Choreograph

Interesting and possibly inadvertant choreography. See this video at around the 45th tick on the countdown to see what I mean..."dancing to a different tune...from a report filed from inside secretive North Korea."

Tree of Gold

Sting sang "Fields of Gold" and of walking in 'em.

Shanxix (of relation to moi) simply executed it in his own version of digital poetry (er photos). Gold dust covering the trees on a fine winter morning as captured from inside a train running at 80 kmph.

The Sun or The Mist

My brother the nature fan(atic !!!) snapped this wonderland scene enroute to Tirunelveli on one wonderful winter morning. Talk of being there at the right time at the right place with the right equipment.

. 2 ?

Point. 2. Ponder.

This funny observation by the early 20th century New York Times columnist Don Marquis...

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

Now, why am I unable to stop laughing at its relevance to our beloved President Bush. Or for that matter for any damn politician alive today.

The Philadelphia Story

Superb star cast - Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart & Cary Grant.

Fantastic story about human prejudices and frailties and ultimately about that ultimate human tendency - the ability to forgive and accept.

But these two are never enough to make a good movie. What you need is fantastic writing - the script for this movie is sizzling. The dialog is sensational. And that superb cast mentioned above - well, it seems the lived and breathed the roles when the movie was made. Such sincere and earnest are their portrayals.

The superb dialog - "I am standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy!". "What's this room? I've forgotten my compass. I'd say south-by-southwest parlor-by-living room"
"You'll never be a first class human being or a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty."

Ah! Such exquisite timing in comedy and such flowery prose in drama.

What else to say except, go, watch it. On cable on Turner Classic Movies. Or from Netflix or Blockbuster. Or if you are lucky, your local library.

Random Randomness

Things that I can never stop pondering about - well, there are always too many things. But the one thing that always fascinates me is the true measure of randomness. In short, how random is random?

For all practical purposes, we use calculated randomness - a random generator that has an initial seed. And that is the bias that prevents it from being truly random. It is like approaching infinity. Once you feel you are there, there is always something more. And more. And more. So, how do we actually achieve randomness?

Well, I suppose one way is to not strive for randomness at all. (Gulp! That is not a solution is it?). Well, maybe if we shrunk our perspective to something smaller, then events happening in that purview just might appear to be random. Note the keyword. Appear. Maybe that is all there is to it. True randomness doesn't really matter as much as the appearance of it. So typically human isn't it - the reality does not matter as much as the appearance of reality.

One final word I suppose - lack of bias or randomness maybe is crucial for a lot of our current applications and things, but in the grand cosmic scale of things, maybe everything is truly random and yet really programmed. Yes. Programmed, and random. Together. And yet disparate. Now I am totally confused. Heck. Who cares. Its 07/07/07 07:07:07 PM. Now, I have exactly one year, one month, one day, one hour, one minute and one second to come up with another such random tripe disguised as a blog-post. Boy, the summer heat is really causing my brains to go awry :)

Thank You For Smoking

Spin. Spin-doctoring. How you want to call it, whatever you want to make of it, the one thing that is constant in this day of instant media and instant news, is spin. Not the facts, not the news, but the interpretation of what that means to you and me, the ordinary joe. And not the interpretation that we choose for ourselves, but rather the interpretation of the news given to us, rather thrust down our throats by the so-called media and Government.

Granted, it has been proven beyond doubt that smoking is harmful to health (and no, don't even bother trying to convince me otherwise). Granted, the harmful effects of smoking need to be taught to people so that they can make informed choices. But is that the reality? Nope. Instead, we have pseudo advertising in movies and such that portray smoking as a cool activity that screen heroes do. Ergo, it must be a cool thing for teens and kids to do.

What we have is a total abdication of personal responsibility by parents and actually everyone around. Until we as individuals can stake and claim the responsibility for our own lives, no matter what happens around us, we are going to be stuck in this vicious cycle. Till we wake up, well....Thank you for smoking!!!

Summer of movies

Wifey and I both love to watch good movies. We both get bugged with typical run-of-the-mill movies (read: most desi movies). So while Netflix and public libraries contribute to satisfying the thirst to watch good movies, there is still the occasional indulgence towards typical summer blockbusters. So far, we're two into the summer movie season. Pirates of the Carribean - At World's End, and Ocean's 13.

Loved Pirates. Loved being able to loudly guffaw in the theaters. (Side note: Only Ocean's 11, Ice Age, and Pirates of the Carribean - Curse of the Black Pearl have provided for totally, utterly, and completely satisfying movie-going experiences. These three movies were a perfect synergy of disparate sources of joy - all coming together at the right place at the right time.). Granted that both movies sorta-kinda-desparately tried to live up to the glib-tongued smart-a** feel of their original versions, they were still good in their own merit. Weirdly enough, we've missed the third installment of two other successful movie franchises of the recent decade - Spiderman, and Shrek. And even more weird, we don't even care we have missed it. I guess you can only flog a dead horse ever so much.

Oh well...I am working up the reasons to convince her to go with me to see Ratatouille from Disney-Pixar, and maybe she won't need nudging to see HP-OotP.

Netflix is providing the nature-fix through the Planet Earth series from BBC/Discovery. Thankfully, they are shipping the Sir David Attenborough narrated version. No offense to Sigourney Weaver (she did a very excellent job in another amazing documentary - Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry), but in Planet Earth, her narrative is, to say the least, awful. Well, maybe the reality is that I am biased towards Sir David Attenborough's clear, concise and involved narrative. Maybe it is watching series after series of Sir Attenborough's works including Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Blue Planet - Seas of Life etc. Maybe it is also the knowledge that he is actually a field guy (an expert even) in wild-life reporting. Whatever it maybe, watching Planet Earth seems that much more complete with his narrative.

You can experience the difference for yourself here in the US - watch Planet Earth Wednesday nights on Animal Planet, and then get your hands on the Attenborough-narrated DVDs selling through retailers or available to rent at your neighborhood or internet video store.

Next up on the 2-do-list - classics and yesteryear black & white features...afterall, "our" movie is one such b&w classic - the evergreen (or should it be ever-black-and-white???) "The Shop Around The Corner".

Good to be back

Life is changed. I am changed. The day has changed. And so has the year. I have a right-shoulder to lean on ( and a left-shoulder too: albeit belonging to the same person :P). But she and I won't let one thing change...our love for writing.

It is good to be back.

Eating Out vs Eating In

Eating out is the new eating in, or so claims this feature on MSN Money, and lists two peoples opinions to substantiate the purported fact that eating out actually comes out pretty even on dollar terms to eating in (also known as cooking at home).

That is as fallacious as can get in terms of substantiating an argument - take two premises, make comparisons on essentially uneven terms, without establishing common ground, come to conclusions on those uneven terms, and then proclaim one argument as the winner over the other...and the media companies wonder why people are skeptical of their reporting?

Take the first example of a person who would get off with spending $17 plus tips on dining out on hand-stuffed ravioli slathered with puttanesca sauce as opposed to about $30 for cooking at home (you know, driving to the farmers market, buying organic veggies, spending an hour cooking etc). Another dude goes as far as counting his hourly rate to the cooking time and opines that taking out his family to eat would essentially come out to the same...

Crunching numbers, this is supposed to prove that eating out is cheaper. Count me as one of the skeptics to this theory, and also to the veracity of this feature. For one, both the examples are set on uneven terms. Hey, the second dude factors his wages for cooking at home, but not for his waiting at a restaurant for his food to arrive etc...and the first dude prefers organic veggies for home cooking, but would rather eat cholesterol-laden ravioli made from non-organic stuff at a restaurant...comparison indeed.

Heck, the simplest logic demands that eating out be more expensive than dining at home. Just the simple fact that eating out is a convenience, and any convenience costs money. That's why a cup of coffee that otherwise costs about $0.10 sells for at least $0.99 at your local gas-station. Do the math...and enjoy dining out, because that is indeed an occasion to indulge the senses...