But then I think: are all celebrities really that self-aware and consciously strong? They can’t all be, there’s just no way. Some of them are just idiots, it’s as simple as that, and if they can put up with the media’s attention, how hard can it be? Eventually everything blows over – doesn’t it?

I hear the body pisses out whatever extra vitamins and minerals it ingests that it doesn’t need. I also read a few months ago about a study of an ape species that revealed that they only take what they need in the way of food, even if more is available to them.

Why can’t we humans, the smartest creatures in the world, think and live like that? To take only what we need and not more just because it’s available to us? I can understand the concerns of the World War II generation who didn’t know where tomorrow’s meal would come from so they would hoarde supplies. But for my generation, which has grown up in relative prosperity, what’s the cause of the greed other than monkey-see monkey-do?

I’d like to see some Oriental or Latino supremacist groups. It would be nice to balance things out a bit. When my parents decided to leave India and move to N. America, for many years I was of the thought that we are in the land of others; that it’s a privelege I should feel grateful for and so on and so forth. I felt like the white people, by forming this great capitalist country, were doing me and mine a huge favor.

Only recently I’ve decided that I was utterly naive – I actually feel angry at myself for my former point of view, for being so innocent and foolish. This land is no more the white man’s land than it is mine or someone’s from Liberia or Chile; hell, you could even say that this land didn’t even belong to the Indians who the whites stole it from (to the extent that land can belong to someone).

As for doing favors, whose mental labor are the CEOs of America getting rich off if not immigrants? Who works the farms and meat factories that otherwise no one would touch if not illegal immigrants? Have they given us something by “letting” us be here, or are we funding their mansions and luxury cars and leisure time to harvest supremacist thoughts from our labor? The immigrants that are allowed in legally, are they allowed in because Americans are caring and compassionate toward all humankind, or because they can contribute to the coffers of the powers that be? Is money gain and greed not the bottom line?

My favorite bumper sticker of all time reads: “Sick of immigrants? Tell it to the Indians.”

A few years ago I was of the belief “Learn English or go back where you came from.” Now I say what the hell, let Latinos and Spanish take over – if it wouldn’t be them then it would be another racial group. The point is that what goes around comes around, and the white man’s “reign” is slowly on the decline. It might not happen in my lifetime, but to do my part, without violence, I can sit back and say “Fuck you” (with a smile, of course).

Sometimes I get really sick of all this positive thinking that’s going around. Self-help and spirituality books and the general media tell us to think positive, feel good about our bodies, put family and nation before anything else etc. etc. I just feel like saying “Fuck you!” to them all sometimes.

But then where I get stuck is at the question “What’s the alternative?” If you’re not to think positively, what other choice is there? Think negatively? That won’t do anyone any good now will it. So then I end up back where I was, genuinely thinking positively about some things and resignedly about others.

Your own domain name – $6.99/year
Hosting your own website with unlimited e-mail accounts and storage – $36/year
Setting up your e-mail accounts – 30 minutes
Going through your Spam – 2-10 minutes/day
Not giving Google unfettered access to your personal e-mail by using Gmail – priceless

Blogging is already a form of hubris, but twitter-ing takes it to a whole new level. “Listen to me world. This is what I’m doing, this is where I am, this is what I’m thinking about something that doesn’t really matter or pertain to the world-at-large.” I know the whole argument of “if you don’t like it don’t listen to it” but it’s the act of broadcasting itself that gives away the self-importance and self-absorption we all feel – whether as members of present-day society or as biological creatures in a never-ending struggle (I use the term loosely) for survival.

But it’s good too. Whereas before a cartel of publishers (of books, music, and videos) decided that this or that person is worth listening to, now every Joe and Nancy has the opportunity to be heard. Let them stand on the merit of their words. But that brings me back to the point I started with: there’s not much merit to tweets of the sort “I’m at X location” or “I’m watching X music video by the latest pop star”. I’ve been lurking in the Twitter-sphere for the past few weeks and people write inane and self-absorbed things for the most part. I envisioned blogging and “social media” to be more about sharing thoughts on things and events we share and participate in together, as opposed to broadcasting to the world what I’m doing in my pajamas on a Sunday morning and thinking it matters.

I also see merit in Twitter’s inherent brevity. Reading an unknown person’s blog post is a big investment in time. I see Twitter as a good introduction to someone’s writing ability and sphere of interest. It’s easier to read, in 140 characters or less, what someone cares and writes about than visiting their website and reading an entire paragraph of (what I consider) nonsense and leave feeling annoyed and crappy for having wasted my time.

I guess my point is: Bloggers and twitter-ers should write about stuff that matters.

They say humans need love; that if there’s anything man needs besides air, water, and bread it’s love and the companionship of others. So I wonder how loving an animal is different from loving another human. Is it really a different love in quality? Aside from the obvious sexual component, what does the love of another person provide that an animal’s love cannot?

They don’t speak, but they certainly make their love clear and known. And there are other important considerations as well: they don’t hold grudges, they don’t hold unrealistic expectations or make crazy demands; they don’t need birthday cards and gifts and ostentatious shows of love – it’s enough for them that you’re there and that you love them in the simplest ways possible: spending time with them, showing them affection, playing with them. The only kinds of humans that kind of love seems to be sufficient for is children, but, alas, they grow up.

I have decided that God is a mean one. I was rear-ended recently, and when it happened I thought nothing of it. But afterwards I wondered why He chose who he chose to get in the minor wreck that he did: a newly migrated young guy from Nepal with the initials BG who delivers pizzas. What’s going to happen to him? Nothing serious, except his insurance will go up for such a minor thing (we were both able to drive away in our cars after the accident). The insurance company will pay maybe $100 or $200 for the repair to my car; BG will probably have to pay a $500 deductible, and the insurance will more than make up that $100-200 in a couple of months after raising his premium.

It’s a win-win for the insurance company the way I see it. Why couldn’t it have been some rich yuppie who probably wouldn’t think twice about their insurance premiums going up “a bit”? Boulder is full of them, yet I had to get rear-ended by someone who’s probably a poster child for bad things happening to good people.

Insurance is evil, and God is mean.

Comfort and corporations

It’s generally accepted that corporations are big and informal monsters and the local shop or eatery is cozy and personable. For the most part I agree with this attitude, but I think it should also be noted that there are exceptions, as occurred to me recently.

There is a local cafe I like(d) to go to. It’s a nice cozy place, and it has its regulars as well as people who stop by to get a coffee on-the-go. The regulars are all well-acquainted with the owner and employees, and there are often hugs and laughs going around if they haven’t visited in a while. All is well, except I feel uncomfortable around this owner. Most likely it’s just in my head, but I feel that because I only get a coffee most of the time (instead of a fancy $3-4 drink), she doesn’t value my business as much as the people who eat $10 lunches at her little bistro. She’s never said anything to me directly, and she’s friendly enough, but something is bothersome – enough to make me stop going there as of late.

So instead I’ve started coming occassionally to the local store of a national bookseller. It’s farther away, but certain things are assured:

1. They’ll carry the standard fare of drinks every cafe has, big or small
2. They’ll accept credit card for any purchase regardless of amount – something the small store unfortunately cannot afford to offer
3. Since the person I am dealing with is not personally involved in the fiscal workings of the company, I won’t get strange looks or feel guilty or even funny for ordering “just a coffee” and paying with credit card for it.
4. Because it is a major chain, they have more visibility, hence I can safely assume their offerings and facilities – like the bathrooms and Wi-fi internet – will be just as, if not more, reliable as the local place.

I didn’t click on it, but you can if you want. I linked the image to the original location.

On having a following in social media

Interesting article by Clive Thompson about followed/following numbers in social media.

From article:

Because socializing doesn’t scale. Once a group reaches a certain size, each participant starts to feel anonymous again, and the person they’re following — who once seemed proximal, like a friend — now seems larger than life and remote. “They feel they can’t possibly be the person who’s going to make the useful contribution,” Evans says. So the conversation stops. Evans isn’t alone. I’ve heard this story again and again from those who’ve risen into the lower ranks of microfame. At a few hundred or a few thousand followers, they’re having fun — but any bigger and it falls apart. Social media stops being social. It’s no longer a bantering process of thinking and living out loud. It becomes old-fashioned broadcasting.

The lesson? There’s value in obscurity.

…literature, I’ve today realized, is that it’s not vetted through the filter of time. There are so many contemporary books that just won’t matter 1, 5, 10, 50 years from now. When children of that generation want to read quality they’ll have a solid filtered selection of books to choose from, books that have stood the test of time. War & Peace and The Tin Drum will still be relevant then; they’ll be just as masterful then as they are today.

Contemporary books though, they’re all new, all fresh, which is all nice but the only reviews they’ve had are from loony critics and professional book reviewers, who I don’t care to read in the first place. They haven’t been reviewed by regular readers yet, at least not ones who aren’t out to just read the latest thing and actually care for quality.

The way I see it, picking up and sitting down with a book is a big investment of time. It takes much longer to discover if you like a book vs. a movie or a song, and by the time you realize you don’t, you’ve already wasted that time. Now I’m all for taking chances and trying new things, but the choice these days – in not just books but everywhere – is ridiculously overwhelming. If I go to the library and look at the new releases, how can I decide “This one and not that one” based on anything but the beauty of the cover or the rave reviews from loony book reviewers?

So it is that I choose to read the classics that have proven to stand on their own merit years after their publication. I have taken chances, a few times, and more often than not I’ve been disappointed. Life of Pi and White Teeth come to mind, neither of which I felt like reading after a few pages. Lately, however, I really enjoyed Evan S. Connell’s Lost in Uttar Pradesh. I felt quite lucky, actually, for having picked a book I liked totally randomly off a library shelf.

“The number one need of any human is to be liked by other humans”

-Source

मुश्किलें इतनी पढ़ी मुझपर के आसान हो गयीं
(So many difficulties fell upon me that they became easy)

-Mirza Ghalib

Just as Ghalib’s difficulties “became easy” by being so many, I wonder if the elite of the world (or at least America), now that there are so many of them, aren’t rendered generic in the same way. Ivy League graduates working their high-falootin’ jobs as doctors and lawyers – aren’t they just a category to the rest of us? They’re probably wonderful individuals, but their impressive titles, along with earning them an enviable living, also alienate them from the rest of the world. And their enviable living, is it just me or is it becoming less and less enviable by the day? As America wakes up to its excessive ways, are these people going to remain asleep? Note that I’m generalizing here. I’m sure there are many socially conscious individuals who have impressive degrees and jobs, but – at least in my mind two recent events have tarnished the image of the American elite: the crash of the economy, and the presidency of George W. Bush.

At least in my mind, according to my own prejudices and in order to be able to categorize them, Ivy League graduates, doctors and lawyers, investment bankers and CEOs – they’re all lumped together as one – rich and privileged people who have probably never seen a day of hardship in their lives; haven’t had to worry about anything because their family’s connections already ensure them a cozy place in the social food chain.

The question, in my mind, is who will “win” in the end, the elite or the commoner.