The Colbert Report

This guy is absolutely hilarious. Worse still, everything he says is true. I love the Report (with a soft "t") and wish I lived in the US so that I could see it every week day.

Bloody Sunday

A dream.

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

This is one of the best books I have ever read.
It describes the lives and actions of a squadron of bombers in Pianosa in Italy during the war. It is absolutely hilarious - you can't help but laugh at the confusing bureaucracy and power struggles in the hierarchy of the army. The antics of Yossarian, the main character, and the group of men you might call his friends will keep you in stitches at times. Most of them try to avoid duty by staying at the army hospital, while a few feel the need to fly ever increasing no of compulsory missions.

At the same time though, I can hardly bear to read it. It's not because of the sometimes complicated plot and twisted sense of time, its because of the overwhelming truth it reveals. Alright, some of it may be exaggerated, but the book is supposed to, or at least appears to me to represent an ordinary man in the big city. The blurb says its supposed to show the madness of the 20th century and how man seeks to get out of it. But the last few chapters and pages are depressingly tragic. After a ream full of laughs, the humour peters out. Figures of corruption, and even totalitarianism come into play, and poverty and suffering get mentioned. In the end, this book is a bit like Animal Farm by George Orwell, or even 1984 to an extent. Catch-22 and "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others" seem to be linked to each other very closely.

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

I found this to be a great read - a brilliantly written piece of work that captures your imagination.

The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a man who becomes "unstuck in time", literally drifting to and from different points in a line that describes his life. A weak and odd character, he is considered a ridiculous figure by almost everyone he meets. The plot centres around his experiences as an American prisoner of war in World War II, and the bombing of the town of Dresden in 1945.

The author writes this novel from his own experiences of the war: he himself was a POW in Dresden when the bombs hit. Indeed, he even features in the plot, adding a sense of authenticity to the grim descriptions of the emotions and conditions soldiers went through.

Billy is described as having seen his own death and birth, and the events in between, numerous times. He sees his highly successful but mundane life as a rich optometrist in his home town after the war, the plane crash of which he was one of 2 survivors, as well as his old age, where his daughter considers him to be senile. Also described is the time where he was abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, 4-dimensional creatures who explain to Billy the way time works. Every moment exists, has existed, and will continue to exist somewhere. The Tralfamadorians see all of their existence, and everyones existence, and travel around it to view the better moments. Billy learns that death is merely a part of one's life, that a person still exists somewhere in time, which is why the aliens have a peculiar saying when someone dies: "So it goes."

Hoping I haven't spoilt it [there's a lot more to it] already, I'll just add that the author use sharp wit to expose the true horrors that war can cause. It's simply great.

Books

Ermmm... well, I do read a lot of these bunches of A5 paper bound together between two decorated pieces of plastic/carboard . I'd thought I'd share a bit of info on what they're about and what I make of them.

Flatland - Edwin A Abbot

This satire was written in the 19th century, as is plain with the elaborate style of writing, which at times can be a bit tedious to follow.

The novel [if it can be called that] has a mathematical aim, steadily guiding the reader into understanding the geometric concepts of different dimensions. Written by a teacher, it appears to me to be aimed at a young audience, as the structure of the plot shows. Flatland seeks to describe and explain the conditions of life in 0,1,2,3 and 4 dimensions, using a parody of different classes to describe the characters.

Guiding us through these complex ideas is a certain A. Square, who inhabits Flatland, a country of only 2 dimensions. A member of an educated class, he makes clear the stark differences between his world and ours, all the while forcing us to ridicule the social structure of those days.

I guess it is a good read if you're about 10 years old, but anyone older than that may consider the tone of the book a bit patronising. Interesting all the same, but perhaps dimmed with a lack of context [i.e. a bit outdated].

Windows Vista

Is it just me or does Windows Vista look look like Mac OS X? I have never NEVER been privileged enough to try any of the Mac OS' but I just can't help going to apple.com and just looking at the design. But in reality, I bet OS X is probably as flawed as Windows XP.
Anyways, do "GADGETS" sound a bit like "WIDGETS" to you, not only phonetically, but in their purpose and use? And the smooth edges that are so prevalent in Apple just keep appearing in Microsoft. What do you think?

A hike in the woods

This is an audio log of a trip i made recently to the south of the Netherlands. I hope you enjoy it.
end

Don't mock my country

I bet you anything that you want that the roots of "home-grown" terrorists are at school.
The reason why young men decide to blow themselves to bits for a cause that no one seems to understand is mostly likely to be because of the treatment they receive from other kids in their childhood. For instance, they may start making jokes about their families, the way of life in their countries of origin, and maybe even make the stupidest remarks about the colour of their skin, their language or even the very sound of the name of the country they or their parents may have come from.
I know from experience how annoying this can be. I come from Sri Lanka, a fairly large island in the Indian Ocean. How many of you knew that? How many of you would drag up another member of the class and tell you "Hey he's from India. You're from the same place!"? How many of you still would laugh and say "Ha - what a stupid name for a place!" before deliberately making pathetic misprononciations of the name? How many of you still would say "Oh - that's nice" and ask a silly question like "Have you seen a coconut tree?" (the answer to that would be yes - they're quite common and are still a major yet declining export) before forgetting and asking again in 3 weeks.
I can understand the fact that, yes, in the grand scale of things, Sri Lanka is perhaps not the most important and recognised player in regional geopolitics. And yes, India is in close proximity to Sri Lanka. It may be polite to ask. But gee, is it absolutely infuriating to have someone make fun of a country that probably has more civilised history than your own culture. If you keep on doing it, as well as being an absolute bigot, then you probably should watch out if you're in any public place at all.
I am perhaps a very extreme case - I am not too sure if many Sri Lankans can be proud of their country in light of recent events: they are more likely to be concerned for themselves and their family, cos they actually are facing a kind of terrorism at the moment. And in reality, I perhaps am a rather meek character. But that may not always be the case. I hate to say this, but try to be a bit (but not too much) PC about other people's culture. Atleast see what they think about if first.

Communism

Communism, though many would say was a despotic and totalitarian regime which held much of the world back for a century, is still a very defining ideology - cmon, if one nation manages to defy the entire world from 1917-90ish, surely that is worthy of some recognition. It probably was an experiment, if we look at the big picture - humans can't really consider themselves to be all equal: evolution tells us we aren't all equal.
What would the world be like without communism anyway? Less democratic, still imperial, and there would be far fewer countries on the map. Man might not set foot on the moon (if you share the belief that he did in '69), and we wouldn't be able to make fun of an old bearded man in Cuba (although Cubans may not be able to themselves).

Apple

Isn't Apple a pretty cool company?
It seems to me to be the most stylish computer firm today - look at the Mac, the iPod and OS X. The design is full of smooth, rounded edges, cool blue/white tones and bright radiant images. I would kinda love to own a Mac atleast for a day, to see what it could do for me. Especially the Mac Mini - come on, a 6.5 inch CPU has got to be cool!
I even heard somewhere that Steve Jobs earns only 25 cents a year - although everything else is provided by Apple. Still, how cool is that?
The ads for the Mac are just stupidly funny - "Hi, I'm a PC..." - and even the website is seamlessly formed.
Before anyone starts complaining about spam here, I use a Windows PC, and have done for about 8 years (as long as I've been using a PC at home). I'm trying at the same time to use Linux, which is pretty neat itself, and is probably the future op. sys. of all computers. But its just the design that captures me, not the function: it's what I have always wished computers could be. Imagine if it could merge with Linux and become free - that would be a day to wait for.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Can't add video content to blog.

Problem solved, with good ol'enjinuity! Btw, before people start posting, I can spell.
I can! I swear! Ingin...Engin...gaaaaaaaaaah!
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This sucks. When I try to add video from either youtube or google video it keeps telling me that it can't be done - cos I've got invalid login information. It is unbelievably frustrating, you wait about 15 seconds for it to check with the blogger server, and it locks you out, even when you keep entering the correct data for your blog login.
Any ideas what to do?

Fear of fear

I have now got a fear of fear - i worry about worrying about something.
But I realise, that I can overcome this, and I can put it behind me.

Fear is the enemy.

Disappointment and depression

Sometimes, I just can't help but feel absolutely low. Because for some reason or another, I just didn't do what I wanted to do.
Writing this down does actually make me feel so much better. Because I'm doing something now. But there are times when I don't do anything, and as a result, I feel like I'm an absolute failure. Just know, I stopped working on something because I felt too tired to go on, and I feel like I've let myself down badly. I want to finish it off, but I can't because I'm too tired. I should have done it earlier, I tell myself, I should have been more organised, I should have realised. I won't be able to do it tomorrow, as I'll be tired out due to a physically active day. I won't be able to finish it until the last moment, and then I'll really be tired, after staying up till dawn in order to complete it. Why did I procrastinate, why did I put it off til last, why did I do that when I could have finished this.

But what I try to tell myself is this. That what I do is up to me, not up to my workload. That every thing I do is a conscious choice, rather than an inbuilt mechanism, and that if i want to do something, I can do it. I won't fail. It is possible, and I can do it. And further- to hell with the work, what I do in my time to make my life better is far more important than whatever it is someone tells me to do. And that's the last word.