s just that I had misplaced my (Mandatory **** (That’s the name of the webcomic; not profanity.) Webcomic Reference (more thrown in very subtly / not subtly at all in this post) ) Regulation Blogging Implements; my Red Cape and Flying Goggles and the (metaphorical car key equivalent) Keys to My Balloon.

I usually don’t watch TV except for this Tamizh show (Yengai Brahmanan) which I watch sporadically, starring an intellectual called Cho who, far from resembling anyone from Harry Potter’s universe, is a New Age Guru of the Hindu Tamizh Masses who often gives surprisingly sound advice for the Confused. The format is one I have never seen before (not that I watch too much TV). There is the usual mega-serial (American’s may identify more with the term “soap opera” and magnify that meaning X10) story, and from time to time, the story freezes, the scene zooms out on to a small screen on the top of Cho’s desk. Cho’s Sidekick asks him questions about the scenario (common/religious quandaries and dilemmas which real people usually have) and Cho (to use collegespeak, “gives fundae”) enlightens his Sidekick about the Right Action(s) and the Right Path to be taken. Despite my non-belief in religion and all that jazz, I sometimes find myself appreciating Chospeak. So, Cho and Sidekick watch the lives of the people in the megaserial, and rationalise/comment upon/explain the important, plot-changing doings. Watch out for Sidekick’s facial expressions!

Cho-vin Yengai Brahmanan (Cho’s Where is the Brahmin (it might be State of Brahminhood, not Brahmin)) is a refreshingly different TV serial. No loud, thudding music for each and every nod of each and every character’s head. No crude dialogue / scenes / characters. No rowdies. No leafy-branch-waving Goddess-Kali-worshipping wildwomen. No under-dressed overly made up vamps. No item numbers (How can a TV show have item numbers? Eurgh.).

(Yes, many of my peers blog about their favourite bands, their favourite movies, et cetera. I decided to blog about a TV show I rarely watch but still appreciate for its difference.)

Seeing an insurance ad again today gave me the inspiration to write Part Two of this post (apart from Someone Else). Children. Why do we want them to grow up so fast? The ad in question has Eager Father egging his Little Overcute (in the sense of overripe) Speaking-Its-First-Words Infant on to say “Czechoslovakia” and Smiling Looking-on Vapid Mother smiling and looking on vapidly in her trendy clothes. Why is it that a noisy and boisterous child has to be quelled, but a quiet and mature child praised? Why is the Supreme Report Card Compliment “Wonderfully mature beyond years”? Why do we, as children, keep going “When I grow up…”? Society as a whole promotes this unhealthy unnatural ripening process (leading to my second rotten fruit metaphor for the day.) which has adults asking “What happened to my childhood?”, or “Where did those days go?” while simultaneously promoting (Mandatory Pulling On of Godwin’s Law), if Hitler “promoted” Aryanism and Lebensraum and his other policies, the accelerated growth of children. I have a lot to say on this subject, but I don’t want to turn it into a one-track, one-sided rant. I am open to any people who want to discuss this sad, sad downward spiral / vicious cycle (Adults promote non-childlike behaviour in children, children see that kind of behaviour as desirable and good, the donkeys reach the carrot and extend it to the next filial generation, and so on.) our society is in.

More Weird Searches (continued from http://tarantinofan.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/natasha/). The Top Searches section of my blog’s dashboard has “no golf”, “trafalmadorian”, “nivedita balaji nitk” and “soviet russian and vodka” as the top three searches. Just one instance of a search term does not make it to my Top Searches list. These terms have clearly been searched multiple times.  Look further below for my thoughts upon this.

My random unsorted comments:
1. Thanks to the readers who still keep my blog stats flying, even though I haven’t been posting for a while. Please leave comments!

2. To The Males of NITK: Comment on my blog! And please, please stop Google searching for girls whom you know of. You will not get their phone numbers. Or photos. Or anything that may satisfy whatever your urges may be. I refuse to believe that the (Intentional use of terminology used by the western police forces picked up from watching “Dexter” (Why don’t I use Indian Police Terminology? Is it “uncool”? Is it weird to write the Hindi/vernacular equivalent of perpetrator on an english language blog? Do I not know the Hindi/vernacular equivalent?) ) perps of these searches were just looking for the girl’s GPA or grades or her Engineer Team. (Yes, I (Ultra pun to which certain over-reacting people (“homies” should ring metaphorical bells) will congregate in my room / wherever I am and proceed to “slow clap” (the physical version of sarcasm, if you will believe it)) re-searched the Top Searches.)

3. My comics seem to have gotten a bit of (niche) publicity! Thank you, Discerning Readers! (Xor is it Discerning Picture Viewers?)

4. Using words from non-mainstream books boosts blog hits! Especially when you do it in the title! That post was written when I was not thinking quite straight. My apologies to the Veritable Guardian of the Blogs of NITK, Wingman (http://vikramgulati88.blogspot.com). Sir, I thank thee for setting me straight, providing more inspiration to set me writing, and for commenting on my blog!!!1 Others are welcome to (read “fervently begged to”) comment on my blog.

5. I now finally have more comments than posts, at the time of writing this. Wow. Please, please comment on my blog! But do not spam it! And do not just randomly post a “hi my name is and i really like ur blog y dont u read mine it is <’s blog>” comment. Unless you are being savagely irony-causing and satirical.

6. Cricket and the IPL still bores me. Fight against the Undeserved and Casual Besmirching of the Gentlemen’s Game’s Name! Comment on my blog!

7. It may strike some people that I might be asking so much for comments as a satirical anti-similarity. Where others are too proud to ask for comments, xor ask subtly and hint towards it and beat around the bush, here I am, begging openly. But be it satire xor not, comment on my blog, please! It validates the purpose of my blogging. Now it might strike a subset of the previously-struck people that I am recursing the sarcasm, creating a literary black hole into which all meaning of the statement disapears! But still, comment on my blog!

8. Yes, I now actively differentiate between the logical OR and the logical XOR in my speech. Cries of “Nerd” and like terms may now ensue. In the form of comments on my blog!!!1

9. Please, please, please. I beg you. I metaphorical fall at the foot of this post. (Xor am I just recursing the sarcasm? Think hard xor hardly xor lightly about it (depending on your cognitive abilities). But comment on my blog!)

WordPress Problems

WordPress is getting to be awful. I am having a lot of trouble posting.

A Trafalmadorian Book

If I were to write down all my thoughts, that (the title) is what they would become. So I attempt an approximation.

I wake up at 1630 feeling sweaty and horrible and irritable. The ceiling fan has been out since the semester began and the table fan is turned off. The sun is streaming right at my body and the door is slamming every once in a while, probably due to a draft in the corridor, while the air in the room hangs still. To top it all off, my best pal has gone off to Udupi for two days, leaving me in the lurch and most of the wing is in Bangalore. There, sweaty and horrible and irritable, all ready and sitting down to write.

Thom Yorke is wailing “Rain down, rain down” from my speakers and gets replaced by Vader’s evil evil song Freezing Moon. I stop writing at the guitar solo and hold my head in my hands. I feel truly and grandly horrible.

The gol guppas in the mess are riddled with holes and I struggle to salvage my memories of the old place at the corner in Ajmal Khan Road and remind myself that this is not what gol guppa is supposed to be. The tea, as usual, tastes like a diabetic mess worker pissed into it three days ago. I always add enough sugar to make the beverage, whether tea or coffee or milk, taste the same.

I have been reading too much gonzo journalist stories. First Hunter Thompson, Ye Moste Original and Authentic gonzo journalist. Then Warren Ellis’ Spider Jerusalem, who is a scifi clone of Hunter. Ellis should have written in more drug-induced visions. Great flying bat-shapes and bloodthirsty bipedal lizards drinking human blood would have improved Transmetropolitan to no end of good.

I watched the first five episodes of Heroes. “Save the cheerleader, save the world”. I wonder if all superheroes love being cryptic and slightly disengaged.

I need a bath.

Poo-tee-weet.

Intranet site

My friend Fakuja and I started an intranet site in college.
The link is http://172.16.52.142
If you are at NITK, you can access it! It is an intranet site just for our college, an amalgamation of social network, multi-writer blog and discussion forums. Since the address is Fakuja’s IP, the faculty will not come to know of this unless some cretin squeals.

If you are not at NITK, too bad! But we plan to make this public sometime in the future, so wait and watch!

New photos

Took some 50, reduced it down to 6. Would never be able to do this with a film camera! FSM bless technology!

The link is here for all who want to see.

Sheep

I do not hate Marathis. I hate fundamentalist rabble-rousers

who enrage the unwashed, unpaid masses, and then go back to their

mansions in their chaffeur-driven mercs.

What these preachers do to rouse the rabble is no different from the

process of converting ordinary people into brainwashed terrorists.

Thanks to Cow’s comment on A Different Perspective for the idea

behind this comic.