Umbrella Drinks and Metatron

So When You Blow Up I Can Pretend I Was An Integral Part Of The Process

2012-01-29T13:34:00.002+05:30

A friend of mine has just released his first book Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist.

I've been following Loco for a while over at his blog, Loco in Yokohama. Through his blog, and our private conversations I've been a privileged witness to the development of the ideas that were to make it into his book.

The book is a memoir of sorts that takes one through the author's experience of black consciousness-raising, nationalism, and militancy in 1970s Brooklyn; military service, interracial romance and corporate bigotry in the 80s and 90s; and the idiosyncracies of Japanese attitudes to race in the 00s. It details the author's struggles with the racism he finds out there in the world and, most powerfully, the author's struggles with the racism he finds in himself.

The raw candour and introspection throughout are the things I like most about the book, and the author. There's a magic to the flow of the narrative that compels you to turn the pages. Each episode in the author's life and their impacts are described vividly, with humour and pathos. There are many gems to choose from but I think the outstanding episodes were those concerning, Aiko - a former lover, taken by cancer - and White Boy Chris.

At the same time I found the introduction lacking the same kind of power as the main text, and the flow of the narrative breaking down in the transition to snapshots of the author's experiences as a teacher in Japan. However I felt the book ended strongly with an interesting conclusion that works as a nice close to themes opened up in the first chapter. I finished the book both with a smile and a small measure of regret that there wasn't more to read.

Loco. Well done! I know it was a long, hard road, putting together your opus. I hope to see many more.

The book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble online. Kindle version HERE.

This Is What Happens When You Have Glamorous Friends

2011-10-17T17:16:00.002+05:30

I was out with Lunch-meet at a party at UB City that was organised by brewers UB (What a surprise!) in order to celebrate a win by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), the local cricket team.

I got tanked up on red wine and chatted with one of the cheerleaders (yes, here in India, cricket warrants cheerleading), went to the kitchen and gorged on chicken shish, lamb shabbab, and intermittently cried out “sheep meat!” in between mouthfuls.

There was a fashion show. Then they put on the cheerleaders. The place was lousy with Bangalore glitterati. Decent music, but a terrible DJ. Great food though! The caterers, Fava, made a spinach and ricotta ravioli that tasted so good it might have had a body in it.

I found it funny how few guys made an effort to dress up; I was easily one of the best-dressed fellows there and considering the state of my wardrobe that’s really saying something! In contrast, all the women were dressed to the nines, goodness me! There was one lady with the most gorgeous little peepers, high heel, with a platform sole. All black with silver petals. I had to give her the compliment through Lunch-meet. The lady’s boyfriend was looking at me like I’d club him and carry her away if he took his eyes off of me for a mere fraction of a second.

Another Splurge

2011-09-27T19:22:00.001+05:30

Because I've felt like eating Italian food. I discovered a decent foreign foods section at a place called Thom's Bakery, where I've seen the largest concentration of non-Indians outside of one of Viren's ex-pat club parties.

I pivked up a few things, but wasn't brave enough to drop the rupees they were asking for a tin of anchovies, I haven't developed enough of a craving for a good penne putanesca... Maybe one day.

Today I feel like a good aglio olio, with a nice salad and braised chicken breast. Of course, just as I'm getting ready to start cooking there's a bloody power cut!

Just Because

2011-09-18T11:57:00.002+05:30

My Weekend Break

2011-08-31T21:21:00.001+05:30

Ah, yes. So it seems in Hampi one can find Indians who stare. Even though I was travelling with a tall, pretty, blonde, Russian lady - my friend, Miss Piggy - damn near all stares were directed at yours truly.

Piggy

Now, I already anticipated the possibility that the stares were because people couldn't understand why a tall, pretty, blonde would possibly keep company with the likes of me. So I compared the frequency and kinds of stares I got exploring the Hampi ruins alone with those I got exploring the ruins with Miss Piggy. About the same. Absolutely fascinating.

Less maddening than the daggers directed my way by the well-to-do black women in the People's Republic of Cambridge (Mass.) when I'm with a non-black female acquaintance; but also less amusing than being regarded with envious eyes by ex-pats when I go out with Lunch-Meet.

I was also surprised by the ways I observed some Indian tourists treating the ruins. I saw people pulling at statues, and/or climbing on them, littering, and even relieving themselves. As if the attitude was that personal enjoyment is of paramount importance; that it mattered not what was left for other people to enjoy as long as they got theirs.

Just Because

2011-08-30T16:32:00.000+05:30

Not usually a Country and Western man, but me likey this one.The music video doesn't do justice to the song. I suspect that's because at the time young miss Rimes lacked the experience necessary to look lonesome enough. Oh well. No matter.

Update

2011-08-26T20:29:00.001+05:30

Our two interns have left so the office is super small and super quiet; consulting dept. is down to little old me and my supervisor again. Hope to get a new ~~victim~~ intern soon.

Still lonely, still missing She on occasion. Not just someone-to-hold-lonely though. I think I actually feel existentially lonely too at times. Missing old friends.

Finally managed to get a well-earned break and traveled to a place called Hampi in northern Karnataka. Absolutely beautiful. Pretty much spent two days in the sun and have a case of sunburn, HA! I burn so rarely that the pain and itching always, always comes as a total surprise.The sunburn hypothesis never even enters my mind until my skin starts peeling en masse like I got hit with a few gamma rays.

Sociological Images

2011-08-11T22:20:00.000+05:30

Peeped one of Lunch-meet's magazines the other day. The Indian edition of Elle. In it was an article about transracial adoptions with the following lede:

Throughout her childhood, her white foster mother's assurances that she was "not really black", made author Precious Williams believe that her skin colour was something unpleasant. That's why reading about transracial adoptions by celebrities fills her with dread.

Yes, folks. This was the illustration they chose to put above the title. Ho ho!

And the piece de resistance, a bloody advert for skin-lightening sunscreen on the page right after the article, because, folks, dark skin really is unpleasant. All one need do is feign horror at those who express such a view openly (and, possibly, keep your fairness cream out of plain sight).

In Which I Vent My Spleen

2011-08-11T21:56:00.001+05:30

I am at the end of my tether with these fucks at Vodafone. They've been promising me 3G for the past 4 months, and every time I call ir’s been: next month sir, for sure. It’s only had no reception a few times. Most of the time it works fine but the speed is really bloody slow, which means that I can barely use Skype.

I was quite pissed off last weekend, because my sister and several friends finally had the time to get on Skype. And I couldn't even chat to them because the data transfer ground to a halt over Saturday and Sunday. Apparently 3G is coming out tomorrow, but right now I don’t trust anything that comes from Vodafone, and I’m all Sunk-costs biased up, and averse to the fumduckery of other service providers to jump ship.

It amazes me that they’re allowing their name to be put to the fiasco that is the Indian operation. How is it that in a country that exports thousands of engineers, this company can’t sort reliable connections for people in its so-called Silicon Valley?

Update: 3G has apparently been rolled out and - surprise surprise - I still have no access to it. I fear what might happen if I pay a visit to the local Vodafone office.

Food Therapy

2011-08-11T21:49:00.000+05:30

A few days ago I hit a low point in my cultural adjustment. I'd occasional feelings of resent towards the walk to and from work through a miasma of toxic fumes; on filthy streets, playing dodgems with dumped rubbish, cars, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, dead things (I've seen more bodies than Quincy M.D), and excrement.

I also hated not being able to cook what I like. So today I went on a splurge and bought some of my ingredients: oyster sauce, soy sauce, chilli bean sauce, and yellow bean sauce. I made some rice, chicken braised in oyster sauce, green beans tossed in chilli bean sauce, and a red and gold omelette. I saved the stock from the chicken, and used it to make a good old red stew - a Nigerian dish - which I've been having with rice.

They Were Surely Mad

2011-08-11T21:38:00.001+05:30

It’s dark. I was heading to my friend's apartment, and walking up the stairs behind an Indian lady...

and nothing. She didn't panic and damn near fall over herself trying to get away -without quite looking as though she was trying to get away, or reach into her bag to ready her pepper spray. Truly fascinating.

In another instance of madness I enter a lift. There’s an Indian woman in the lift alone. She moves slightly to the right to give me space to enter comfortably. Egregious. As though she'd never seen a black man before.

Thrice Valiant Prince

2011-07-25T20:13:00.001+05:30

It was my birthday the other day, which I ended up celebrating in several parts:

Part I

boss treats me and the office to lunch.

Part II

A dinner at my place, I was coerced into playing host by my good friend Lunch-meet, got absolutely fakakta, woke up to a vibrating mobile phone on a bed stripped of all bedclothes, pillows had been similarly defrocked and lay strewn on my bedroom floor. I had mysterious pains in the lobe of my nose and both latissimus dorsi. It was my supervisor calling. "Why is she calling so early in the morning?" I thought. Turned out that it was actually 9am, and I’d missed the morning meeting. Luckily the entire office, including my bosses, found it absolutely hilarious.

Part III

My boy Rahu came over the following day and we shared a few cups of sake. In the evening I met up with Lunch-meet and went to a party organised by the local party boy, Viren.

Lunch

Lunch wore her freak ‘em outfit - and kilamanjaro if she didn’t! She had these boys slobbering all damn night. It was a massacre. I had a whole bottle of champagne, two if you count the amount of champagne that was sprayed over me. Afterwards we headed back to her place and were joined by some mutual friends… had some amazing chicken kebab, and got fakata again. Good times, my lovelies. Good times.

Their Tears Are Sweet to Behold

2011-07-18T20:39:00.001+05:30

Somebody call the fucking Waaahmbulance for the editors at the Wall Street Journal. Those dirty little commie bastards at The Guardian are taking baseball bats to kneecaps and they don't like it one bit:

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world.

"Competitor-critics"? Spare me.

Of course, those meanies at The Guardian couldn't help but clap back. If those clowns in Congress get their act together on the whole debt ceiling thing, I might actually be able to enjoy the schadenfreude.

Apropos of Nothing

2011-07-11T20:43:00.001+05:30

My colleagues in the office have been admonishing me to get a maid, and I can understand why. By the time I get round to cleaning on the weekend, my place has picked up more dust than the Event Horizon; and there are a number of mini-beasts relieving themselves in my apartment.

My policy is to leave creatures alone if they aren’t evil/Filthy McNasty/bothering me. Animalia non grata are few: mice, rats, houseflies, drosophila, mosquitoes, Japanese hornets, and giant centipedes (the latter two were shooed out of the house or thrown out with long chopsticks respectively).

The other day, a wasp was ambulating on my living room curtain when lifted its abdomen, and fired a rod of excreta onto the floor. Later a gecko, regarding me with a wary eye, lifted up its tail and released a sticky black globule, which landed with a nasty little soft thud on the cistern of my toilet. It was in the right area I suppose; cheeky son of a bachelor.

Red in Tooth and Claw

2011-07-11T20:35:00.000+05:30

I was having a conversation with one of the interns in which I mentioned that I couldn't live in New York. “Not enough green”, I said, to which he immediately retorted, “and you’re living in Bangalore?”

He had a point for sure, the rapid development of this city is literally brutalising the landscape. Urban planning is non-existent: Well there are plans but they aren't implemented; there are regulations, but they are worked around. Just the other day the one patch of green I had next to my apartment was removed to reveal a nasty eyesore of red-brown earth littered with the plastic detritus of untold multitudes. Some cinder blocks have been foisted upon the ground along grooves barely deep enough to fill up in the rain.

I was standing on the balcony at the office and shortly after my exchange with the intern, I observed a group of crows taking turns eating the carcass of a rat. Suddenly, one of the local raptors – a hawk, methinks – swoops in, and without landing, or even so much as a by-your-leave, snatches up the rat. I burst out laughing, turned to him and said, “This is why I can live in Bangalore!”

Now He's Cooking With Gas

2011-07-02T15:13:00.000+05:30

So I finally sorted out my apartment with a gas connection and have begun the process of furnishing my apartment. (Issues in the office meant that I could never feel completely settled and was in a state of just waiting for the other shoe to drop.) I think I’ve got off to a good start with the furnishing. I’m thinking of getting some more pillows and a low table so I’m no longer eating breakfast off of my bed. Baby steps.

I used my gas appliance for the first time a little while ago, and boy was that an adventure. I thought I’d make a sambhar with aubergines – a light sauce – and eat that with rice. On the way back home however I felt too tired to go to the store and pick up some rice, since I planned to cook the lentils I would use in my rice cooker. I opted instead to pick up a few chappathi from the nearby kitchen. Mistake number one, as it turned out. Shasti called as I began cooking. I asked her for some tips with making the sambhar, and things went downhill from there:

What kind of Indian are you? You don’t eat sambhar with chappathi! It’s rice or idly!

?! I’m not Indian at all!

I’m not Indian either.

You’re cheating. Your parents are Indian, and you cook this shit all the time!

OK. Fine. Do you have tamarind?

…

Mistake number two. In the end I had the chappathi with lentil sauce, and fried aubergines.

Sociological Images

2011-06-27T18:03:00.000+05:30

Get thee away from me, thou foul and dark creature!

The Market Unleashed

2011-06-14T00:25:00.000+05:30

I’ve been here a few months and I’ve gotta tell you folks. I am schizophrenic on the issue of auto drivers and their dad-burned idiosyncracies. I have rants – I say, rants in me about these fellows!

As a foreigner, getting a fair deal on an auto rickshaw ride is so rare that I remember the names of drivers who have actually acted right.

Mohammed, Vijay, Kannan, Victor, Said, Iqbal, Murali, Masood, Rajen, Srinivasaiah et. al.: life to you.

Now I can’t remain annoyed for very long when an auto-wallah acts like he thinks I was born yesterday. I have to laugh because I actually like the entrepreneurial spirit of these guys. The auto rickshaw ride is the market unfettered. If it’s raining and demand rises, these guys will up their charges, because your desire not to get soaked has a price. Foreigners are assumed to be tourists or short-termers with little in the way of local knowledge, and far more disposable income than average Bangaloreans – meaning the chances of getting called out for overcharging are smaller.

The kicker is that even when they do get called out they’re in a city of about 10 milly – and counting! Someone is going to ask them for a ride. Hell, these guys can practically take customers when they feel like it; the demand is so stable, and so high. That’s the reality, and I can live with it.

That being said, these fellows do at times cross the line. My first malediction goes out to the young rapscallion whose undisguised attempt to overcharge me was so egregious that I burst out laughing.

I required his services for a journey of 3km at most, which would cost around 30 rupees. Yet without stuttering the dude fixed his mouth to demand 100 rupees of me. The time was only 8pm (they can't charge extra until 21:30). Even if it were after midnight and he'd been within his rights to charge me double what was on the meter, it wouldn't have come close to 100.

Clearly, he must have fallen and bumped his head to think he could get away with charging such an outrageous sum. And then the fellow has the chutzpah to declare a final offer of 50 rupees as if he's doing me a favour. Billy O!

My second malediction goes out to the son of a bachelor who claimed he had to charge me extra because he had to drop off one of my fellow passengers, and it was out of his way, "fuel costs, old sport! Don’t you know?"

Very well. But you and I both know good and gatdam well that we were already overpaying you by a significant amount to get us back home. Had you gone by the meter you wouldn’t have made anything close to what we paid you. Fuel costs, Indeed!

...

I think I'm going to like this town.

On A Lighter Note

2011-06-07T13:59:00.000+05:30

I get a kick out of nonsense like this. Only in Japan.

Believe It Or Not...

2011-06-07T13:53:00.001+05:30

I'm still not opposed to nuclear power, even after the flustered cluck that went down with Fukushima Dai-ichi. That being said, I caught this interview with physicist Michio Kaku, and the professor plainly states that we came real close to losing all of Northern Japan as a habitable area; and would have done if TEPCO had not been forced to pump seawater into the reactors. All jokes about Tohoku aside, that's just gobsmackingly nuts.

100% meltdown and clowns at TEPCO were apparently more concerned with their investment than the Japanese people. Good to know.

Suitor #12

2011-05-25T07:49:00.000+05:30

Her exasperated tone was quite a contrast to the smile she had on her face as she said: “I’m with a friend. Is that OK with you?”

The thing about Shasti is that she attracts rather a lot of male attention. I swear, some dudes are straight falling on their knees with rings if she so much as flings a kind word in their general direction.

So we’re chilling one weekend and she gets a phone call, seems some model from Kashmir is blowing up her phone on a regular basis. Shortly after finishing her call with him, and peeps I kid you not, dude’s brother calls to try and get a date. Shasti switches off her phone, turns to me with a sigh and á me dit: I don’t understand, all these men, I turn them down but they keep calling me!

You keep answering them.

I can’t ignore them!

Then stop giving them your number.

I make it clear that nothing is going to happen.

Really? And how, pray tell, do you do that?

I tell them that my parents need to approve of any man I’m with, and that my parents wouldn't approve of them.

OK. Well, step into the shoes of one of these guys. You've told them that your parents wouldn't approve, you haven’t said: I’m not interested. What might the sort of man who straight tells thee, “ I've been watching you for the past hour, and I've decided I want to marry you” be thinking when you give them the parents spiel? I mean for all you know, the guy could be saying to his friends, “boss, give me six weeks and she won’t care whether or not her parents approve!”

There was something Shasti said to me later about not wanting to run off potential friends, and it got me thinking. As ex-pats we’re pretty much alone here. We’re starting a new life, and it’s tough to risk losing the few people you've connected with by telling them you have romantic feelings for them, or indeed attempting to disabuse them of theirs. It is understandable for anyone in our situation to be loath to disrupt the comfortable equilibrium they feel they have attained.

It’s hard to put oneself in situations where one’s hearts and one’s feelings are at risk of being hurt. That’s why real love, romantic and otherwise is so profound – for it is, in part at least*, the power to destroy oneself freely given to another. And I would wager that very few people like to think of themselves as the kind of person who breaks hearts and hurts feelings – It can be absolutely devastating to your identity when someone tells you that you have crushed them.

So while I can empathise, I can’t say I really feel too sorry for the lady. I’ve crushed people in worse ways than merely telling them I don’t think of them in that way. I think of these people often. Of what comfort to them is my resolve to do better? And I have been absolutely shattered by people I loved… People I still love. So right now my mood is: I’m done with the pussyfooting. Rejection is always hard to take, but I doubt anyone could make me feel the kind of rejection, and sheer soul-destroying sense of worthlessness I felt, most acutely, last winter.

On a lighter note, but still real talk, I don’t feel too sorry for my dear friend Shasti, because I’m craving affection these days. If I had models from Kashmir after me, every time my phone so much as vibrated with their names on caller ID I’d be out like the vapours and on their divans eating fresh lychees quicker than you could say Finrod Felagund.

* Bear with me, I’m still working this stuff out.

Just Because

2011-05-21T18:32:00.000+05:30

I haven't done this in a while:

Omoide ni Dakarete by Tsubokura Yuiko. Plays during the closing titles of Bubblegum Crisis ep5, "Moonlight Rambler". Has the kind of old-school sound I like. Sway to it with empty arms, or with whomever you let slip through your fingers.

A Few Novelties

2011-05-21T18:03:00.001+05:30

Being happy when the power cuts are shorter than an hour.
The realisation that not catching the fragrance of raw sewage between waking up and going to bed means the day has been an extraordinary one. I've also realised I feel the same way about days spent in Shibuya.
Carrying over 20kg of drinking water about 150 meters from the market to my apartment every two weeks or so.
Handwashing again after a more than a decade. It's like riding a bike, you never forget.
Trying to come to terms with the fact that cocktails in Bangalore are roughly the same cost as cocktails in Boston.
Cravings for the flesh of animals – Right now I want a beef steak with chimichurri, Wagyu, char siu pork, the fragrant beef belly ramen from the Chinese restaurant I frequented when I worked in Shiba, the pork belly ramen from the restaurant I frequented when I worked in Saitama, the amazing kara-age from a great bar in Hannou city, pig knuckles from a restaurant I visited in Hong Kong, my red-cooked pork belly with cabbage, mum’s pepe (pepper) soup...
Getting into Indian politics: Tea Partiers, if you want to see what an actual Socialist looks like, get thee to West Bengal. Or, y’know, there’s always that guy Bernie Sanders.

A Bleeding Heart May Result in Exsanguination

2011-05-15T12:49:00.000+05:30

It's funny, some of the poverty I've see here has been gut wrenching - I thought I'd seen it all in Lagos, but narhp! However unlike my previous experiences giving what little I can spare to people I've seen in other cities, here in Bangalore I feel like a mark Every. Single. Time I even consider reaching into my wallet.

Perhaps it's the indifference with which I observe my local counterparts treat the poor. Beggars here get ignored worse than the people who hand out flyers and tissues in Tokyo. Slum dwellers it seems are like an annoying distraction; we love their cheap labour, but do they have to bring down the area with their presence?

Perhaps it's because the behaviour of most of the beggars I have encountered here has set off my bullshit detector in some way. People have motioned their hands to their mouths, but given me the side-eye if I actually buy them food. In another instance, a lady attempted to browbeat me into buying her two kilos of rice when I asked the shopkeeper for one.

Still I feel guilty every time I say "sorry, no", feel some kind of way every time a friend or colleague ignores someone, and cringe every time a beggar is shooed away. I think it's because I'm more concerned about the possibility that someone in real need is not being ministered to than the possibility that someone might receive aid they don't deserve.

(Yet another reason why I'm a Dirty Fucking Hippy).

Alien Hominid

2011-05-07T20:11:00.000+05:30

Have you ever watched a movie called The Thing? Where a group of researchers at an Arctic station find themselves under attack by an organism that invades the body and copies each of the victim’s cells. Philosophical debate on Identity aside, the Thing makes a superb but ultimately flawed approximation of any other creature it comes into contact with. It’s quite fascinating to observe someone beginning to suspect that there’s something a little off – that you or another person might be an alien organism.

I’m out with Shasti, and we’re at a stand buying some sweets. Shasti is communicating in Tamil, and the vendor is looking at her as though he were working on Chinese algebra. His eureka moment came when he tried to put Shasti’s purchase into a plastic bag and she starts giving him the 3rd degree in Tamil about the ills of plastic (She’s from the Bay Area, California – yeah I said it). He just couldn’t wrap his head around why on earth she gave a shit about what he or anyone else does with their plastic bags.

Then suddenly, Sokath! His eyes uncovered! It was like magic. The vendor’s eyebrows raised and a grin spread across his face like: Holy moly! The reason for her crazy talk is clear now. This lady isn't an Indian!

I love it.

Good Eatin'

2011-04-22T23:04:00.000+05:30

Real talk. I've tended to find Western vegan and vegetarian cuisine a little too easy on the palette (i.e bland). But I gotta tell thee, India's been good to me so far on the vegetarian front, and I'm finding it really easy to not require meat flavours in my meals. This isn't to say that I've gone vegetarian, just that things as they are have facilitated a significant reduction in my consumption of flesh.

I have cereal for brekkie, we get a veggie lunch made at work – the big boss is a vegetarian, so at lunch we’re all vegetarian. As for dinner I haven’t got myself a gas delivery sorted out yet so I've been heading to the kitchen that’s only about four or five doors down my street. It appears to be run by a Tamil family, and I've been making an idiot out myself using the few Tamil words Shasti taught me. Not everything they make is vegetarian - they have hellbutcher good fried chicken - but their vegetarian meals are dirt cheap, nutritious, filling, and taste wonderful.

Moreover, my landlord is a Muslim and he has requested I refrain from cooking or eating pork in my apartment. I'm also unsure of where to source quality meat that won't introduce unwelcome guests into my intestines. So, even when I start cooking for myself I doubt my meat intake will go up very much. I smirk at my own anxieties considering I've bought and consumed meat in the United States*.

My favourite veg dishes so far are kesri bhat, bhindi (okra) fry with rotis, masala dosa, paneer masala, palak paneer, and chappathi with lentil sauce and sambal. Oh, and the office cook makes a mint chatni that is to die for!

I plan to hit up my girl, Rimi for recipes. As I'm poor, rushed, and out to learn how to make some of this stuff for myself.

I suppose I could argue that I'd rather get sick in The States than in India, but I actually don't know if I would.

I Am Nothing

2011-04-22T08:07:00.002+05:30

Goodness me. I had particularly bad episode last night. As I tried to sleep this almost overwhelming sense of hurt and anger engulfed me, in response to what I perceive as the injustices and ill luck that are in large part the cause of hole in my heart.

I'm continuing to lose sleep over someone whose actions impact me in such a way as to make me wonder at times whether they even consider me a human being, and make me feel as though I'm being punished for having the temerity to be born into a certain socio-economic class.

I have to laugh at the absurdity of my emotional state.

Seitei Souther for the win!

Nickles and Dimes

2011-04-20T22:47:00.001+05:30

One thing I think I’m noticing is how protective people in Bangalore seem to be of their small notes, especially 10s and 20s. Basically, most items will only require you to pay in the tens of rupees. This means that unless you find a way to break up your bigger notes, you’ll always run out and have the inglorious task of looking round for a kindly soul willing to provide the change you need, or attempting to force some shopkeeper to come to your aid by providing change when you pay for the 20 rupee packet of crisps with a 500 rupee note. It’s a wonderful little dance.

Case in point: I was charged about 130 rupees for a journey back to my apartment by auto rickshaw. Now, I did have 30 rupees in small bills plus a hundred-rupee note with which to pay the fare. On the other hand I also had very large notes that I wanted to break up:

"Do you have change for five hundred?"

"Sorry, sah. No change."

This dude drives auto rickshaws for a living and obviously knows what’s up. He clearly suspected I was trying to bluff him out of his small notes, which I’m guessing are just as precious to him as they are to the Bangaloreans I’ve observed*. However, it was evening. So I was pretty certain that after a whole day of driving my man had some dad-burned change.

"Seriously, mayn?"

The driver had now developed the slightest hint of a shit-eating grin. His whole demeanour said to me: I hope you brought your dancing shoes, son.

My position was significantly weakened by the fact that Bangalore shuts up shop early. Street vendors tend to stay out a little later, but it was far too late in the evening to find one. Even if one were around, there was every chance they’d refuse me change, especially for five hundred rupees. Refusing to pay the auto rickshaw driver until he coughed up change would have been, it seemed to me, a serious breach of acceptable dance etiquette.

"Very well", I thought, and gave the man two hundred-rupee notes. And I received a 50 and a 20 in return. Well played, sir. Well played.

*Moreover, as I was to learn after discussion with Indian colleagues, he was worried that I might give him a fake note and scam him out of his takings.

Class Warfare

2011-04-20T22:34:00.001+05:30

The office was out of toilet roll today, so I ended up using newspaper. Had the pleasure of cleaning up with Lloyd Blankfein’s face.

…

Don't give me that look.

Ooh, speaking of Blankfein, I got a nice smirk out of this (via Balloon-Juice):

Lloyd Blankfein walks into a bar and strikes up a conversation with an attractive woman.

“So what do you do for a living?” she asks.

Blankfein pulls out a can of gasoline, douses her in it, and takes out a cigarette lighter.

“I sell fire insurance.”

The woman turns in desperation to Jamie Dimon and says,

“And what do you sell?”

A sinister smile slowly spreads across Dimon’s face:

“Why, ma’am, I sell smoke.”

A Taste of Home

2011-04-20T22:26:00.000+05:30

I found a Japanese restaurant! I wouldn't be surprised if it's the only Japanese place in the entire city. I was like a kid in a candy store as I perused the menu (how about, "like a fushinsha at a school sports day practice"? - since we're doing the whole Japan thing - ed.) All the good shit was there. It was like these dastardly fucks knew just what a fellow would miss the most.

Yes lawd, I dined well. Edamame so nice I had to order it twice, kara-age like my nights out in Dasai-tama, excellent pickled cucumber served with a superb pureed umeboshi, and agedashi tofu, one of my favourites. It was clear that sacrifices had to be made due to Indian infrastructure, and the distance between Bangalore and the sea, which meant the okonomiyaki wasn’t quite my okonomi.

Bite Prevention

2011-04-16T02:06:00.001+05:30

Summer is coming. I have already begun my defense against a variety of annoying little bastitches:

Day Biter

Night Biter

Delbiter

Hunger or death, ladies!

The Swing of Things

2011-04-05T12:27:00.000+05:30

Things are super hectic these days as I’ve had a lot on my plate: draft development plans for the two programmes I’m to design and run, analysis of the monitoring and evaluation strategy for a programme of facilitated dialogues and design of new surveys, design of an exercise for use in the facilitation, drafting a letter to peeps at the UN. I love the pace and the energy of my office. My only concern is that I suffer from bouts of extreme loneliness.

The people I love are all so far away from me.

Job Creation

2011-04-05T12:19:00.002+05:30

“The wheels turn slower in India, you’ll have to take the time to get used to this.” – Rahu

When you have a population of over a billy, how do you keep as much of it as you can in employment? Some will point to India’s vast informal economy. Fools! After nearly two weeks in the country I am supremely qualified to ask that we consider the Indian civil service – To the peeps at the shiyakusho: all is forgiven!

Every foreigner who will be residing in India for 180 days or longer has to register at their local Foreign Residents Registry Office within 14 days of their arrival. Without a foreigner registry card you can’t do much of anything that requires some kind of contract: bank accounts, phone lines, home internet, and the like. Needless to say that without these it would be very difficult to do my thing.

My experience of Indian bureaucracy to date has convinced me – for the moment – that the whole thing is one giant middle-class growing perpetunator™. Lawd knows what use there was, apart from the salaries, for the layers that stood between me and my foreigner card.

Shall we?

First there was a bearded man and his female assistant sitting at a cramped desk behind an iron grate. You hand them your documents, which they check over, then you collect a ticket number from one of the four middle aged men sitting at a wide desk, speaking loudly in Kannada (the local language) and English. Their job is to call up numbers and review documents once again.

Two Japanese fellows who’d turned up with an Indian assistant became increasingly annoyed by the fact that they were completely at a loss to understand the application process, and these bad-boys were refusing to help them. No entreaties from the Indian assistant could get them to budge. Nebula, the head of admin, pointed out to me her perception that anyone who came at these four fine fellows in any language other than Kannada was being treated with about as much regard as Galactus has for sentient life.

Lucky for me Nebula is a native speaker of Kannada. Two layers down. The next part of the process required me to head upstairs to the complete the second stage of the process. No help allowed. So I went upstairs alone and without a clue about what to do next. I ended up repeatedly requesting help from one of the numerous, bored-looking attendants until she decided to wave me over to one of her colleagues.

Layer three involves going to a desk to have your application documents checked over again, after which you are sent over to another desk, right next door, where your application documents are checked once more – you’re sensing a pattern emerging here, deshou? – You are then sent to the Assistant Director’s office to see the Assistant Director, who was an incredibly bored looking man sitting behind a huge desk, watching Indian soap operas on a small flat screen television. The man did not look at me once.

As I entered his office the Assistant Director’s droog – a thin, deadly looking man – motioned for me to hand him my application documents, which he then checked. He then handed them to the Assistant Director who read over them, took a pen, and signed some pages. Layer five down. I was now ready for my interview at desk number 4.

The lady at desk 4 told me to come back after lunch…

The Wife

2011-03-31T00:11:00.000+05:30

Shasti

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my colleague, another newbie; let’s call her Shasti. We're sharing a service apartment until we find more permanent accommodation. We went for a walkabout the other day, which was fucking hilarious. She wanted to open a bank account and I think we damn near scandalised the whole bank looking like the oddest couple. Me in my shorts and yellow t-shirt, contrasting with my dark brown skin. She in her turquoise salwar kameez. A glowing, youthful face juxtaposed with a significant number of snow-white locks. The looks on people’s faces suggested they were trying to figure out precisely what our relationship was: Sugar mama, wife, illicit lover?

We would joke about how people we encountered would appear to treat her as though she were my handler. People would look to Shasti whenever I asked a question, or address her about things concerning me. Too funny. I figured it was because of the psychic energy required to make the effort to communicate in a language they perhaps are not entirely comfortable using – especially the doormen and street vendors we sometimes disturbed to ask for directions. One of the funniest moments was the look of elation on the faces of two older men I’d accosted when they discovered that Shasti could speak Tamil, their native language.

We also survived our first scam – of sorts. We went to a supermarket and tried to buy a 10 litre bottle of water. There were a bunch of old-looking dusty bottles outside the store entrance. We asked for a new bottle, and the manager said that the shop assistant was heading down to the store room to get one. However I saw the assistant take a rag, and one of the old bottles. Common-sense… Tingling. I ask the manager, what’s going on:

“He’s getting a bottle from the store.”

“So why did he take a bottle?”

“Those bottles are for display only”

“Ok. But I saw him take a display bottle. Why would he do that if he’s getting a bottle from the store room?”

I was getting some straight “me, or your lying eyes?” ish from this fellow. So Shasti and I had to peace out.

Another experience we had that cracked us up was when in the supermarket, which was just like any other South Asian supermarket I’d been to in the US, (we were walking around the store asking the names of vegetables, and I was asking Shasti stupid questions about how one would go about preparing them. I figure that if I’m going to be here for a while it will be much more economical to use ingredients available locally.) Shasti was looking for quinoa, so she asked what grains they had in stock other than rice and wheat. The manager gave her a puzzled look and asked “for dinner?” In a way that suggested, “what the fuck else would you eat other than rice or parottas or what not?” He shot me a brief glance/our eyes met briefly. I perceived a micro-expression of pity, like: oh lawd, please don’t tell me this dude’s madam doesn’t know how to cook! Shit, Son! You married an idiot.

Old Japan-hands will have analogous stories to tell. Asian Americans in Japan, especially those who had some proficiency in Japanese, would discombobulate the locals in a similar manner. To outside observers, Shasti and I are a man and woman together, so people tend to assume we are married (at the time we were shopping together, so that assumption is not at all strange), she also looks Indian, so why on earth wouldn’t a married Indian woman know how to cook with rice and wheat? Head asplode!

The Streets

2011-03-30T11:11:00.001+05:30

The perfume of incense, fragrant oils, herbs and spices. The air thick with half-burnt hydrocarbons, smouldering wood, cooking oil and hot tyres. Sometimes mixed with the sweet stench of rotting fruit and vegetables, and the musky putrefaction of cooked rice. Occasionally the dark odour of sewage. Evokes memories of Lagos.

The pavements, in the less nice places, a monjayaki of refuse from building sites, dumped rubbish, the shit of stray dogs, goats, sheep and cows. In other places, suddenly people/the powers that be know how to collect refuse and clean – memories of London, New York, Atlanta and Philadelphia. “Oh, this is high-life area, madam.”

Indians Don't Stare

2011-03-30T09:39:00.000+05:30

Indians don’t stare. I’ve noticed a few older people and young kids give long glances of curiosity, but for the most part – in my experience of a mere 7 days. Yes, I’m a dadburned expert in Indian culture now! – Indians, more precisely Bangaloreans, don’t stare.

They might be thinking all sorts of shit about darkest Africa when they see me on the street, but so far no one has given me a look like they know all about “my kind”, no woman has given me furtive glances, or cowered in fear at my proximity, no one has crossed the street upon seeing me come towards them, and no one has damn near caused a traffic accident rubbernecking.

So far it’s been a nice contrast to some parts of Londinium and Japan. I love my Japanese brothers and sisters, but sometimes…

…

I give it one month before I’m venting about Indians in the same way. Or perhaps not. Maybe here the fumduckery starts at two black men walking down the street.

Japan On My Mind

2011-03-15T23:47:00.001+05:30

I was cleaning my room today in preparation for my departure to India and came across some old essays I'd written when I had passable Japanese, as well as postcards and photos from Japanese friends. The Sun newspaper used the headline "APOCALYPSE" to describe the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on the 11th. I resented the use of the word. It felt like someone was denigrating family. Yes, there is destruction on a massive scale, whole communities have disappeared, and the authorities are battling a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, but haven't the Japanese faced worse and pulled through? Why hint at the end of the world?

I think one of my crewmates was based in Sendai, one of the areas worst affected by the tsunami. I was looking at a picture of us together today. I haven't been able to get in contact with him. Last Friday I logged into Mixi, Japan's biggest social networking site, for the first time in about 9 months. I only have 4 connections, a fellow Brit who was working in Kansai through the JET programme, and three members of my old breaking crew. "Sure, I'll join Mixi. I want to keep connected." The words seem bereft of substance now after being out of contact for such a long time. I could write about how I dislike using Mixi, how in my depression since moving back to Londinium I've been loath to contact people, but it would do little to mitigate my feelings of guilt.

言ったはずだ。

2011-03-08T00:02:00.001+05:30

Eamon Fingleton discusses "The myth of Japan's 'lost decades'" over at The Atlantic. Interesting piece - think the South Park episode where the Japanese claim they have small penises to deflect attention from their plans of world domination. I was talking about it with a friend and we didn't think it quite passed the smell test. Our conversation is after the jump.

Decoy さんの発言:

My tack lately has been "you know, the US doesn't really even offer great opportunity anymore. i think maybe i'll go somewhere that does."

people should be responsive to that, because supposedly the whole point of the exercise is to make america "great" or something

Rubi さんの発言:

great for whom?

Decoy さんの発言:

and if we're losing Ph.D. scientists, that's not a good plan.

yeah well that's a good point

they don't like things like science and facts

one of my favorite lines is "creating a new industry is not like opening up a franchise."

but the way i see it

Rubi さんの発言:

it takes real infrastructure, regulation etc

Decoy さんの発言:

that's what they want…everybody to open up a burger king

it's like

fuck dude, you guys have no fucking clue what you're talking about when it comes to "innovation" you supposedly value, do you?

Rubi さんの発言:

Check out James Fallows' blog over at the Atlantic, real interesting article arguing that the Japanese have done exactly this and are taking advantage of Chinese growth to drink America's milkshake

Decoy さんの発言:

"the myth of japan's lost decades"?

Rubi さんの発言:

that's it

Decoy さんの発言:

mmmm

from the title i'm thinking i might not agree with this piece entirely

Rubi さんの発言:

I think he elides the growth in working poor due to casualised work

the NEETs

The fact the Japanese haven't tackled aging combined with loss of working population

Decoy さんの発言:

indeed

i'm reading this and hearing only "dude, japan is better now than it was in the 80s"

ummm

i hate to mention this, but the city of hakodate cannot afford to mow the grass in its public parks

and hasn't been able to for five years.

the trade numbers are great but

debt-to-GDP is 2:1 and showing no signs of going anywhere but up

Rubi さんの発言:

Right

Decoy さんの発言:

the workforce is in shambles

Rubi さんの発言:

and the Japanese can't borrow on the cheap forever

Decoy さんの発言:

education is fucked up

like, seriously, fucked up

and he spent this whole piece talking about the export economy

which is like 10% of the japanese economy

and which is, admittedly, awesome

but it has to be, to prop up the other 90%

Rubi さんの発言:

aha

It would be interesting to see one of those economists debate him then

Do you think he's trying to make a name for himself by picking a fight with the big dogs?

Decoy さんの発言:

as long as they're not fucking idiots and they've been in the 'pan long enough that he can't pull the "have you even ever been to japan?" card. yeah i think it's possible

i wonder if the "debate" will just turn into him trying to ridicule them

Rubi さんの発言:

cos he's been living there since 85 and understands the nuances of Japanese culture

Decoy さんの発言:

"oh you just look at numbers but you have no idea what they mean because you've never been there" blah blah blah

that's right

goddammit

he's the one who has the japan story right

and by god, he got it right in the 80s too

Rubi さんの発言:

Ha!

Decoy さんの発言:

and they've been ignoring him ever since

cocksuckers

i dunno man

even the yen strength

has exactly dick to do with the long-term prospects of the japanese economy

which are fucking bleak

Rubi さんの発言:

is that because Japan was doing well, or because America was doing badly?

Decoy さんの発言:

i tend to think it's more the latter

Rubi さんの発言:

and didn't the strong yen hurt exports?

Decoy さんの発言:

deeply

that's why when it was around 100 to the USD the BOJ was freaking out

and trying to keep it above 100

i mean, when i look at it, i think

okay, what's the main reason someone would want to buy yen?

well, other than to buy japanese products (okay, there's some of that going on), it's buying japanese assets

japanese stocks (nobody wants to own them because they're not worth the paper they're printed on)

japanese real estate (yeah, right)

japanese bonds (don't make me laugh)

etc.

Rubi さんの発言:

Well the Japanese are trying to get the population to buy bonds

Decoy さんの発言:

yeah and it's working

which is why their debt situation is fundamentally different from, say, the US

_but_

Rubi さんの発言:

because they owe the money to the people

Decoy さんの発言:

yes, rather than to, say, china.

but

that only works as long as people don't have to sell their bonds

to generate cash

Rubi さんの発言:

say, for retirement?

Decoy さんの発言:

there's a thought, isn't there?

Rubi さんの発言:

Not like there's any danger of large numbers of retirees any time soon, eh?

Decoy さんの発言:

and of course

since nobody wants to buy them

at like 1% interest for a 30-year term

eventually something's got to give, i figure

but i'm no japan expert

and i didn't call the crash in the 80s

i'm just not as sanguine on japan's future

"The Filth"

2011-03-07T23:23:00.000+05:30

About two weeks ago, my cat Kenzo died. I'm not as crazy about pets as some of my fellow Brits, but I feel no shame in saying that I loved him, and he will be missed.

I can say with all honesty that from the moment Kenzo was born I knew he'd be my favourite. I called him by many names, including: Vincenzo, Kenneth Chen, Chen Jialuo, Kenzo-Ocean, Zocean, The Dogma, The O, and The Filth.

He and his brother ruled our old neighbourhood with an iron paw. The squirrels no longer stole bird-food, and feline intruders were shook like when the Dwarrowdelf of Moria started beef with the Flame of Udûn. That is how I shall remember him.

Just Because

2011-03-02T19:16:00.000+05:30

My man, Loco, put me onto these lovely ladies. They have a really pleasant sound that I just had to share!

Discussions in Black History Month: Some Cool Links

2011-02-23T17:30:00.000+05:30

Via Postbourgie, interesting articles I thought were apropos of my chronic month-long pretensions:

The racial implications of transportation policy.

An obituary for conscious rap.

A LGBT Black history quiz - I did terribly.

Just Because

2011-02-19T03:19:00.000+05:30

A great anime series that kept me sane in those lonely days before grad school.

Discussions in Black History Month: On Black Conservatives

2011-02-19T03:08:00.001+05:30

During the six months or so of my fruitless job hunting in the US, my friends and I used to joke about getting a job as a Black Conservative. It seems to be a growing industry in the age of Obama. I would ride the monster of American history to financial stability. All I'd need do is stand looking at myself in the mirror after an evening of slagging off black people for fun and profit.

Chauncey De Vega has stirred up a hornet's nest with his take down of Atlanta businessman Herman Cain's speech at CPAC. De Vega later defended his post at Salon magazine:

A difference of opinion on what constitutes good policy is not in and of itself a bad thing. Moreover, the diversity of political opinion in the black community ought to be embraced. It should not be glossed over or run away from. However, as a black American with a deep and abiding love and concern for my community and country, I begin with a basic question for my conservative brothers and sisters regarding their political affiliations.

Where is the love? Where is a sense of linked fate to a community whose centuries-long freedom struggle made your success possible? Whose long-term interests are you beholden to?
For example, Herman Cain has repeatedly spoken before Koch Brothers-funded, John Birch Society-linked groups, including those that are in favor of rolling back such basic civil rights era gains as integrated schools. In addition to the raucous applause they received CPAC, Cain and Allen West, a conservative black Republican who was elected to Congress last year, both legitimated a deep hostility to President Obama that is rooted in "birtherism" and crazed paranoid narratives about the tyranny and terror supposedly unleashed by America’s first black president.

As I and others have suggested elsewhere, these are narratives that are premised on a belief that a black man who happens to be president is de facto illegitimate. And, of course, there's no shortage of black conservatives who make a living among the pundit classes as human parrots for the right --popular for their novelty and unwilling to offer sustained critiques of policies that may, in fact, be deleterious to communities of color and the common good.

A common response to this kind of criticism is to argue that the critics are themselves guilty of using racist premises. Here's Cynthia Tucker in her article on De Vega's attack:

I find that kind of criticism of black conservatives deeply offensive because it presumes that they are not entitled to think differently. Isn’t that the essence of racism — the notion that all black folk must think and act alike? Don’t racists make that very assumption?

I have two problems with Tucker's take. First I read De Vega not as arguing that Black people must think and act alike but against the kind of enabling and channeling of anti-Black hostility that Cain engaged in. Second, Tucker elides the racist framing - Blacks on the Democrat plantation- employed by Cain; framing that was called out in the quote she pulled from De Vega's post!

Christ on the cross, weeping.

Discussions in Black History Month: Those Who Don't Want To Know

2011-02-13T19:48:00.000+05:30

While living in the United States I came to think that much of the energies of the national psyche are directed towards pretending the existence of African Americans and related structural inequalities does not signify evidence of some of the greatest crimes in their country's history.

It is, in my opinion, precisely this failure to wrestle the monster of history that leads to things like the Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans' efforts to have the state issue specialty license plates honoring an early leader of the Klu Klux Klan - Mississippi is the state with the highest proportion of African American residents.

I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would want to honour a man who ran a "Negro Mart", and conspired to enslave millions of human beings. Those are his accomplisments. If, as his defenders argue, his last minute expression of regret is supposed to wipe the slate clean, what is there left to celebrate?

Discussions in Black History Month: Cornell West on the Late Late Show

2011-02-11T16:03:00.000+05:30

Via

Clearly A Mossad Plot

2011-02-10T01:28:00.000+05:30

... I found the clip below about two separate recordings of a UFO above the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem mildly interesting.

Probably not Elohim, folks. If it were, I'd definitely be left wondering why it doesn't have better things to do than faff around over a temple.

I give it three days before my brother-in-law comes in with a grin that says: explain this one away, insipiens!

Discussions in Black History Month: The Browning of America

2011-02-02T01:18:00.001+05:30

I've started my Black History Month posts much earlier than last year, though I fear that the quality will be much diminished. After catching this NYT article I've been thinking about the growing number of young USians describing themselves as multiracial, and the optimism about the future of US race relations - much the same as that attached to the Obama presidential campaign.

I personally think that this optimism reflects a desire for absolution on the cheap. It is nowt but magical thinking to believe that prejudice and bigotry will disappear if we just looked the same. What it will take is the often emotionally and psychologically draining work of calling out bigotry and prejudice where you find it, and fighting for policies for social justice and equality. This is precisely why I share Ta-nehisi Coates', and Jamelle Bouie's suspicions about what a more multiracial USA might mean.

There was one account in the NYT article that elicited a (gallows humour) grin.

Over dinner with Ms. López-Mullins one night, she wondered: “What if Obama had checked white? There would have been an uproar because he’s the first ‘black president,’ even though he’s mixed. I would like to have a conversation with him about why he did that.”

Absent that opportunity, Ms. Wood took her concerns about what Mr. Obama checked to a meeting of the campus chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. last year. Vicky Key, a past president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, who is Greek and black, joined her. The question for discussion was whether Mr. Obama is the first black president or the first multiracial president.

Ms. Key, a senior, remembered someone answering the question without much discussion: “One-drop rule, he’s black.”

“But we were like, ‘Wait!’ ” she said. “That’s offensive to us. We sat there and tried to advocate, but they said, ‘No, he’s black and that’s it.’ Then someone said, ‘Stop taking away our black president.’ I didn’t understand where they were coming from, and they didn’t understand me.”

Black/African Americans are a mixed community. Harold Ford Jr. has two black parents, Obama has one. However if you to stand them next to each other and ask someone who did not know their family background which of the two had one white parent, I'm pretty sure Harold Ford Jr. would be picked almost every time. Therefore, in my experience, some African Americans suspect that the interest Obama's multiracial background is more about distancing him from blacks than it is about having an honest conversation. It's great to aspire for a society where identity can be fluid, but you can't get there unless you understand why identity is treated as though it is immutable. I'm not sure these kids are there yet.

退かぬ　媚びぬ　省みぬ

2011-01-23T18:31:00.000+05:30

I found this article rather endearing, as I'm the sort of person who rolls their eyes at the ridiculous melodrama in scenes like the ones below, but still enjoys watching them. It reminded me of my man Loco's little series on what Japanese teens are thinking about.

So Let Me Get This Straight...

2011-01-23T03:35:00.000+05:30

You fell off a ladder and broke your leg while looking at a house -you didn't have permission to be in that house, but the owners did you a big favour and decided not to press charges. You waited until the statute of limitations on a trespassing charge ran out, then sued the homeowners for negligence?

Arsehole.

H/T: Mistermix.

Human Ingenuity

2011-01-19T18:54:00.001+05:30

I was impressed with this effort by Colombian drug smugglers.

I can only imagine what ingenious methods have been cooked up by Nigerians. "Pigeons? We off that. But if you insist, here's a formula for assigning appropriately weighted loads to each bird.... That'll be $1000 for the consultation."

It was only a matter of time... (cont.)

2011-01-18T04:05:00.002+05:30

You may remember my post last year about Chatroulette, a site that lets you have video chats with random strangers. It seems the site owners have finally figured out a way to make money out of all the guys who like to... perform... over the webcam. Surprised it took them so long:

The onslaught of disgusting naked men that seemingly destroyed interest in Chatroulette is now earning the site $100,000 a month. After being flagged by other users a certain number of times, the masturbators — there are about 50,000 on the site every day — are automatically redirected to adult pay sites with which Chatroulette has made agreements. The site's founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, claims that you'll run into a penis only once an hour now — still more surprise penises than you typically experience in an hour outside of Chatroulette, but a vast improvement nonetheless.

H/T

The Trouble With Lagos

2011-01-16T01:14:00.001+05:30

I haven't been to Nigeria in a very long time, but one thing that sticks in my memories of Lagos is the sheer awfulness of traffic. Which I suspect got worse in the decade or so since I was last there...

Assorted community members: Eh heeeh, so you can go to this Jah Pan and America, but you cannot take time to go to your country! What do you mean you are a British? You do not belong there!

Putain d'enculer chikusho! Ok, got that out of my system. Moving on.

Caught this story in the Guardian about a plans for new railway service, which could potentially save untold amounts of time, hassle, and money. A city with the population of Lagos current 10 million or so -and rapidly growing- needs a good, efficient mass transit system. A positive development, though I think it's too early to say whether it will have the desired impact.

The King's Speech

2011-01-16T00:53:00.001+05:30

I wasn't really interested in seeing this film as I really could not get excited about the prospect of watching a royal get over his stammer. Don't get me wrong. I'm of the opinion that great films can be made about such subjects as women who like to crush cockroaches with the point of a stiletto. The issue for me was the probability that this particular story would be told well enough to make me leave the cinema with a smile. It's not like The Man is paying me to review it - or to do much else these days.

Well, I'm happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. A very good, well-put together film. Intensely character driven. Much like the director's previous film, The Damned United, which I recommend. I don't know if it was worth my while to see The King's Speech on the big screen however; because to paraphrase a friend: it had the whiff of a BBC special about it. Which is good, but perhaps not so good at the cinema.

Just Because

2011-01-15T06:34:00.000+05:30

This tune combines two styles that I can't hear without wanting to move.

The Night Terrors

2011-01-10T07:57:00.002+05:30

I've been holding off writing this for a while, for the strange reason that I didn't want to look like an idiot. Which I realised was a completely idiotic position given some of the fumduckery I've splashed around on this very blog. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Lately, I think I've been dreading the prospect of going to bed. This isn't anything new, and in fact is a lot milder than the last time I went through something like this. I thank the flying spaghetti monster I'm not as miserable as I was back then.

In the darkness and silence of nighttime I often have trouble sleeping, because bereft of external stimuli to work on my mind switches inwards, pulling out and dissecting thoughts, feelings and memories. As you can probably guess, there are a fair few memories I possess that I do not wish to revisit. It's easy to avoid doing when I can throw my mind out into the world.

That's much harder to do at bedtime when I'm alone with my thoughts. I am vexed by my inability to turn my mind away from thoughts of She. Oh there are plenty of good memories alright, but then comes the day of the phone call that put paid to my hopes of staying in the US, and my chance to stay with her. Then comes the frustration of the idea that the only reason why I have this hole in my heart is for want of one job. Then comes the analysis of all the flaws in that idea.

Of which there are many: How do you know you wouldn't have broken up if you were anywhere but where she is? What about her family? What about yours? How do you know you won't feel expendable again? Hell, you're no saint. What if you break her heart like you did the other love of your life? Thou villain.

And a voice inside me screams "I don't fucking care, I just want to hold her!"

And just what would happen if my desire were granted? Love doesn't conquer all. You need a plan, and my last plan came to naught. The only viable option was to split. The agreement to stay out of contact was right. I am dead to her now, and it is killing me, but deep down I know it is the right thing. I lost to the economy, and the insane barriers to entry in my field. I need to move on. I have to give her the space she needs to move on.

I go through some version of this almost every night, and it sucks.

Tron: The Re-Up

2011-01-10T06:38:00.001+05:30

What can I say? Not as bad as I'd been steeling myself to experience. Very very pretty film. Though the dialogue was so excruciatingly bad at points that it was hard to just sit back and enjoy the audio-visual extravaganza.

For My First Post of The New Year...

2011-01-06T07:38:00.002+05:30

Some breakbeats by DJ RX78. I'm really feeling the Mechagodzilla breakbeat, and lawd ha' mercy! the G-Gundam mix is hot! (ETA: the stabbing horns the DJ puts together are hot, the tune as a whole got a little repetitive) Got me going through Youtube for the original tune. The horn that comes in at around 00:49 reminds me of The Fist of the North Star soundtrack, with all its bromance and melodrama.

I don't even really remember how I stumbled onto DJ RX78's music. I was probably doing something inappropriate...

Actually, because I've waaay too much time on my hands. I went back through my web history. It seems I was in the mood for some funk and got down to this tune on Youtube:

Which led me to a tune by a relatively big name in bboying, DJ Renegade, posted by some fellow called btunes72, who has a plethora of bboying tunes uploaded to Youtube. I sampled a few and came across these tunes, which due to nerdstalgia I must have liked so much that I decided to look this fellow RX78 up.

Harbinger

2010-12-30T05:52:00.001+05:30

Remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth I expect to accompany re-districting?

The state of Ohio will lose two congressional seats thanks to the latest U.S. Census figures, and liberal stalwart Dennis Kucinich is worried his seat is on the chopping block.

In an e-mail to supporters Wednesday, the seven-term Democratic congressman and two-time presidential candidate says the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature is likely to eliminate his heavily Democratic Cleveland-area district.

This could just be Kucinich making a play for donations, but I wouldn't be surprised if his seat were eliminated.

H/T John Cole.

To The Game Grid

2010-12-24T02:38:00.000+05:30

God bless the internet! I'm planning to watch the new Tron film, and so just had to watch the original again. My first memory of this film involved the rapid destruction of a whole box of Cadbury's Roses - right down to the dreaded coffee creams- by the scene where the protagonists attempt to reach the I/O tower to contact Tron's user. I can't have been much older than five.

The film actually hasn't aged too badly in my opinion, but then again maybe its just me showing my age. I'm sure my niece and nephew would balk at the very dated special effects. I do think that the pace of the film is far too sluggish. Decent performances by Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner though. Let's see if the re-up is any good - trailers below.

Rethinking Russian Humour

2010-12-10T21:51:00.001+05:30

I remember a friend of mine regaling me with tales of her experiences in the Soviet Union, and trying to get me to understand the unique aspects of Russian humour... I laughed at none of the punchlines. I think I may have seen the light, because this dig at the US over Wikileaks has me in stitches.

The Chinese basically got all pissy at what they perceived as Western sanctimony, and went and staged their own awards ceremony, The Confucius Prize. This latest salvo by the Russian government uses Assange - a man I'm sure they'd like to discover has come up missing - to expose the kind of hypocrisy they would like to keep hidden in the case of their own interests. You have to laugh.

Oh, My Goodness...

2010-12-08T03:44:00.001+05:30

Young City Extraordinaire takes me back.

Fujimama's Boys' Brunches. Abso-fucking-lutely! Good food, beautiful people, great conversation. How I miss those weekend brunches after a night out in good old Tokes. Plum liqueur - made with honey and brown sugar- on the rocks. Pork and rice with chopped okra and kimchi. Yukke at the Korean restaurant in Shin Okubo. Braised taro at the Chinese restaurant in Shiba. Unice, with the great food but awful service. Baobab, great food, greater cocktails, and the one and only Ikuta; keep playing that funk, man.

It was a good time. Will such a thing be mine to experience again, I wonder.

Is our Democrats Learnin'?

2010-12-07T01:28:00.000+05:30

I will not trust to hope, but it was nice to see this from Sen. John Kerry.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Via

Shark Attacks at Egyptian Resort

2010-12-07T01:19:00.000+05:30

Clearly a Mossad plot.

Just Because

2010-12-05T18:34:00.000+05:30

Fascinating

2010-12-03T17:22:00.001+05:30

Nasa scientists have discovered a species of bacteria that can live on arsenic. A quite exciting find, as it may herald new research into the biological history of life on Earth, evolution, and life on other planets. Stories below.

Guardian

Wired Magazine

Image: Mono Lake/Henry Bortman

So, about that foul mood...

2010-12-01T00:10:00.000+05:30

I had landed a job, a rather good job in some respects. Now it is gone from me.

At the moment I do not have a mouth with which to tell the tale. I need to get to a better place first, and I fear that will not be happening anytime soon. My good friend tells me I may have dodged a bullet, but I remain haunted by visions of my nascent career being smothered in its sleep.

Wikileaks

2010-12-01T00:00:00.000+05:30

Can't really say I have too much beef with them. Secretary Clinton's claims that this latest release of data has put lives at risk are an exaggeration, methinks. And only serves to make me tune out the politicians falling over themselves to condemn Julian Assange in the strongest terms possible.

I got a kick out of news that many leaders in the Arab world, wanted the U.S. to take action against Iran's nuclear programme. Mark Klieman's comment elicited a good laugh:

... the Saudis (and our other Arab quasi-friends) are willing to fight Iran to the last American.

A hit! A palpable hit! Perhaps it's because I've been in such a foul mood lately that I find this whole brouhaha rather amusing.

Thoughts of She

2010-11-24T02:36:00.001+05:30

I came across one of those WTF stories I used to send her, or have her come over to the computer screen to read.

She would read the headline, and sometimes the lede, roll her eyes and ask me why I keep reading Sankei News.

...

I wish I didn't feel this way.

Just Because

2010-11-21T01:54:00.000+05:30

I've had a pretty shitty week, so here's a cute tune that made me smile:

Maddow Vs. Stewart

2010-11-15T20:52:00.006+05:30

I absolutely love Rachel Maddow, mind like a steel trap; and I consider John Stewart one of the best commentators on US politics. So it was great to see this interview where Maddow really pushes Stewart to get at what he's trying to do and his precise role. The interview felt a bit awkward in parts, however. I think this was down to the fact that he was making his points about 24-hour cable news to the person whose show is one of the least representative of the problems Stewart critiques. I do take issue with what I see as a false equivalence in his analysis of political dialogue in the US, which I've written about elsewhere, I've been doing some more thinking, and I'm mulling over his points in the Bush WMD and waterboarding discussion.

I think that Stewart had an astute point to make on this kind of discourse: is the passion there (on the left/left-leaning media) because of a belief that the policy was bad for the country, or because of a belief -being confirmed- that the architects of the policy are simply bad men? For Stewart the latter is not at all useful.

It's a fair point, and I agree. How can you discuss what's best for the country with your political adversaries if your people expect you to treat them as the monsters you've made them out to be? I remember the people who thought that if Bush were doing something, it must be something wrong. The chaumurky that ended with Bush as president-elect will do that I guess - Bush Derangement Syndrome, they called it.

I think, however there are a few issues with the critique. The first thing that comes to mind is that the people who have Bush Derangement syndrome are not driving the rhetoric of the Democratic party.

Secondly, Americans do have plenty in common with each other socially. The political realm, however is where you find that bifurcation. The cable news networks inhabit the political realm, and so it is hard to see how they can avoid feeding into it, regardless of whether or not they did a better job evaluating arguments and weeding out corruption.

Thirdly, if Stewart's point about starting from the assumption that Bush is a bad man is a response to MSNBC's waterboarding coverage in particular, then one could easily respond that there has been evidence available before the waterboarding issue arose for opinionators to make a judgement call about the sort of man Bush is. I've been trained to withhold judgement, and doing so is good practice for facilitating dialogue, and indeed for life, if I do say so myself.

I don't think that George W. Bush is evil, nor do I know whether or not he is a bad man. His claim that one of the worst moments of his presidency was getting dissed by Kanye West, and his braggadocio about waterboarding certainly did not make him look good. Perhaps the upshot of Stewart's argument is that the media should concentrate on what people do, and not be in the business of making calls on people's character at all. I do think that if the media did the job that Stewart wants it to do, evidence will be uncovered that inevitably leads to people looking like real pieces of work.

Stewart made a great point when he talked about putting the actions of presidents into context. For example, I've complained about Obama claiming the authority to order assassinations of US citizens without trial. Did Abraham Lincoln do something similar during the US Civil War? Obama is responsible for extraordinary rendition, and is holding terrorism suspects without trial. Franklin Delano Roosevelt interned US citizens of Japanese descent, and was responsible for the firebombing of Tokyo. His successor, Truman, was responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did these men break their oaths to defend the constitution, are they responsible for war crimes, and if so are they evil men?

My thinking so far is that the latter question is not really useful. A more useful question is, I think: ultimately, were/are these policies good for the country? I'm also thinking that any critical assessment of the political calculations that led to these decisions needs to examine not just what the they believed, but what the American people believed. Waterboarding, and bragging about waterboarding can only have little cost to the perpetrators in a society that largely doesn't care about or actually supports the torture of terrorism suspects.

Simple Answers to Simple Stupid Questions Cont.

2010-11-10T03:51:00.000+05:30

After quoting this post from Juan Cole:

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who will seek the Energy and Commerce Committee chairmanship maintains that we do not have to worry about climate change because God promised in the Bible not to destroy the world again after Noah’s flood.

About half the newly elected Congressmen are climate deniers (and if past experience is any guide, about a third of them are criminals).

John Cole asks:

Do other nations look at us and just laugh?

Basically yes, until we realise what the fumduckery of your lawmakers may mean for the rest of us.

Just Because

2010-11-09T05:35:00.002+05:30

Some tunes from a cool Icelandic band, Hjálmar. Caught their song Manstu on a Icelandair flight back home and haven't been able to get it out of my head. It brings to my mind's eye a scene in which I foolishly serenade some poor girl with my boys in tow, and ask her to remember how good it felt to be with me:

I also dig this tune, Líð ég um. Enjoy:

I'll try to keep an open mind...

2010-11-08T21:16:00.002+05:30

I've just learned, via my morning read, that Zac Efron has been offered the lead role in an adaptation of anime fan favourite Akira.

Akira is the name of a manga series -later adapted into an animated movie- set in "neo-Tokyo" a city built following the destruction of the old Tokyo in an explosion three decades earlier. The explosion was caused by the eponymous Akira, a young boy with terrifying telekinetic powers. The central protagonists are Shima Tetsuo and Kaneda Shōtarō. The latter -the role Efron has apparently been offered- is the leader of a biker gang who discovers that his childhood friend Tetsuo is developing similar destructive powers.

Truth be told, I'm not all that enamoured of the anime. Still, my immediate reaction is worry that this will be another Dragonball Evolution, a little disappointment that the rumours do not concern some hot, young Asian actor, and hope that the producers will do more justice to the depth and complexity of the original manga than the anime adaptation.

Crank Up The Wingnut Wurlwitzer!

2010-11-04T22:22:00.000+05:30

I expect lots of crowing from the pundits about "the people" having delivered their verdict on the so-called big government tax and spend policies of the Obama administration, and I shall pay them no mind. I have little time for those who largely kept quiet while an inherited surplus was transformed into a structural deficit with tax cuts, two wars, and a new programme - all unpaid for. Furthermore I'm quite certain that if you were to ask people specific policy questions they would not opt for a roll back of provisions for people with pre-existing conditions, nor for another transfer of wealth to the rich and super-rich through the Bush tax cuts.

The economy sucks, incumbents always get soaked when the economy sucks. In fact considering how many people are hurting I'm surprised that the drubbing the Democrats received wasn't much worse

What annoys me most about the result is that now the Republican leadership has no incentive whatsoever to actually get to grips with the business of governance. These knuckleheads spent the last two years ginning up fear about a secret muslim Kenyan socialist usurper, and they've been rewarded with control of the lower house of Congress and quite a few state legislatures - I expect some real wailing and gnashing of teeth when districts are redrawn. The next two years should be even more fun: crazy bills with no chance of making it through the senate and frivolous investigations (to keep the base nice and angry), increased legislative paralysis, the inaction and its consequences shamelessly blamed on Obama.

I can't wait!

Simple Answers to Simple Stupid Questions

2010-11-03T02:45:00.000+05:30

Bill Maher, upon discovering that the most popular baby name in the U.K was Mohammed: Am I a racist to feel I'm alarmed by that? Because I am.

Not necessarily, Mr. Maher but that's classic bigotry right there.

Oppression and Respect

2010-10-29T05:18:00.000+05:30

A great post by Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds me that while Malcolm X may have been admirably humble in turning his critical gaze inward, he did not rethink his positions on gender. Sad.

The Very Model of a Modern U.S. President (cont.)

2010-10-27T17:37:00.001+05:30

I just have to shake my head at this ish.

The Very Model of a Modern U.S. President

2010-10-21T18:24:00.000+05:30

An impressive spoof of Obama. I almost forgot my beef with the drone strikes, and the fucking with civil liberties thing (don't even get me started on the current U.K government!)

Via.

From Sociological Images

2010-10-20T23:13:00.001+05:30

an interesting video and post on gender non-conformity in one family. I couldn't help thinking how fortunate the young boy in the video was for having a relatively safe space to express himself, and the debate over Morehouse College's decision to restrict that kind of space.

A Rethink

2010-10-20T22:30:00.001+05:30

The first Bioshock game was OK but I got a little bored with the gameplay so I swore off the sequel. After seeing this review of a (quelle surprise) well-done African American character I might just give Bioshock 2 a look:

As I read it, Grace becomes a symbol for the desire not to see African Americans succeed and create their own lives, families, and spread as do others. Despite her barrenness, despite her lover being taken from her forcibly, she is given hope, however. It is not hard to see why she would warm to Dr. Lamb, a white woman who believes in the greater good, regardless of race or class. Even though Lamb ends up the antagonist, she is still seen as human despite her hatred towards you. She is not a ‘great evil.’ She and Grace are humans, with concerns, lives, and stories of their own. They also become symbols of their plight, and ideology in the case of Lamb, through their lives.

Via

ATL Georgia

2010-10-17T23:56:00.001+05:30

Back from a ten-day trip to Atlanta, Georgia. I'm one of those fellows who tries to take pleasure in both the journey and the final destination - the Flying Takeshi Monster knows that this effort is especially needed when the journey is 15+ hours. So, some highlights:

The aerial view of Miami.
The Chicago skyline at dawn.
The way that sunlight would transform rivers and lakes into molten gold.
The unbelievably vast expanse of Lake Michigan.
Flying through the clouds over London in the moonlight.

I stayed with a close friend in a pleasant little neighbourhood of Atlanta close to Emory University. A friend of mine described Emory's campus as "very beautiful in and Abercrombie and Fitch sort of way". Indeed, these sons of bachateros have the kind of money that would make the vice-chancellor of my old alma mater green with envy. Each building I saw around one lawn, sat there like a huge white and pink marble "fuck you" to the rich neighbours of a poor man who has a sudden windfall.

I also took the opportunity to check out the Martin Luther King Jr. Centre. It was pretty cool if not a little overcommercialised and underwhelming. Visiting his natal home was much more interesting. I had the good fortune to visit on the 30th anniversary of the opening of the centre, so there was a little festival on the street in Atlanta where his natal home is located. There was a street festival a few blocks over filled to bursting with black humanity, and I ate at a soul food restaurant. Chicken, stuffing, gravy, hush-puppies, collard greens and baby lima beans. It was good, but that ish will kill you!

Insidious

2010-10-14T23:52:00.001+05:30

I've been away for a while on a holiday (of sorts) to Atlanta - more on that in later posts- so I've been trying my best to avoid the daily reads and the ensuing desire to give forth on them, but alas...

A few days after my arrival I noticed, quite by accident, an op-ed in the New York Times by John Edgar Wideman. The article details Wideman's experiences on the train between his home in New York City and his workplace in Providence:

Over the last four years, excluding summers, I have conducted a casual sociological experiment in which I am both participant and observer. It’s a survey I began not because I had some specific point to prove by gathering data to support it, but because I couldn’t avoid becoming aware of an obvious, disquieting truth.

Almost invariably, after I have hustled aboard early and occupied one half of a vacant double seat in the usually crowded quiet car, the empty place next to me will remain empty for the entire trip.

I’m a man of color, one of the few on the train and often the only one in the quiet car, and I’ve concluded that color explains a lot about my experience. Unless the car is nearly full, color will determine, even if it doesn’t exactly clarify, why 9 times out of 10 people will shun a free seat if it means sitting beside me.

The account was so similar to experiences I've had, and those of some of my acquaintances of colour, as to be banal. In hindsight, perhaps it would be nice if some readers became more mindful of their behaviour. Anyway, it wasn't saying anything I didn't already know so I didn't really pay the article any mind. I was therefore, rather taken aback by John McWorther's response.

It really is a thing of beauty.

McWorther claims that he is not questioning Wideman's experience, and he isn't. However his rhetoric appears designed to shift the problem from the behaviour of Wideman's fellow passengers onto Wideman himself (and as a corollary from whites to blacks). Both McWorther and Wideman have ridden the quiet car on the Acela in recent years, both are black, yet their experiences are completely different. Furthermore, McWorther has never been stopped while driving his car, he can pick up a taxi in New York City, and he has he been followed in a store. He has asked other black men and they share his experiences. So why Wideman and not them?

He does not answer that there is anything wrong with Wideman or people who claim similar experiences, no. However he skillfully opens the door to those kinds of explanations, and American culture provides many of them. Claiming oversensitivity, or that someone is looking for racism, or imagining things, or that racism will go away if people just stop bringing it up are all strategies employed again and again to derail conversation.

It reminded me of a discussion on my friend Loco's blog where one commenter appeared so concerned that people might think that Japan is a racist country that, in the interest of fairness, just had to come in and make sure Loco's readers knew that Loco's experiences were not at all representative of black people's experiences in Japanese society.

McWorther says that his experiences, those of his friends and the many other black men who have yet to encounter a "while black" moment should not be dismissed, and that we need an honest discussion about racism in America in 2010. I agree, but I have to say that his piece didn't feel very honest to me.

As Resistance put it on her blog:

Obviously, in the interest of fairness, John McWhorter needs to make sure you know this doesn’t happen to him. Or his friends. Because of course the problem is that we don’t hear enough accounts of how racism doesn’t really affect black people. (Or how they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.)

It's Funny

2010-10-05T03:31:00.000+05:30

... I was revisiting a post my mate Loco had done on his blog where he talked about his admiration for Malcolm X, I then check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog and see a post on -you guessed it- Malcolm X. I urge you to check out Loco's series on race, of which his latest post is a part. Also, the discussion at Coates' place on the Malcolm X post is top notch. There isn't much I can add to it, except to say that I get the sense that as a historical figure Malcolm X really isn't given his due. The man was wrong about many things, but I found his calling America out on it's failure to live up to it's own ideals to be totally on point. It was the way he delivered his criticism, with passion, humour and wit, and the way he turned his critical gaze upon himself that makes me a fan.

Open Up Your Mind and Let Me Step Inside

2010-10-04T19:08:00.001+05:30

A little while ago I had the dubious pleasure of watching Highlander, and I am ashamed to say that I had kind of forgotten just how awesome Queen are. I was thankful for the reminder:

The bass guitar at 1:27 is just the kind of dirty I like.

This next one is also great.

Two of my favourite Queen tunes, "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" and "Play The Game" after the jump. Enjoy.

More tea, anyone?

2010-09-29T21:38:00.001+05:30

Matt Taibbi has a piece out on the Tea Party movement that is great to read. I wanted to highlight a couple of exchanges in particular:

At a Paul fundraiser in northern Kentucky, I strike up a conversation with one Lloyd Rogers, a retired judge in his 70s who is introducing the candidate at the event. The old man is dressed in a baseball cap and shirtsleeves. Personalitywise, he's what you might call a pistol; one of the first things he says to me is that people are always telling him to keep his mouth shut, but he just can't. I ask him what he thinks about Paul's position on the Civil Rights Act.

"Well, hell, if it's your restaurant, you're putting up the money, you should be able to do what you want," says Rogers. "I tell you, every time he says something like that, in Kentucky he goes up 20 points in the polls. With Kentucky voters, it's not a problem."

In Lexington, I pose the same question to Mica Sims, a local Tea Party organizer. "You as a private-property owner have the right to refuse service for whatever reason you feel will better your business," she says, comparing the Civil Rights Act to onerous anti-smoking laws. "If you're for small government, you're for small government."

You look into the eyes of these people when you talk to them and they genuinely don't see what the problem is. It's no use explaining that while nobody likes the idea of having to get the government to tell restaurant owners how to act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the tool Americans were forced to use to end a monstrous system of apartheid that for 100 years was the shame of the entire Western world. But all that history is not real to Tea Partiers; what's real to them is the implication in your question that they're racists, and to them that is the outrage, and it's an outrage that binds them together. They want desperately to believe in the one-size-fits-all, no-government theology of Rand Paul because it's so easy to understand. At times, their desire to withdraw from the brutally complex global economic system that is an irrevocable fact of our modern life and get back to a simpler world that no longer exists is so intense, it breaks your heart.

I had a house mate at one time with whom I had a rather heated discussion about the role of government, and the Civil Rights Act came up. What really got to me was how fired up he was about the rights of business owners rather than the denial of human dignity to a whole swathe of the US population that made such a law necessary. I'm loathe to think that what makes me describe myself as a "Dirty Fucking Hippy" as rather than a Conservative or a Libertarian is a concern for the less powerful, as well as the history and structures that have shaped present inequalities, but these days I get little in the way of disconfirming evidence.

Taxonomy Of Rap Names

2010-09-22T17:56:00.000+05:30

I was bumming around on the intertrons, when I found this. As you may already know, I'm a sucker for this kind of representation of data.

... Look at all the pretty colours.

Supernovae

2010-09-16T02:03:00.002+05:30

Another day, another weird dream. This time I was walking along a wet tarmac path at night time. I could tell because of the way the light came off of the path. It reminded me of the path through the little field in my college town that I would walk through on my way to my ex’s house. The sky was clear and the air was fresh and cool, like just after rain. The most striking thing about this dream was just how vivid it was. Everything felt so real, the breeze, the sound of my footsteps, everything. That was until the stars started exploding.

The first explosion caught me by surprise. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen, but the material from the star, spread out in a doughnut shape like a firework, confirmed what had happened. Then another star went off, and another, and I was suddenly filled with the urge to get closer.

I jumped, higher than humanly possible. I tried to fly but I could only muster a kind of double jump that left me hanging in the air after I had finished accelerating skywards, then falling slowly to the ground. No idea what it meant, but it's better than getting shot in the head by a classmate.

A Western Disease

2010-09-13T18:33:00.001+05:30

Over at Ta-Nehisi coates' blog I listened to an NPR interview with Jeff Sharlet about David Bahati (below), the author of Uganda's bill to eradicate ~~gay people~~ homosexuality. I found Sharlet's account of Bahati chilling, and the apparent cynicism of Museveni maddening.

Like Coates, I was touched by the notion that homosexuality is alien to authentic African societies.To my shame, I actually used to accept such nonsense as fact. Growing up I would encounter messaging, both subtle and not so subtle, that asserted the inherent superiority of white people and European culture. It was like the very air I had to breath. It still is to tell the truth, but that's for another post.

Thinking back on it, I realise I believed such a myth because it was was a way to attack the supposed superiority of whites and European societies in all things. The idea that homosexuality is disgusting and unnatural, used to argue that any culture that "produces" gay people is inherently flawed. Et voila. An instant salve the mitigate the smearing of a continent.

Man, the dumb things I believed.

At the age of 14 I'm chasing some guy who coded quite feminine around the playground shouting "battyman!" At 22 I'm getting hit on by gay men, and I don't care. Hell, it's nice to feel attractive, and in Japan I can't say I felt that way very often.

If you were to ask me how I changed I think the biggest thing is my curiosity. I love to know. It's how I came across data that destroyed a lot of the things I thought I knew. Like, "Cleopatra was Greek?!" The truth can mess you up like the blood of Glaurung. It's how I lost my religion. And losing my religion was a huge blow to my homophobia.

People who met me after university, tend to think I'm joking when I say that I was a soldier for Christ. I used to go to this huge evangelical church in London called the Kingsway International Christian Centre with my uncle and his adopted kids, and lift up my voice, and my hands, to the Lord. I kid you not.

At the same time, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something a little off with basis of my beliefs. My questions were not encouraged, and doubt turned to outright mistrust. When I gave up on religion (sorry Lord, not enough evidence) I no longer had any obligation to view homosexuality as wrong, and the more I learned about human sexuality the less I cared about what sex a person was attracted to.

(Check out my previous post on the anti-gay bill here.)

Little People

2010-09-06T03:39:00.000+05:30

"I'm hairy because my dad was really hairy!" my niece asserted. And believe you me, my niece asserts with aplomb. It was like as I was hearing her I watched a medal winning high-dive in my mind's eye.

After regaling me with the difference between a mono/uni-brow and an omni brow*, she put her face to the living room mirror and scrunched up her face - to better reveal the nose hairs she had begun to fret over, I later learned.

"Do you have a tail-comb?"

"Sorry?"

She ran off to my mum's room and came back with one, then began to style her eyebrows. The most interesting of these was when she combed them up into the shape of a Vulcan's eybrows, like from Startrek.

Yes, I am a bad uncle. I express mild wonder at the beauty of my niece and nephew's burgeoning personalities. I've been away chasing that paper. So I've ended up missing out on siginificant periods of my niece and nephew's growing up. The last time I spent any significant amount of time with them, they weren't in the habit of describing their feelings or opinions in detail or as arguments. Now, as they engage me in discussion I sometimes think to myself, "My goodness!"

As I looked at my niece scrunching up her face in the mirror, I began to imagine the woman that she would become. I began to wonder about the feelings she might have about her body, and how they could change as she develops. It made me feel some kind of way.

*A mono/uni-brow travels across the brow in a straight line, an omni-brow takes a dip between the eyes. Apparently.

Whatever, man. I laughed

2010-09-01T22:04:00.000+05:30

H/T Andrew Sullivan's blog at the Atlantic

Nwoke'm e jighi beke awa oji

2010-08-30T02:51:00.002+05:30

Kilamanjaro! Just got back from an outing with mumsy. A friend of hers had a christening and party for her grandchild. I haven't been in a room with that many Nigerians in a long long time!

My mum's friend is an interesting lady. She's from a place in Nigeria called Arochukwu very close to my mother's own hometown, and the former capital of an old political alliance called the Aro Confederacy. My mother's people, my people, were part of this alliance and fought the British at the turn of the twentieth century.

My feelings on the British expedition into Igboland are captured beautifully by Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart if you haven't read it yet, do so. It really is a wonderful piece of work. I was sympathetic to the protagonists' way of life, but Achebe would point out the ways in which change, at least from a contemporary perspective, improved the lot of the society's most vulnerable.

The Aro Confederacy achieved economic hegemony mainly via its control of the regional slave trade. So while I feel some kind of way about the British colonisation of Nigeria, I can't really say I'm sorry that the alliance is no more.

GSW

2010-08-27T07:04:00.002+05:30

I woke up with a nasty headache this morning. I dreamed that I got shot in the head, right above my right eyebrow. It was quite funny not quite being able to comprehend why I still lived, blood, fluids and brain matter running down my face while I dialed 911 for the ambulance and worried about how I was going to cover the ridiculous cost of treating my injury.

The person who shot me was a young lady I knew from secondary school called Emily. My peers judged her because they considered it a bad thing for a girl to enjoy frequent sex, especially frequent sex with guys other than themselves. I went right ahead and judged her too.

I have no idea what she was doing in my head. This is the first time I've thought about her in ages. I remember very little of her. In fact the only memory I have of her is when she was being teased about having sex with me. We hadn't. Back then being linked to me in any way was just the worst thing that could happen to a girl. And they would do whatever it took to avoid the merest hint that they viewed me as anything but repulsive.

I remember one time when one of my classmates, Khalil, was calling me ugly amongst other things, which I vociferously denied. In frustration he appealed to Angie, a relatively popular girl, to adjudicate: "which one of us is better looking, me or him?"

It was obvious that she found me more attractive, she looked into my eyes pleading for me to understand what she was about to do. The dictates of classroom hierarchy meant that her status was forfeit if she challenged the orthodoxy. She said Khalil was more attractive as if she were apologising for stealing from her mother's purse.

Poor Emily had the misfortune of arriving a little late at our home room at the same time as yours truly. Obviously we had been going at it hammer and tongs, because everybody knew that Emily likes to have sex. "How was his dick?", Ram asked her.

"Very. Very. Small."

It was only a matter of time...

2010-08-25T06:08:00.001+05:30

I'm sure by now you've heard of Chatroulette. It's basically a site where you randomly video chat with strangers. If, like me, you are aware of all internet traditions, you'd know it goes without saying that that kind of site just has to have plenty of men looking for some action. Not that there's anything wrong with that. However, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to mess with them.

Behold!

Gotta say, I laughed. Is it harmless, or is does it reflect some kind of sexual shaming of young men?

How pathetic? This pathetic

2010-08-25T05:46:00.003+05:30

Lately I've been playing a pretty old video game called Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic. Now I'm sure by now some of your alarm bells are going off. The words video game and Star Wars are in the same sentence, and not being used negatively. Stick around, it gets worse.

The plot is a classic fish out of water story. You are thrust into the game as a crew member of a ship under attack and end up having the fate of the galaxy on your shoulders. One of the main plot arcs is the development of the relationship between the main protagonist, you, and a Jedi called Bastila. Depending on how you play the game you can end up with a whole confession of love after the penultimate battle. At one point Bastila says something like, "I can't think of anything better than to be loved by you". And dephlogisticate a man if I wasn't all touched, and identifying with the characters*, and suddenly desiring to hold my ex in my arms and wanting to hear those words.

But I won't hear those words, and I'm finding it really hard to be ok with that. At least 100 percent of the time. The times that I'm not ok with it can be so damned unbearable I wish to tear my heart out, that I may not feel.

* The development of Jolee's character was very well done. All in all it's a pretty good game.

A New Beginning...

2010-08-25T05:22:00.001+05:30

Or "Do Not Trust to Hope, It Has Forsaken These Lands."

Goodness gracious me! It's been hard to believe that I've been away from this place for a good five months. As I mentioned a little while ago, I've been struggling with thoughts that I really haven't anything to write that anyone would want to read, or would not be expressed with much more skill elsewhere. I also got it into my head that writing would distract me from the essential task of looking for a job. This blog was originally conceived of as a way of keeping people in the know about the interesting work I was doing in Japan, and it sort of evolved into a spot for some amateur political commentary, mixed in with some posts that revealed my nerd status.

I've been thinking lately that I need an outlet for my thoughts, forget worrying if they're serious enough. So I think that I'm going to excise the poor attempts at applying my professional training and get more personal. I have a new spot for the more politically oriented stuff, but I'm sure the two will occasionally overlap.

Now maybe I'm all energised and ready to post again because I'm in a kind of manic stage, where the loss and mourning and crisis feel distant and I am once again confident in my abilities to elicit woos and yays from the people I interact with.

I'll hedge and say that my posting will be intermittent. I'm on a motivation rollercoaster these days.

For the longest time I just been way unmotivated to put my fingers to the keyboard to hammer out anything but a cover letter. And believe me, some days I don't feel very much like typing those either. So it is slightly amusing that I'm coming back to my spot now, because it could be argued that I'm actually in a worse place than I was in March.

In March I had a gig, a modest evaluation of some peacebuilding training, and I was in a relationship. I now have neither. The loss of the latter has been pretty hard to take. I wasn't able to find a long(er)-term job in the States and had to leave. Not knowing when we'd ever be able to be in proximity again, a break-up was pretty much inevitable. Trés くやしい.

Yep. Since my return to mumsy's place I've been pretty miserable and pathetic some days.

Anyway, whichever of my vanity projects you peruse (both would be nice), I hope you'll find the content interesting and meaningful.

Mandrake!

2010-03-07T02:20:00.000+05:30

I always loved the soft hiss of "defenders" that followed the titular phrase.

But, I thought you loved your country

2010-03-03T07:14:00.000+05:30

Liz Cheney's group, Keep America Safe, has released an ad questioning the loyalty of US Justice Department lawyers who advocated for terrorism suspects detained by the Bush administration.

Never mind that in the U.S everyone is supposed to entitled to legal representation. Even people alleged to have commited acts of terrorism. That's right, alleged. A key principle of the US justice system is that the government presents evidence that demonstrates the guilt of the accused. The quality of that evidence must be tested, ergo the requirement for a good legal defense. It isn't about "sharing the values" of the accused, or condoning the crime for which your client has been accused, It's about the very integrity of the justice system.

Jaysis wept.

Conflict in the South Atlantic

2010-03-01T03:16:00.002+05:30

Great Britain, Argentina, and the Falkland/Malvinas Islands: The saga continues.

Geological surveys have indicated a possible motherlode of oil in the vicinity of the Islands that could make Falklanders very rich indeed. Inevitably the The U.K awarded licenses for oil exploration, and the Argentine government are not happy bunnies.

It's a complex emotive issue. One that's has been unresolved since James Onslow evicted pre-Argentine settlers from the islands in the 1830's. The Argentines have been continuously frustrated in their attempts to negotiate a settlement, and it must kill the Kirchner administration -who apparently made recovery of the islands a part of their platform- that the British could be in for a bonanza, of what they must see as filthy lucre gained by robbing Argentina.

My feeling is that the Argentine government needs to feel that they're respected, and their interests treated as legitimate enough for discussion. Given the history of the dispute I'm more than a little sympathetic to this position. But in order to counter this kind of emotional appeal, the British are likely to impute Argentine calls for serious negotiations to the possible revenues involved. Unless the Argentine government is able to seriously disrupt surveying/extraction operations, I don't see the British government becoming more open to changing its policies any time soon.

Discussions in Black History Month: On being the "bigger person"

2010-02-28T03:55:00.003+05:30

I was bullied from about my 4th year in primary school until my last year in secondary school. Mostly I was just ostracized, but there were times when it got physical. It got so bad at one point that I had to spend my lunch-hours in a classroom to prevent the fights from starting.

In general, it was a thoroughly awful period of my life. This may be unfair, but I remember my secondary school as a place that offered very little to most of the students that passed through it outside of socialisation for the street, which was merely an epiphenomenon of the backgrounds of the majority of the student body. The school leadership and staff, at least some of them, did what they could. However the hegemonic culture inside the school walls was pretty much that of the street. This is hopelessly simplified, but in the street pretty much all you have of lasting importance is your name, your rep.

I could have taken on the boys and girls with reps, I could have played by their rules, but for the most part I didn't. My mind was beyond the school walls, beyond the street. I wanted more than what the street had to offer, and because of that I was extremely vulnerable. Say I'd brought a knife into school and used it on one of my bullies. It would mean expulsion, and possible imprisonment. I had no crew, no one would have stood tall for me. Maybe I'd get a rep, but more likely I'd get a knife in the liver from anyone of my victim's crew. And the rep you get from knifing someone was not the kind I needed to get where I wanted to go.

So I took punches and abuse, when I would have liked nothing more than to smash the faces of the people who stepped to me. At times I wanted to seriously hurt the people whose indifference and insults made my life almost unbearable at times, but I never did. Being despised and ostracized was bad enough, but being thought of as weak, and the knowledge that this perception would only encourage more despite and ostracism, was hard for me to live with.

Another thing that was hard for me to live with was the fact that I would likely never get to where I wanted to go having exacted revenge, or seeing the people who made my childhood much harder than it should have been called to account. I've managed to let go of much of my anger, perhaps the process has been aided by the fact that I'm now a good way along on the path I wanted.

Needless to say my experience has greatly affected my thinking on the struggles of black people and other minority groups across the world. A number of my acquaintances are dissatisfied with it. Taking the position that there are finite resources, and that any struggle for these resources is a zero-sum game; they argue that fighting for the development of the black community while precluding the tactics used by whites to gain and maintain power at the expense of other groups means also precluding any chance that black people as a whole will ever catch up. I commonly hear:You're asking black people to be saintly, to keep turning the other cheek. Why push for policies that benefit most Americans and not just black people? Why can't we just say that we alone deserve this or that policy because of what was done to us?

I think my acquaintances' positions also rely on the ugly premise that racial discrimination is only a wrong when it happens to black people - I know for sure that at least one of them would affirm that premise with no qualms.

Aside from arguments about values or morality, this is a terrible foundation from which to build up a community. In the US context this kind of "all for us, none for others" thinking would pit 13% of the US population against the other 87%. Looking at the numbers, what are the odds of fulfilling one's agenda?

It's an awful tribalism. The kind that would call for 5 take on 50 in combat to reach a target, rather than have a sniper take one shot, based not on a comparison of the likely effectiveness of the two strategies but because the latter does not generate the right feelings, and lacks the requisite gore and glory.

My position isn't about being "a bigger person" as N would say. I wasn't a bigger person in secondary school. I could be as ignorant, and cruel, and ugly as anyone else. My desire to go to university did not mean that I'd completely transcended my environment, I was an active participant in the culture of the school even as an outcast. My hands are not clean.

My position is simply about wanting more than violence, and more than the fear of violence.

Discussions in Black History Month: Do we need a Black Agenda?

2010-02-26T03:26:00.001+05:30

A fellow named Tavis Smiley is looking to hold Obama and numerous other black elites' feet to the fire for not pushing for a black agenda. LINK

As far as responses go, I can't really do better than Ta-Nehisi Coates. He writes:

I don't know what a "black agenda" is. I can think of very few policies which I would say are good for black people, but aren't good for most of America. I think Tavis would agree. (His site says "a black agenda is an American agenda." But that only raises another question: why would we calling it (sic) a "black agenda?" Surely changing the way we approach incarceration would help black men, but were there no black men in this country, we still would do well to think about how we incarcerate people.

I'm at a loss to see what we gain by simplistically racializing problems that may well have a racial component, but aren't wholly, and in many cases even mainly, racial problems. To be clear that component should be called out. But it seems you implicitly alienate allies when you claim that broad problems are the property of specific communities.

Moreover, you do the work of your adversaries. Nothing would please them more than for America to think of incarceration as a "black problem" to be addressed by a "black agenda." People hear "black issue" and they feel relieved--"Oh well, it ain't my problem." Except that it is. And we should make them aware that it is.

Yes, it definitely strikes me as poor strategy. Similar to my point in this post you're more likely to achieve your policy goals if you align the interests of a broad coalition, or at the very least do not mobilise significant opposition. Emotionally it can be a tough sell, for example my girl N said "Why do we have to be the bigger people?" "Why isn't it enough to just talk about American history and outline the legitimate reasons for policies that benefit black people? Why can't we point to past wrongs and say that we are working for policies of corrective justice?"

Again, I get it. Doing things like avoiding the word "welfare" is not a direct challenge to the prejudiced thinking that changes the meaning of "welfare" to something like "taking money from hard working whites and giving it to shiftless blacks". However I would argue that if the goal is policy that benefits ordinary black people, being mindful of the biases, fears and interests of potential opponents and acting accordingly is not weakness.

Umbrella Drinks and Metatron

So When You Blow Up I Can Pretend I Was An Integral Part Of The Process

This Is What Happens When You Have Glamorous Friends

Another Splurge

Just Because

My Weekend Break

Just Because

Update

Sociological Images

In Which I Vent My Spleen

Food Therapy

They Were Surely Mad

Thrice Valiant Prince

Their Tears Are Sweet to Behold

Apropos of Nothing

Red in Tooth and Claw

Now He's Cooking With Gas

Sociological Images

The Market Unleashed

On A Lighter Note

Believe It Or Not...

Suitor #12

Just Because

A Few Novelties

A Bleeding Heart May Result in Exsanguination

Alien Hominid

Good Eatin'

I Am Nothing

Nickles and Dimes

Class Warfare

A Taste of Home

Bite Prevention

The Swing of Things

Job Creation

The Wife

The Streets

Indians Don't Stare

Japan On My Mind

言ったはずだ。

"The Filth"

Just Because

Discussions in Black History Month: Some Cool Links

Just Because

Discussions in Black History Month: On Black Conservatives

Discussions in Black History Month: Those Who Don't Want To Know

Discussions in Black History Month: Cornell West on the Late Late Show

Clearly A Mossad Plot

Discussions in Black History Month: The Browning of America

退かぬ 媚びぬ 省みぬ

So Let Me Get This Straight...

Human Ingenuity

It was only a matter of time... (cont.)

The Trouble With Lagos

The King's Speech

Just Because

The Night Terrors

Tron: The Re-Up

For My First Post of The New Year...

Harbinger

To The Game Grid

Rethinking Russian Humour

Oh, My Goodness...

Is our Democrats Learnin'?

Shark Attacks at Egyptian Resort

Just Because

Fascinating

So, about that foul mood...

Wikileaks

Thoughts of She

Just Because

Maddow Vs. Stewart

Simple Answers to Simple Stupid Questions Cont.

Just Because

I'll try to keep an open mind...

Crank Up The Wingnut Wurlwitzer!

Simple Answers to Simple Stupid Questions

Oppression and Respect

The Very Model of a Modern U.S. President (cont.)

The Very Model of a Modern U.S. President

From Sociological Images

退かぬ　媚びぬ　省みぬ