Remembering Bhopal

Please visit REMEMBER BHOPAL to leave your thoughts, your comments, your reminiscences of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The 25th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster starts on the night of the 3rd and continues for 72 hours.

THE GRAPHIC CONNECTION

This article appeared in the Times of India's CREST edition, Saturday 14th (i.e., on Children's Day): More Power To Pictures. I thought I'd post it here for two reasons -- one, it increases the life of an article by, ummmm, a few minutes and two, because I'm going to be in conversation with one of the artists mentioned in the piece, David B., author of EPILEPTIC.

The event is scheduled for December 11th, at the IHC, New Delhi, courtesy the French Information Centre as part of their BONJOUR INDIA FESTIVAL. Clicking the link will take you to the BIF site. My event includes two other well-known graphic novelists, Sarnath Banerjee (CORRIDOR) and Nicolas Wild (KABOUL DISCO).

ANIMUSIC

Many of you may have already received e-mail forwards with either this video or variations on the theme. Well of course the "amazing instrument" is NOT real, but in case you want to visit the site to get information about the DVD and the developers of the video -- and see other videos -- here's the link to ANIMUSIC.

How To Put On A Bra -- Commando Style

Need I mention that I got this from the Incomparable AA?

WHERE DO UNDELETED CHARACTERS GO?

Got this from the Excellent Anvar Alikhan, who either spends far too much time sorting through the vast piles of garbage out there on the Net in order to send his friends only the choicest and most succulent of tidbits OR he never sleeps. Either way, I worry for him ... but am also very grateful.

According to my research this list is originally sourced to: Joel Garreau (garreau@well.com), as reported in his Cybersurfing column in the Washington Post


Where Do Deleted Characters Go?


QUESTION: Where do the characters go when I use my backspace or delete them on my computer?

ANSWER: The characters go to different places, depending on whom you ask:

The Catholic Church's approach to characters: The nice characters go to Heaven, where they are bathed in the light of happiness. The naughty characters are punished for their sins. Naughty characters are those involved in the creation of naughty words, such as "breast," "sex" and "contraception."

The Buddhist explanation: If a character has lived rightly, and its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be reincarnated as a different, higher character. Those funny characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become numbers, numbers will become letters, and lower-case letters will become upper-case.

The 20th-century bitter cynical nihilist explanation: Who cares? It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted, undeleted, underlined, etc. It's all the same.

The Mac user's explanation: All the characters written on a PC and then deleted go to straight to PC hell. If you're using a PC, you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're in PC hell also.

Stephen King's explanation: Every time you hit the (Del) key you unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!

Dave Barry's explanation: The deleted characters are shipped to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart filling; this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while cheap imitations are not flammable. I'm not making this up.

IBM's explanation: The characters are not real. They exist only on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to delete them is merely to de-conceptualize them. Get a life.

PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) explanation: You've been DELETING them??? Can't you hear them SCREAMING??? Why don't you go CLUB some BABY SEALS while wearing a MINK, you pig!!!!

Sing It!

For all those of us who yearn to be song-writers but can neither sing nor have friends who sing, here's a web-site that has something to offer: an audio-patchwork of words that have already been sung by other songsters, stitched into a song composed by YOU! Here's the website: Let Them Sing For You. It's really EASY. But in case you're feeling shy, here's a ready-made "song" for you to input:

You don't need a verse
A tune or a song --
It won't take a moment,
You'll see I'm not wrong!
Just enter your words
And click on the arrow --
Then tell me about it
Today or tomorrow!

--no, wait! I've experimented a bit and realize now that less is more (always!) -- i.e., less sense = more amusement.

Try these lyrics to see what I mean:

sing body sing song
hot sexy bread sing
body beat music long
just rock beat now now now

25th October, Delhirium

I've been away from the blog for so long I feel like a visitor! I dropped in now and then, just to remind myself it was there but I just did NOT feel like posting any updates. Maybe coz I was also writing bulletins to post to my Mom as well as making weak little attempts to do a bit of writing on the side? Maybe coz I was distracted by the amusements in the house I was staying in -- including a pair of very talkative Austrailian Zebra Finches? Maybe coz I spent a good half of my stay leaping on and off subways, buses and finally a train (back from Vermont)? Whatever. It was a hectic trip, but fun and I got a lot done, but have very little evidence to show for it! This little kitty was perhaps the only creature who got recorded on my camera, and she belongs to my Vermont family. I am SO fed up with my camera -- though I feel instantly disloyal writing this. Poor little thing! It does its best ... but I bought it at a moment in technology when cameras had just become self-aware but were not yet energy-efficient. So even though it takes acceptable photographs with the minimum of effort/thought on my part, it chews up batteries like a barracuda. I can never take more than about 30 pix in quick succession without being shown the "dying battery" icon and if, god forbid, the flash goes off at any time, well then pop goes the battery two pictures later. MOST FRUSTRATING. I try to remind myself of the days when the problem was running out of film or putting the film in backwards or of misjudging filmspeed -- but to no avail. It is STILL very annoying not to be able to use the camera spontaneously. gnngngngngnnnnggngggn, as Obelix might say.

Anyhow. I got back one week ago, last Saturday night, but was immediately felled by a monster cold. I mean, it had been threatening to break over my head the whole of my final week in NYC, but only really let itself go once I was back in Delhi. I didn't have a fever, so I wasn't worrying about H1N1 but omigod the FLOODS in my nose were like having twin rivers at high tide just pouring continuously. And a sensation like a saw-mill in my throat. Coupled with a desire to just burrow into my bed and DIE.

Which is pretty much what I did ALL WEEK. I have literally not stepped outside my house ever since returning -- I mean, yesterday evening I stepped into the little community park outside my front door and that was the first time I had worn outdoor shoes since removing them after the flight.

Speaking of which: it was one of those Continental Nonstops, filled to overflowing. I was scared to look out the windows in case I saw a few passengers clinging to the wings. Really. But I had planned well in advance, and had booked myself an aisle seat. My neighbour, however, was less fortunate. He seemed a very nice person, he was SO uncomplaining -- a tall, very polite and soft-spoken Afghan, he had been waiting to board a flight for two nights and this was his best bet. I even offered to give up my aisle seat in view of his discomfort but he was too polite to accept my offer. Half-way through the journey he got up and lay down in the space between the central bulkhead and the seat-backs of the middle section -- lucky for him, there was a lull in crew activity so no-one contested his use of that space. Poor man! 16 hours of being curled up like a shrimp. Yow.