There are some things that leave you with no option but to drop whatever else you're doing and PLAY. Here is one of those things: Mitoza. It's not quite a game or a puzzle and it's certainly more than a slide-show. Designed by an Israeli artist who goes by that handle "Baboon" it's one of those things that gives the Internet a good name.
UPDATE: Sadly, this site posted an ACCOUNT SUSPENDED sign some time later today. I'm hoping it's just because of heavy traffic or some such thing and that it'll be back up SOON.
Further UPDATE: And while you wait, here's a site I found interesting: THE WEEK BEHIND -- you'll see that they've featured MITOZA too -- and a little further down there was this rather beautiful and hallucinatory KALEIDOSCOPE.
And ... just to show all of you that I am reallyreallyreally concerned about the quality of your visit, I discovered a site where Mitoza is featured and it DOES work: KONGREGATE.
These two pieces appeared recently -- the first one on the edit page of the Times of India (in what's called the Third Edit slot) and the second one in OUTLOOK magazine, as part of its Cricket Special issue. The Third Edit pieces are going to be semi-regular, appearing once-in-three-weeks, on Mondays. The titles are links to the online editions of the pieces.
Familiar mnemonic sequences sometimes need updates. For instance, I can remember learning Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge when I was twelve. The initial letters of the words, E,G,B,D,F represent the names of notes on the five lines of the treble clef staff in western musical notation. Alas, however, I got it into my head that Every Good Boy Deserves APPLES, rather than Fudge. Worse yet, since I wasn't a boy, I tried to provide Every Girl (with) Big Delicious Apples. The resulting confusion effectively brought my musical career to a quick and screechy end.
But mnemonic devices have never ceased to fascinate me. Even as I grow more absent-minded with each birthday, my yearning to know the names of the nine Muses or the progression of taxonomic categories in biology becomes ever more intense. Particularly in the middle of the night. There is nothing so dismal as to lie awake at three a.m., with the planets from Mercury to Jupiter spinning around the sun in an orderly fashion, but Pluto, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn milling about in disarray at the outer fringes of the solar system. It doesn't help that their initial letters form the handy, but incorrect, acronym PUNS or that Pluto was de-classified as a planet in 2006. The familiar mnemonic, My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas has had to be altered and the new suggestions are all a bit disturbing. They range from My Very Eccentric Mother Just Served Us Nothing to My Very Evil Mailman Just Showed Up Nude. At three a.m., the last thing you want is to be fretting about pizza-free mothers and evil, naked mailmen.
I used to think VIBGYOR was the accepted mnemonic for the colours of the rainbow. Despite the fact that the colours are reversed and the word is an ungainly earful, I honestly believed this was how the English-speaking world remembered the sequence Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. So it's a rude shock to discover, via Wikipedia, that it's been Roy G. Biv all along! Not only that but in the UK, the preferred formula is Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. This is hardly useful to those of us who might turn into dangerous colour-blind insomniacs, as we churn about in bed, reciting Richard Of Gere Battling Various Irksome Yokels instead.
Sometimes, the only solution is to find one's own mnemonic. For instance, I have secured the Muses in memory by placing their names in alphabetic sequence. This yields Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania – a very easy-to-recall sequence of CC-EE-MP-TT-U. Needless to say, it works particularly well for me because my initials are MP. Taxonomic categories? Not a problem: Dear Kilroy, Please Come Over For Gay Sex stands for Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. So I was doing okay with the late-night frets until I came across this one: Camels Often Sit Down Carefully. Perhaps Their Joints Creak? Possibly Early Oiling Might Prevent Permanent Rheumatism. It's for the Earth's geological periods: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and so forth. But its imagery is much too complicated. I get to the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous without mishap. Then the Paleocene begins and I'm lost in a hopeless tangle of Oily Masseurs and Rheumatoid Perverts.
So when I found a small book called THE ORDER OF THINGS by Barbara Ann Kipfer, I thought I was saved. I kept it by my bedside and slept peacefully for several weeks. Until the night when I happened to glance elsewhere in the book and noticed something terrible: the graphic for silverware shows a cheese knife in place of the fish! My confidence in the book is shattered. Herds of arthritic camels hobble enthusiastically across my pillows once more and the Duke of York eats pizzas every hour. And no, that's not a mnemonic for anything.
When OUTLOOK invited me to write an essay for their Cricket Special, I said, 'Sorry! Don't know a thing about the game. It's like I'm colour-blind, you know? But for cricket.'
'Whoa,' said the man from OUTLOOK. 'You must be a total social pariah, right? So tell us what that's like! Amazing. Seven-fifty words by next week?'
'Wait, but—' I spluttered. Too late. He'd put the phone down.
It's not just cricket: it's sports in general. I get no thrills watching teams of Neanderthals kicking an inflated bladder of polyurethane between goal-posts or muscle-bound viragos in short skirts slamming fluorescent green missiles across a red clay court. In the case of cricket it's one team whacking a shiny red sphere so that the other members of the team can … ummm … well! There we go. I can't even understand the objective of the game. Fellows in white run about. The crowd roars. The score changes. And then one of the fellows in white is once again rubbing the hard red sphere against the sides of his pants in that ominous way, like a bull pawing the ground just before charging.
My explanation for the excitement that surrounds these activities is the R-word: Religion. Yes, it's one of my themes of late. Public art installations, sports, romance – all, in my view, are expressions of religious fervour. Belief in a Higher Power provides an anchor in the Ocean of Doubt. However many children die in your arms, spouses divorce you, lovers betray you, dictators rise and fall, stock markets crash or recover, there is some corner of a playing field that is forever glorious. With victory. With defeat. With valour. With sweat. With passion.
Anything that mimics religion gains by association. You know how the concept of One True Love has been promoted relentlessly as the international gold standard of Romance? Well, I believe it's a cunning extension of monotheism's ever popular One True God concept. Celebrities who stray from monogamous ideals are burnt at the stake of public disapproval while those who remain faithful to one partner all their lives are showered with tributes and giant fan-followings.
Extend this idea to sports and you get a million fans chanting "Sa-CHIN! Sa-CHIN! Sa-CHIN!" and painting their faces with the tri-colour in a close approximation of devotees chanting the Divine Name in a temple and ascetics at the Kumbhamela painting their faces with saffron and white ash. At one time, an interest in sports was considered a distinctly masculine preoccupation, connected to physical prowess and the warrior's ethic. But that's changing, isn't it? Sports has become a subset of religion and religion merged with patriotism long ago. So women, traditionally responsible for maintaining the spiritual core of the home, are bound to make space for these new gods on the altars of their private prayers rooms.
Where does that leave unbelievers like me? Just as you might expect, in a grey and silent space. There are neither the dizzy heights of victory to soar up towards nor the bottomless depths of loss to be shattered by. It's not that I haven't felt the occasional tug of faith. I can remember a night-spend at a friend's house once, years ago, to watch a match on her superior television set. As a teenager I was dragged to a couple of games at Bombay's Brabourne Stadium. And as a child when my father was Ambassador to Thailand the Nawab of Pataudi stayed in our house. The other kids at the Embassy were incandescent with envy, but I'd grown up away from the Motherland. I'd never heard of the famous cricketer and therefore had no idea how lucky I was.
Initiation to any religious faith needs to occur early in a person's life and it's obvious to me now, at 57, that I missed out. I cannot possibly memorize all the crazy terms for instance. What's a mid-off and who says it's silly? Why are there legs before wickets, not whole bodies? Where are the maidens and what are they standing over? As for the ducks, don't they get hit by all those sizzling balls? And who removes the poor things when they die? Is it the night-watchman?
There's just too much to learn and never enough time! In the dibbly-bobbly corridors of uncertainty, with no friendly white-clad gardeners to worship and no bails to lose, unbelievers like me were clean-bowled by destiny a long time ago.
February 13, 1911 -- February 13, 2011: as this is a special birth date for my father, K. V. Padmanabhan, I thought I'd post a few photographs. We're all sensitive these days about what part of the shared record is made available on-line, so I've confined myself to just these four. The first is of my Dad and me as a baby, most likely taken in Bangalore just before we left for Sweden in 1953-4 (not sure of dates! Will amend when I've checked); the next is of both my parents and me, in Thailand, circa 1965, when I was 12; the next is of Dad with the man he called with great affection and warm reverence, "Panditji" -- I'm guessing it was taken while we were in Karachi, circa 1959-60; the last is of Dad with (not sure what kinds of titles are appropriate so I'm not attempting the name) the King of Thailand, most likely in the first year we were there, 1964.
There's a great deal I could say about Dad's illustrious career, his journey from tiny, French-speaking Mahé in Kerala to representing India as Ambassador to Thailand and Iran. But all that matters is that he was a wonderful Dad. He was good, kind and scrupulously honest, with a strong sense of humour. He collected comic strips and stamps in his youth and always enjoyed doing puzzles. I can remember, for instance, him glueing together a crystal vase that had shattered in transit -- it would never look all right, but he did it for the pleasure of the challenge.
If a scream could be recorded, then filmed, then edited so that only the shadow of the pain revealed by that terrible sound might be heard, the result might look a bit like Pankaj Butalia's MANIPUR SONG.
At the time that I began watching the film (at home, on DVD), the amount of practical information I had about the "small northeastern state" of Manipur wouldn't fill one of the dimples on the outer surface of a thimble. I use those quotation marks because it's the kind of description that is routinely used of a "small northeastern state" and it is, whether we want to think of it that way or not, just one of many ways that we discriminate against places that are physically small. And "marginal". After all, however small Manipur may be, if it were located somewhere close to Connaught Place in New Delhi, we would never refer to it in that way.
The movie is not intended to be an educational supplement for people like myself who have not managed, for whatever reasons, to be better informed about their own country. What it does is remind viewers like me that we live in a vacuum of awareness. A reminder that "news" is only the items that get past all the filters that exist between news-consumers and the continuous bleeding of reality from all the pores, gaping wounds and sores and orifices that make up the world we live in.
Through five or six shifts in perspective, scenes from another world appear. Initially, it is a fairly familiar world – it could be anywhere in those "marginal" places, far from the cities – there are ill-made roads, slender young men in uniforms, their faces smoother and more hairless than their counterparts on the plains, their eyes shaped differently into those elongated shapes that we, of the plains, find various derogatory ways of describing: slit eyes, chinky eyes, slanty eyes – and yet, as the film gradually unfolds, I realize it's not familiar at all. Not to me, anyway.
The scenes that stand out for me include:
*The interviews with the young woman dissident called Sharmila – Wikipedia tells me that her full name is Irom Chanu Sharmila – who is even now living in the limbo of detention, a feeding tube threaded through her nose to prevent her from dying of her hunger. She has been on hunger strike since 2000. She was 28 at the time she began and has not let up since then.
*The "naked protest" of Manipuri women, at the gates of the Assam Rifles headquarters.
*The groups of young men, apparently being urged by soldiers to cane one another – all of them looking so similar to one another (I mean, racially similar) except that the soldiers were taller and better-fed, and the actions carried out with so little apparent passion, that it would have been farcical if it were not so pitiful. Toy soldiers, toy dissidents, but the blood, the pain, and the deaths only too real.
*The women drug addicts injecting themselves with the clear liquid that rules their lives so thoroughly, yet so invisibly too. This footage was, I thought, extraordinary exactly because it was presented with no squalor, no drama, no special lighting, no salacious, invasive, prurient commentary. It was the extreme domesticity of these scenes that gave them depth. We might have been watching a wild-life film in which a syringe is readied for use on a wild animal, to subdue it. And as that thought appears in my head, I realize that it IS what's happening and that these young women, from their quiet lives in distant villages, ARE being anesthetized, subdued and put to sleep, by forces out of their control.
*The school girls at the end, the sweet simplicity of their nursery rhymes and their soft, defenseless faces contrasted against the implacably jagged background of the whole rest of the film.
I realize, seeing this film, that all unknowingly, I've been aware of Irom Chanu Sharmila – because over the course of several years, I've noticed the face of a woman, stenciled in blue, that has appeared here and there on walls around the city. It is a small stencil, but draws attention to itself easily – perhaps because the face, with its pouting mouth and its narrowed eyes, the brows slanted in a permanent frown appears not angry so much as fierce – perhaps because it is positioned on white walls and looks freshly painted. All the time.
There is so much more that might be said, but – just as in the film, with its curious restraint, its silences despite the song referred to in its name – to use violent language, to scream, to lash out, or in any way to lose composure would be besides the point. What we see has little to do with having reactions or registering emotions. The film is that smallest and saddest of things: a tiny but dignified, well-made and carefully crafted gravestone for a culture, a people, a protest, and a movement. A gravestone made even while the culture, the people, the protest and the movement are still alive and still breathing.
ART WITHOUT HEARTappeared in this week's OUTLOOK Magazine. It's my response to the Anish Kapoor show that's on in Delhi at the moment. I know lots of people who adore his work and I did too -- well, not "adore", but I liked it, sort of. It caused an interesting tickle in the brain. Now I only want to run the other way. There's a photograph of the model for the piece called "ORBIT", being readied for the London Olympics next year, accompanying the article.
This appeared in the New York Times (possibly today, in the section called "Region"): Against All Odds, A Beautiful Life. Keep a handful of tears on stand-by. It was the horse that tipped the balance for me ...
For some people THIS LINK might be the most important thing they read this year. From The New Yorker. About findings from the forward reaches of modern-day social science.
I've been visiting Salon.com's advice-chat column "SINCE YOU ASKED", written/managed by Cary Tennis, for a couple of weeks now. Today's offering has something of special interest to subcontinentals: I'm From India, Crazy In Love.
Worth a visit, mainly to witness the extraordinary levels of cultural missed catches.
This was sent to me by my Itallian Connection, PL!!! A game that leaves me feeling at the mental level of a cicada -- obviously something I adore, coz I play it at least a half-a-dozen times in a row, getting worse and worse scores each time. Time to pass it on to all you Geography buffs: LUFTHANSA TO EUROPE. This is perhaps the only way left to enjoy air travel these days!
So! My previous post didn't make it into the New Year it seems. Hmmm. Well, here are fresh offerings, in that case! To begin with, a set of funny graphs sent to me RS followed by (not sure if the link will work coz it's from the Evil Empire of FaceBlecccch) a video-montage from BBC One of critturs in chat. Posted by blogger Kapan Senget. Sent to me by ANOTHER RS. Oh wait -- turns out the FB link DOES work, but it isn't willing to appear at the END of the images. So here it is now: BBC ONE, Animal Chat
Later today: here's a link to a wonderful article in the New Yorker called SWEET REVOLUTION, by Adam Gopnik, about the science and theory and also the sheer delight of ... DESSERT. An absolute MUST READ.
Got this from TA and after a short struggle decided it would be my New Year offering to friends and visitors to this blog. It's funny AND it's got resonance for Pythonizers from the last century -- for everyone who finds the references to Blackberries and Apples funny, there will be a small tribe of those who chuckle at the echoes of John Cleese's Dead Parrot sketch.
HELLO 2011!!!
The year just ended was a fairly wild one. My niece got married three times in quick succession (oh all right! It was three different ceremonies, in three different locations, but only one marriage) and I visited Belgium for the first time, and also Framingham, MA and also Lebanon, NH and also a number for friends and family besides.
I spent most of the year either on my way to the airport, returning from the airport, AT the airport or in the air. Or at a bus terminal. Or at a train station. Or planning to be at an airport/bus terminal/train station. I even managed to lose my passport and waist-pouch in August, but got it back three hours later, because Boston's South Station is the kind of hub where many buses run a loop that goes to Logan Airport and comes back before the buses return to their base-stations in other cities. I was just major, major LUCKY that I got it back. I think travelers should be allowed to have their passports micro-chipped and embedded in their skulls. That way, we either have our travel papers or we're dead.
But that wasn't the only hairy trip I made. This last week, returning from Madras to Delhi, I left for the airport at 2 pm and arrived at Friends Colony in Delhi at 1.30 a.m.! It was a Jet Airways flight (9W 830, Sunday 26th Dec), scheduled for 5 pm. It was even announced on time but then, at 4.30 with passengers queueing up into front of the gate, it was cancelled with no further information.
Actually, I was so sure that the flight WOULD be delayed -- because it's the Season of the Fog, and flights in and out of North India are ALWAYS disrupted -- that I was amazed when I heard it being announced. After that point I had only sympathy and admiration for the Jet Airways staff. The passengers milled around, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees, behaving like children who've been told that they can't have a second helping of ice cream. Some were just shaking their heads from side to side, saying "nonononononono" as if sheer denial was going to ensure them a seat on the flight of their choice. The ground staff were scrupulously polite, maintaining admirable sang froid while explaining very softly and patiently that the matter was simply out of their hands.
I decided to stick it out at the airport. The drive from Chetpet (where my mother lives) to the airport is arduous even without a fog and my ticket was nonrefundable. I felt I'd rather take my chances with the flight. Even though I knew the chances were very low: according to news reports 70 flights had been cancelled in the course of that day. The flight was called again, at 7.30 pm and when we boarded, there were enough empty seats that I had a spare one between me and the fellow passenger with the window. In spite of all the chaos, Jet landed safely (and with a HUGE thump!) at IGI but we had an hour's wait before a parking berth was available.
Outside, the fog was like a thick woolen blanket. The luggage carousel didn't begin spewing its contents till we'd all been waiting 45 minutes. And then there was the FOG, THE FOG, THE 'ORRIBLE FOG outside. It was one a.m. and I am always unwilling to take my chances with the prepaid cabs if it's very late at night. But the alternative was waiting till sun up.
So I stood in queue and got my receipts for a prepaid cab -- but was still feeling anxious -- and so just before going out into the wind and fog, turned to a fellow passenger -- someone I'd noticed on the flight, sitting across the aisle from me and fiddling with an interesting hand-held device which he explained to the flight staff was "not really a cellphone at all, but I'll turn it off, since I know you'll want me to" -- I turned to this fellow passenger also standing in the prepaid queue and asked if he'd like to share a cab.
Whoever he is/was and in case he happens to see this blog post -- THANK YOU. Because, even though the prepaid taxi-wallah refused to accept passengers to two separate destinations -- and anyway, he was going to Vasant Vihar while I was going to Friends Col -- just the act of accompanying me out to the cab rank was somehow steadying and life-affirming. I hadn't ever used Terminal 3 for prepaids before and it was all rather peculiar and confusing so it was just NICE to be escorted out by a friendly person, stranger though he was.
The drive back was so tense that I entirely forgot to feel any fear whatsoever. The driver & his buddy were both hunched forward and staring through the windscreen at a thick white swirl of pure white lassi -- there's no other word for it -- it was just totally impenetrable. So long as we were on the highway, there were the tail lights of other cars to follow into the creamy haze, but then we eventually had to veer off and go through an intersection ... and there was nothing WHATSOEVER to hold onto, as a visual guide. The driver was navigating by the seat of his amygdala, or whatever's the name for the most primitive/mysterious part of his brain, that permitted him to find his way across the milky nothingness and on and on and on until ... at last we were at the Outer Ring Road and the sheer volume of traffic thundering through had managed to shift the curtains vapour aside enough to show us the way.
Whew. I spent the whole trip saying "GOOD DRIVER! NICE DRIVER! THERE'S A FINE FELLOW THEN!" and other soothing remarks of this nature, to which he would give out little bashful snorts and say, "We live only to please our customers!" or some other PR-type nonsense that maybe they'd been taught to parrot to tourists during the C'wealth Games.
And so it goes, so it goes.
My final offering for this first post of 2011 is something mildly controversial that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It was intended for publcation so if it sounds a bit a dated and also rather more formal than my typical posts here, it's because it was not intended for the Blogiverse. But it got turned down in favour of my other offering, the item on Klingons (see below). So here now is:
WIKI-FICTIONS
The WikiLeaks story reads more like a movie than a news item: Julian Assange, a cold-eyed ash-blond geek, is catapulted to fame as a cyber-Robin Hood only to be derailed by his sordid sex-life. While Liberals and Leftists the world over struggle to decide whether he's a hero or a villain it's the feminist networks that have boiled over with dissent. Is he a victim of cynical governments or a sexual deviant stupid enough to parade himself on the international political scene with female skeletons rolling out of his closets? Should he be denounced as a rapist or championed as a man whose sexuality is being used against him?
What makes this case so fascinating is that for once, it involves a man's sexual integrity rather than a woman's. Gender-parity has not yet reached the point where we can speak of outraged masculine modesty. But in this case it seems possible that a man's sexual misconduct is being used to punish him for having pulled down the panties of various Governments. That's something new. The easiest way to destroy the credibility of a woman who challenges authority is to accuse her of "loose" behavior. Men, however, are rarely charged with sexual misdemeanours when their real crimes relate to politics and international trade. Imagine, for instance, a suspected terrorist or arms dealer being arrested because he also happens to be a rapist! Not only would it mean potentially millions of men being thrown behind bars but it would also suggest that all those women who are typically silent victims of violent, sadistic men had suddenly been enabled to speak out in the way of Assange's ex-girlfriends.
What makes this case especially interesting (or atrocious) is that the accusations are not about easily-identified crimes. The accusers are not, for instance, under-age virgins savaged at gunpoint by a man riddled with AIDS. If the accounts in media reports are to be believed, both of Assange's ex-girlfriends are adults who consented to have sex with him but later withdrew that consent. Modern societies try to distinguish between types of sexual behavior in order to ensure that manipulative and oppressive practises can be treated as crimes. But the arena in the Assange case is murky. One woman claims that he pinned her beneath him using "his body weight" and proceeded to have sex with her even though she strenuously objected. The other woman says she was unconscious. Condom malfunction was also an issue. Whatever the specifics, it's obvious that Assange behaved in a seriously uncouth manner. But within the spectrum of incidents deserving the title of rape, these accusations fall within the eye-roll category. The boundaries between full consent and playful resistance, pleasure and pain are, after all, extremely porous. It is easy to wonder whether these accusers would have felt differently if Assange had varied his behavior just a bit: used romantic language, for instance. Or chosen a more expensive aftershave. Or promised a stable relationship.
Merely to ask such questions is -- I KNOW -- terribly unfair. The insinuation is that the charges are trivial. Assange may yet turn out to be a sexual predator who deserves to be locked up. But supposing the problem is that one or both women is motivated by hurt pride and unrequited love? Worse yet, supposing one or other of the governments whose secrets have been exposed by WikiLeaks is motivated by its own hurt pride and wants to get Assange behind bars by any means whatsoever?
The nature of truth and justice in any accusation of rape is muddied by the gender-biased prejudices of societies. In the Assange case, it's as if an awkward sexual encounter has suddenly blown up into an international fracas complete with red-faced ministers and black-browed generals. But whose version of truth will prevail when the end-credits roll? Only time will tell.
Here's a link to an opinion piece by me that appeared in the Times of India today KLINGON SEASON. I found the image of Star Trek's Worf on CARBON BASED CURIOSITIES.WORF, Star Trek
Well, they're not all EQUALLY cool but many are the kind that bring a warm fuzzy glow to the inner lining of the brain. My brain, that is. And for those of you who crave sweeter rewards for visiting this space, here's a photograph of the FRESH TANGERINE CAKE I made following my friend Elizabeth Wong's recipe, for Thanksgiving at my sister's home in Sayre:
It was as yummy as it looks! I don't feel immodest saying this because I just followed the recipe. The decision to add the slices of of tangerine was taken at the last minute -- I had taken far too long over the cake and was feeling kind of bedraggled at the end of it all, but there was a clamor for DECORATION! DECORATION by the time I had finally slathered on the icing, so I went that extra mile -- and they made a very pleasant difference -- the icing was VERY sweet and the slices were a welcome contrast.
The thing about not being an instinctive cook is that I can't tell whether or not something is working properly just by looking at/tasting it. In the case of this cake, it had to be made in two layers and for some reason I took an inordinate length of time just setting everything up and measuring quantities and then, after all of that, having put the two pans filled with batter into the oven, I happened to glance at the recipe again and realized with an awful OOOOOPS! feeling that I'd left out one entire ingredient! The sour cream. And the fact is, the batter had seemed a little odd, too runny and too sweet, but this is what I mean when I say I don't have the right instincts: I knew something was wrong but I wouldn't have fixed it if I hadn't looked at the recipe. But my sister said, "Don't worry! Just pull the pans out of the oven -- it's not too late -- and add whatever it is! It'll be fine." And it was.
I've not been keeping up with the blog at all, right? Well there's just been TOO MUCH going on. Thanksgiving was great fun but also a lot of work -- my sister cooked up a storm, as I'm sure many millions of other equally capable and gifted home-owners did too, all across North Am -- and I was her sous-chef. There were six of us in the house over the final four days and I think we all had a very pleasant time. For me, however, the absolute KNOCK DOWN MAJOR HIGHLIGHT OF THIS YEAR was that my nephew-in-law, Deke taught us all to play Poker (the game called "Texas Hold 'Em"). Wow! I had NO IDEA it was so much FUN! I am not a natural gambler at all, and I don't like losing money (we used real money, but not much -- $20 max per player), but playing the game was like a fascinating tool for understanding motivations and strategy in other people. Thrilling.
The 'and I wasn't even looking' is my lead-in to another recent MAJOR THRILL -- watching the Beatles movie 'HELP' the other day, on DVD. I always loved this film -- I saw it on the big screen, in Bombay (at EROS Cinema, Churchgate), maybe a year after it came out, and if I could have, would have seen it many times over to memorize key scenes -- but of course that wasn't really an option in those days, as I was still in (boarding) school and wasn't at liberty to just dash off to see any movie I liked.
It's been digitally remastered and is absolutely sumptuous. I didn't realize at the time I ordered the DVD that iTunes was going to be show-casing the Fab Four starting today (or was it Yesterday?), not that it would make a difference -- but I may have felt I was band-wagoning if I'd known. Which I wasn't.
Watching it again reminded me that it was still very funny in a way that anticipates Monty Python's Flying Circus by about five years (I had to check to see the dates -- 1965 for HELP, '69 to '70 for MPFC) -- it's something I didn't recognize at the time I saw MPFC, though I knew they were channeling the Goon Show -- but also just their own I-Am-The-Walrus wackiness. They anticipate political correctness to an astonishing degree, considering that it was NOT the order of the day: they use a multi-armed deity they name 'Kaili', importune a goddess they call 'Perverti' and though characters are obviously dressed to simulate SubContinentals, they're just enough off the mark (I suppose ...) to get away with their spoof. They're quite vicious towards the British characters in the film -- the manic scientist who complains bitterly about the lack of Govt recognition and the daft elderly-lady neighbours, f'rinstance. The mumbling conversations of the 'Head Priest' in which he complains about young people not being attracted to human sacrifice any more, 'such a shame!' and wonders what can be done to make it more palatable. LOVE it.
Like I LOVE the tiger, the idiotic winking lady, the Beatle-fan who was the original sacrificial victim, the crazy 60s clothes ... and of course, of course, the boyz themselves, singing.
For me the best bit is the way Ringo finally gets the ring off his finger --SPOILER ALERT-- not all thru the main part of the film, when he desperately wants to, but only at that moment when he's distracted from the need to get it off his finger and is no longer obsessing over either keeping it or removing it and because at that moment he genuinely wants to help the petitioner. I always thought (but yes, of course I romanticize the Beatles out of all proportion) this was totally THE HEIGHT of transcendental philosophy revealed in the banal-pop medium of a Beatles film. Way out.
To top this, I have also ordered the DVD of Magical Mystery Tour, which I've never seen. Yes, yes, I know it was such a low-tide moment in cinema that even die-hard Beatle fans are embarrassed by the film. That's why I want to see it. I want to Love The Hate. Haven't got it yet! Will report when I do.
UPDATE: A friend posted a link suggesting that this so-called cure is most likely a hoax. Please follow this LINK. It's the same as the one in the second comment to this post. I'm removing most of the original post regarding the "cure" but if you'd like to know what it was anyway, then follow the link in the paragraph below this one.
A friend sent this to me. I do not have first-hand information but since the method appears to be otherwise harmless AND easy to resort to, I think it's well worth the try. Here it is: (disclaimer: I don't know, in both accounts given below, who the "I" is. The message is as it came to me, with no changes made to it by me. I Googled Won Low Kat and found several sites listing the same advise about the papaya leaf cure. I have NO idea what "Won Low Kat" is! The story and information appear to be sourced from the Philippines or Indonesia. There are very many links to blogs featuring the same or very similar text, but this one includes a photograph of the papaya's leaf: A SAILOR'S MUSINGS.
WORF, Star Trek