Orson Scott Card slams J.K. Rowling for her latest lawsuit.

Today was the last day of Alfaaz, the literary festival at college. The last 2 days have been horribly busy, so I missed a lot of good stuff. I did make it to the book fair, though. I browsed around, found a lot of popular stuff, and some less common stuff, particularly from Yoda Press and Undercover Utopia. The former had some really interesting books. I picked up Rahul Roy’s A Little Book on Men and A.R. Venkatachalapathy’s In Those Days There Was No Coffee. There was more interesting stuff (particularly a “Sexualities” series of which the Rahul Roy is a part), but with budget constraints and what have you, this is what I could get. Apparently they have their books at Blossoms so not all is lost.

I just finished the Rahul Roy book (yes, 1 hour). It’s a short, illustrated, book. Very visual. I guess the intention is to analyse masculinity and its social roles and personal influences in a way that is accessible to people who don’t read much, or at least not much literature of this kind. Of course, the analysis is not very deep (I would have preferred more), but I think the experiment w.r.t. presentation style paid off. The book provides a reasonable amount of food for thought and pointers towards more works on the matter. Good stuff.

My second choice might make sense to some who know me. Being a Tamilian whose only real cultural predilection is coffee (something I do rue sometimes), I found both the title and the topic apt. The book is something of a cultural history of Tamil Nadu. Looks a little more heavy than I want to read right now, but will get to it soon. Happy purchase.

While the Book Café guys wrapping up, they decided that they’d give out a few free copies of Al Raines’ Soul Search Engine (signed!) and November Rain. *grin*

And the funny part is I went to the fair once, left without buying anything, thought “what the hell” and went back to actually buy the books, which is when this happened. Oh sweet indecision.

I know there’s something I’m forgetting, but maybe I’ll remember and make another post of it.

Welcome back to the second episode of Arun Unleashed (though I find myself less inclined to blog these days).

Reading TP‘s Wyrd Sisters. I thought I’d finished all of the older Discworld stuff. Pleasantly surprised to have not. :-)

For those of you that’ve been living under a very large rock, Radiohead has released their latest album, In Rainbows on a pay-what-you want basis. But you need to jump through a couple of hoops to get to the final page.

Nirbheek is a big time Songbird pimp. I finally tried it after much nagging. It is good, if somewhat raw. Their demo video pointed me to this band (actually, guy) called Bonobo (not the component architecture, silly). Good stuff. Wish I could buy it in India. In the mean time you can get some of their stuff too (is this remotely legal?).

There is something absurdly wonderful about being lost in a library.

Just finished The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood). Fame well-deserved. On to Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (but hopefully not too soon).

Went out to Loka Ruchi today, way down Mysore Road. Amazing North Karnataka food. Brilliant time.

Read Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Quite good (albeit somewhat morbid). Theme somewhat similar to Fight Club. This is the book his publishers found too disturbing to publish (Palahniuk, it seems, decided to write something even more disturbing to show them, but they liked it and published it. And “it” was Fight Club).

This Toe (Flash alert!) stuff is brilliant. Would really love to buy this album (New Sentimentality).

Alas, Kurt Vonnegut is no more.

Time I read Slaughterhouse 5. Currently on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Time, it is short, as the semester end nears.

And it appears that I will be busy this summer.

Not much else that is spectacularly worthy of reporting. Now to read about routing protocols in mobile, wireless, ad-hoc networks and associated security concerns.

Finished reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Rushdie) yesterday. 'Tis very good reading, across ages. Should be made mandatory reading for children aged 6-10. I liked the Shadow Warrior <-> Kathakali association particularly.

Before that was the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Mark Haddon -- keeps reminding me of Haddon Mirk). I'm certainly lucking out in my choice of books -- this too was amazing. Next in line, is The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Busy days here, filled with a lot of "nothing in particular"s. Coding work in earnest on thesis begins. Will also probably get to commission an HP NAS head, if I can figure out, and probably an EMC filer too. Fun!

Hope ya'll had a happy Shutdown Day.

[A lot of this is going to sound hackneyed and childish. There is language that some might regret reading. Go away.]

Whether working for two years before doing an MTech was a good idea is still somewhat an open question. Well, there are a lot of questions there, but one thing I got was perspective.

Mundanely enough, I understand a lot more about personal finances than I did, and that's a good thing. (I just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Content is okay, but presentation is very much teh suck)

Secondly, I now have a lot more perspective on how exploitative work life is today (hope a certain friend doing 16-hour days isn't reading this ... if you are, don't tell me I didn't warn you). Whether we want it or not, we all (I'm generalising, so sue me) fall into the trap -- this needs to be done, this is a really important project. Agendas (agendae?), prioritised action items. It's how we're programmed -- hard work good, life bad. So fucking forth.

To what end? More work, greater responsibility (so that's okay), more stress, a litle more money for me, a lot more money for my employer. Corporations continue to exploit customers and consumers. The rich slowly get richer, the cog turns a little faster, that it's master needn't wait so long to rake in that much more. Time with your family? Don't make me laugh. Participate in social activities (there are things other than cocktail parties, cherie)? The Master owns your society, and deigns that you need not participate.

I'm bad at articulating this shit. There are many who are infinitely better. And all for nought. Noam Chomsky likes to think that the revolution is coming. That's a load of bull. No such thing is happening. And I think he Gandhi said something cloyingly optimistic to the effect that The Man is always beaten. Fat fucking chance this times. You've been pwn3d. Deal with it.

Ah yes, it's Chuck Palahniuk that articulates it better. I remember now. Him and a bunch of others.

Alright. Break's over. Back to the wheel, boys and girls.

Home again. End-sem vacations end in less than a week. Was a much-needed break -- the previous semester got very stressful towards the end. Exams were okay. Got very bored towards the end of the last, and left it a little incomplete. [shrug] Thesis topic should be finalised before the year is through. Will update when confirmed. Only two subjects left in the course. Will sit through the choices and see how it goes. Current contenders are Computer Systems Security, Advanced Networks, and Bioinformatics. Am attempting to lug guitar to college. Whee.

Not much book reading done. Lolita. Subject is horribly sick, writing is beyond words. And Nabokov rues the fact that it’s written in English, which isn’t his native language. Possibly reason enough to learn Russian. Prachett’s Carpet People is next, borrowed from Eloor. I’ve till tomorrow to finish it. Need to get hands on some Chuck Pahlaniuk. Our library’s got Fight Club, but it has been (temporarily) purloined by some daft child.

Went to Palakkad for a wedding. God’s own country. There was a strike going on this one day. Went to Malampuzha Dam, three of us on a motorcycle. Nice dam. Cops caught us on the way back. Got off the usual way. Next day, we’re leaving, Dad was haggling with porters. It was interesting to see these people. In most other places, people are openly greedy, openly corrupt, and make no bones about being this way. In Palakkad, though, there seemed to be some strang, skewed morality there. The cop insisted that “we don’t have this sort of thing in Kerala” (refering to bribery) with a whole lot of righteous indignation, before accepting the money (amidst continued protests of honesty, and insisting that a group of 3 people is a congregation). The porters started off with a ridiculous figure for transporting the luggage, but seemed offended when we suggested that this was so (he settled for a third of the original amount, so there is certainly a contradiction there). Maybe it’s just a different negotiation style there, or maybe the people are too proud to have outsiders suggest such atrocious things as “you’re greedy”.

Words of RHCP wisdom -- “Staying high and dry’s more trouble than it’s worth”.
Gurgaon, Kanpur ... here I come. Superman’s Song. Nice.