Kiai Master vs MMA

Everything I ever had to say about MMA being the real deal is expressed best by this laugh riot of a video. I was rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-my-ass-off at the antics of the old geezer and how the MMA guy sticks it to him big time.

Steven Segal, the quintessential Hollywood bone breaker made much of his Aikido and his exotic martial art training in Japan. The buffoon once challenged he could get out of any hold using his mastery of Ki, the energy force, a la master Yoda of Star Wars. A judoka, a stunt extra on one of his sets took up the challenge and applied a hold that had Steven not only passing out but passing out so bad he lost control of his sphincter, ending up in a shitty mess. So this poor kiai master is not the first one to have dug his own grave. I wonder if years of dishing out the baloney and a bunch of sycophantic followers (like those twisting and tumbling students of the kiai master) these guys really start to believe they are worth anything against those who really know how to throw and take a punch.

A real fighter is like this, Fedor Emelianenko. He is the best in the world today. Respect.

How to dismantle an atomic bomb.. kind of

This post made me ponder over a possible solution to stop the self destructive march of mankind - what with the humankind having found little else over time besides killing in one way or another to keep itself busy with. Wars and genocides are pretty much all that we have to show for our history. It's funny really to think of how minuscule our existence is in this cosmos and yet in our miserly little world we live with missiles pointed at each other. Like it was a game to avoid grand boredom out of so much loneliness in our seemingly lifeless stellar neighborhood. For such a stupid world, what could possibly be a reason to stop the madness?

The answer, perhaps lies in UFOs. Not ordinary UFOs, but hostile ones. Beam images of unfriendly alien ships descending, kidnapping and killing earth-folk and you would stir the collective fears of all earthlings. In the face of a bloodthirsty alien, threatening all human existence, the human race would band together like a bunch of frightened sheep. And there will be forced amongst the peoples of the world, discussions for strategies to counter the common enemy. An existence saving inter-galactic war would seem very imminent, encouraging or forcing, as the case may be, the people to live together and look at the earth as a common resource in the everlasting preparation for the star war(s). In such a situation, people would perhaps realize it didn't matter where the individual countries' borders stretched or what religion was supreme. If not forgotten, such issues will at least be relegated to a secondary status to the need for preserving the human mark in the universe.

Ender's Game?

Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly...

Here's how Herman Melville proceeds with making a point,

1) I must state an important fact which everyone should be aware of.

HM:
In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause--such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy?


2) Coronations of Kings and Queens in certain countries involve anointing the important person's head.

HM:
It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely--who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.


3) The supreme quality coronation oil comes from the sperm whale.

HM:
But the only thing to be considered here, is this--what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?


4) We whalemen are in a noble profession.

HM:
Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!



And people question me why I haven't yet finished reading Moby Dick. By the time I finish reading and actually understanding it, I'd probably have read the six hundred pages four times over. As is evident, only for literal meanings (like the one liners I have put up above) Mr Melville wouldn't have spent such effort on the intricacy of this prose. That adds another direction to think of all the time.

Blink, and miss it. Fun.

Google sees through you

A report on a randomly chosen AOL user divulged the following internet searches the user carried out - "termites", "tea for good health" and "mature living", all within a few hours. Well, makes me wonder how intimately a person may be known given one's internet searches. Such a life sketch they are - from the mundane interests, pleasures and irritants to the deepest secrets and desires. All revealed by those little phrases we punch away in the Google search box.

Gives me an idea of a dating site that matches people based on their internet searches. Should work - given people's inclination to meeting people as like minded as themselves.

But I'd like to make it better by having it match people such that certain areas of disagreement, perhaps a little more profound than things like favorite color, remained. Complete agreement makes for dull conversation.

Eat this Indian Idol

Sunshine girl

Here's another soul looking for some salvation from corporate mornings. But I wonder why an epithet like "Sunshine Girl" doesn't seem ominously portentous to him. Unlike him, I use the company bus to travel to office. Though glad to not have to negotiate Hosur road in my own car (something that brings dangerous things like inevitability of death and meaninglessness of life to my mind), this little luxury has cost me dear. I have been invountarily subjected to the Sunshine Girl treatment for some time now. There's no escape as the radio onboard the bus, but for Radio City, tunes into only extraterestrial noise.

Now my problem with the sunshine girl is that she bears the burden of having to live up to the title by sounding really really happy and cheerful at all times. I can bet my pants there isn't a person in the world who feels that cheerful everyday. And Vasanthi must be no exception. Hence, the forced happiness and choir girl cheeriness facade she puts up really rankles me. Then there are grim mornings (we're talking really early mornings here) when you'd give anything to savour some silence but a character like that yapping pointlessly on air is a source of great misery. Especially when there isn't really anything smart or funny that she ever has to say apart from a lot of "Great"s, "Wow"s, "GGoodd Morrrning"s and other crappy smalltalk. If it weren't for the usual Nazia Hasan kind of retro numbers the show would be absolutely trash. Vasanthi's voice does have a beautiful timbre, but I would trust her little for anything more than talking back to me on my telebanking number. I demand more from an RJ than voice harmonics.

I haven't heard an RJ that really interested me in quite a while. The last really good one I can recall was Shamsheer Rai Luthra from my days in dilli when FM radio had only just arrived. Easy going, witty and fun. Very alike to a relaxed chat with buddies on vacation mornings. And a playlist where you could as much expect a Nusrat classic as a Mika or a Metallica number - deftly interwoven with the agendas of the meandering talk.

Oh, and by the way the Sunshine Girl's show also features a zillionth spin-off of Lola Kutty - Lingo Lila. Suffer her and you'd wonder what the whole fuss about chemotherapy is.

Chakk de India?

With great repugnance I have been watching the promos of this new shahrukh khan movie. Everytime I see visuals of Sharukh Khan wearing the irritating smirk, doing the bollywood patented slow motion strutting accompanied by the seedy theme song, I develop a strong urge to throw up or bang my head against the nearest wall. It really gets my goat to see bollywood trivialising rampantly and constantly feeding us such melodrama.

Sharukh says this is a movie that breaks stereotypes - why? - because it's about hockey; it's about women's hockey; it's about Indian women's hockey led by a muslim coach. Ugh, this is anything but breaking stereotypes. I have lost count of how many earnest muslim police officers I have seen in bollywood. I have already watched lagaan. The theme song might as well be any of those that play in karan johar's mind numbing movies when the tommy hilfiger clad hero lands in amreeka. It's absolutely in the same mould of the terrible bollywood formula. I am irked because this time it's being done to the thing I love - sports.

I can predict how superficial the movie would be but as we all love to wear our patriotism badges high, when the movie is released viewers will no doubt say how uplifting the movie is because the Indian team comes out trumps in the end. The predictable denouement having occurred through little more than a series of songs and superfluous dialogue would not seem to bother too many since we, Indians are not really sport lovers. We lack the ability to recognise and understand the sheer mental and physical investments athletes make to perform at the international level. So, watching real sporting performances can never generate genuine admiration from within us.

One day cricket works because it's another form of an Indian movie. However, even that is not saved from the unique Indian attitude. What else would explain pot-bellied slobs questioning Irfan Pathan's lack of pace, or junta labelling every Indian loss to "paise khaye hue hain". No Sir, don't expect too much from us. We are happy with the king khan of plastic smiles telling us about one of Indian sport's finest achievement and how it was accomplished.

I would, however be glad to have the Indian audiences prove me wrong. If the promos are an aberration and the film proves me wrong, better.

Update
I saw the movie today. The movie did not turn out as bad as I expected. I liked the fact that hockey and the girls took centerstage and not Shahrukh. Also, it was good to see the movie bring out the widespread ignorance of the Indian junta to what sport is, with the news media only making it worse. Shilpa Shukla, wow, fine acting.