Vanity check

Cocktails at Ajmal Sb's place:
This is me, plain and simple:

How to make an A
Ingredients:
1 part competetiveness
3 parts courage
1 part leadership
Method:
Blend at a low speed for 30 seconds. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of fitness.

With frills and fancies, erm, all caps as initials are to be:

How to make an A
Ingredients:
3 parts mercy
3 parts crazyiness
5 parts beauty
Method:
Stir together in a glass tumbler with a salted rim. Serve with a slice of emotion and a pinch of salt. Yum!

I can't decide which one to disagree more with!
And yes, nothing better that I could come up with either.

This was better and, erm, truer:

A may explode without warning

M EXPLOSIVE

The University of Blogging Presents to A An Honorary Bachelor of Cutting Majoring in Self Portraiture Signed Dr. GoQuiz.com ®

Alright then, I check in vanity today evening.

Ramadhan Mubarak everyone!

One day at work

*ring ring*
Hello
Hello, I am calling from *****, can you advice me what BMW series is latest in the market and I should buy?
Huh?
I mean would be worth spending all that money? Are parts readily available, what about maintenance and car specifications and all.
Oh, I see. Sir, how many wives do you have?
Excuse me?
Well, you see, BMW has a new notice out after Swaziland's King Mswati III invested in 10 new 5 series for his wives. BMW now stands for Beamers for Multiple Wives. So, the new policy dictates that only men who have more than two wives can now buy a BMW.
What? Is it BMW’s Karachi office?
*grin* Errr, no.
*click*

“Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles…instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.”

~ Robert W. McChesney, Introduction for Naom Chomsky’s Profit Over People

Imports to Latin America are heavily skewed towards consumption for the rich…the wealthy are generally exempt from social obligations, including taxes…The problem of Latin America is not ‘populism’…but ‘subjection of the state to the rich.’

My reading list these days:
From Beirut to Jerusalem, Dr. Ang Swee Chai
Che Guevera, Eric Luther with Ted Henken
Profit Over People, Naom Chomsky
The Economist’s Pocket World in Figures 2005

Everyday I face a barrage of gigantic billboards, trying to get my investment in world class residential projects, flashy cars, jazzed up home entertainment systems, latest communicating gizmos; trying to entice me into walking into their swanky outlets with promises of amazing sales and discounts, and mouth watering food.
Lowering my gaze, more to the ground, I see a huge mass of people sweating in the blazing sun, waiting for their route buses, little children running about barefoot on infernal tarmac.
A petrol station sports a spiffy billboard on how 88% of its customers found that their particular brand of petrol gives more mileage. And right across the road I see a teeming mass of ailing humanity stirring up on their tattered chadars on the pavement that served as their beds for the night. Entire families marking out their spaces. Some have not bothered with even a chadar.
This is Pakistan, with a growth rate of 8% that allows Pakistan and its people to raise their standard of living and improve the quality of life, something already beginning to happen.

With this growth rate, the per capita income will rise and people will spend more and that will create more momentum in the economy, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz noted. "This buoyancy in economy is sustainable and will provide a base for even higher growth in the years to come."

I reach my workplace, switch on the aircon, answer a phone call that, grins aside, gets me thinking, run a google search on some words for old news items I remember having read , to see if all these months have been enough for the good effects to have permeated downwards in the society, and type out this blog. About time I paid lip service. Best that I can do.

On another note, Altaf Hussain turned 52 today. I just hope he starts acting like a sensible 7 year old, his real mental age.

(S)he died while (s)he was living...

At times I marvel at my own ability to live through it all; is it all worth the while? Or is it just whiling away awhile? Why bother? And then again, why not bother? Is it worth the bother, then? How much? How less? And why?

Questions, all unanswered. Tasks all undone. Time racing by and yet stagnating, suffocating in its slow pace. What is time? Does it limit me? Threaten me? Is there a deadline? Who set it for me? It wasn't me, was it?

A blank wall before me, painted ugly messages. I bang my head against it?

Past is a way out from the present mire? Is past not glossed over for just the good times? Was there no bad bout in the past? Would today be looked over as good tomorrow? Is is getting worse by the day, by the hour and second? Is there no future to look forward to? Are dreams to be abandoned? Is it a nightmare or am I living it all? Where am I? What am I upto? What is it all about? And worth it all? Really? What is reality? And what is that I want? Really? What is that I have missed? What is that I now regret? Worth a pine? Did I live through it? How? Will I live through this? Really? Will I live through that? Why?

Honestly, I don't know. But should I?

All I am certain of is my own uncertainty. And that it is not that time of the month for me to get in this mood.

Everything and anything and nothing bothers me. Why should it? Do I really know? Or care?

I just live. And marvel at how I do it.

Blasts from the past

I been cheating.
I started blgging in 2002. December 2002 actually. and have deleted this blog twice since. changed blogger name at least 4 times and changed templates a whole 6 times, that is not mentioning the minute tinkerings I carry out on a regular basis.
'Neways. Yesterday I was going through my 'soft' clutter and came across a CD that housed Version 1 of the blog. So I thought it might be a good idea if i gleaned and put up some old, antiquated entries...it makes for such a good study of my blogging and thinking patterns that when paranoia sinks in, I delete blogs. Not this time, figured out an other way. perhaps.
'Tis a shame I could not figure out a way to the interesting comments i had gathered at the time too.
and Blog Day tag was a previous post. Perhaps I should change back blogger display settings.

Tag a Day

Tag a Day

August 31st is designated to be a Blog Day. SAJ Shirazi tagged me to mention top five blogs that I enjoy reading. Now my blog reading habits are erratic. My top five read list these days would be:

1. Hypocrisy Thy Name
2. Olive Ream
3. WaiterRant
4. Opinionistas
5. UberHomme

I think all of them bloggers should come out with a book. I would be the first in line to get Sir Ajmal’s book, signed by him of course.
Oh, and I am not really updating, or checking up my own sorry place on blogspot. This should do, for a long long while. ;)

حال میرے دیس کا

Jashn e Azadi mubarak everyone!
yes, everyone irrespective.

I was thinking of an August 14 related post, but Ajmal Sb's beat everyone to an apt spoof of Iqbal. And yet not a spoof as it is a scary and sad representation of teh current state of affairs of this state founded in 1947.

باعمل مسلمانوں سے پیشگی معذرت
اقبال تیرے دیس کا کیا حال سناؤں
دہقان تومرکھپ گیا اب کس کوجگاؤں
ملتا ہے کہاں خوشہء گندم کہ جلاؤں
شاہین کا ہے گنبد شاہی پہ بسیرا
کنجشک فرومایہ کواب کس سے لڑاؤں
اقبال تیرے دیس کا کیا حال سناؤں
مکّاری و عیّاری و غدّاری و ہیجان
اب بنتا ہے ان چارعناصر سے مسلمان
قاری اسے کہنا تو بڑی بات ہے یارو
اس نےتوکبھی کھول کےدیکھا نہیں قرآن
اقبال تیرے دیس کا کیا حال سناؤں
بیباقی و حق گوئی سےگبھراتا ہے مومن
مکّاری و روباہی پہ اتراتا ہے مومن
جس رزق سے پرواز میں کوتاہی کا ڈر ہو
وہ رزق بڑے شوق سے کھاتا ہے مومن
اقبال تیرے دیس کا کیا حال سناؤں
جھگڑے یہاں صوبوں کے ذاتوں کے نصب کے
اگتے ہیں تہہ سایہء گل ۔ خار غضب کے
یہ دیس ہے سب کا مگر اس کا نہیں کوئی
اس کےتن خستہ پہ تو اب دانت ہیں سب کے

Bhai, can you imagine? It's been a year to our Baithak madness already?

ab yeh yahan kia hua?

Madrassa expulsions 'to go ahead'

So Mushy said:

...he took the decision because he did not want the madrassas "misused for extremism".

But it is all right to resort to extreme and myopic measures to curb extremism. Now that is 'enlightening'. Why do such news crop up before me just when I am packing up for the weekend? Is he and his stooge company in existence for teh sole purpose of making my blood boil? I t hink not, not. so that would be a yes. This being my place, i can say all i want and as i want:

I HATE MUSHARRAF!!! AND EVERYTHING HE BROUGHT WITH HIM THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER 12, 1999. IMPOSTOR! UNIFORMED RASCAL!

urghh!

Irish lottery winner speechless as she collects £77m prize

Speechless? Oh no, Ms. Dolores McNamara. Never again will you be speechless. For just a li’l one million I agree to write speeches for you. And it would be a wise move too, seeing how insanely I am in love with hearing my own voice permeate the airwaves around me. The words aren't that bad either. Yes I do have this annoying habit of taking my feet, toe by toe, all the way upto my mouth in any conversation that continues for five minutes or more, but it's not my conversational skills that should concern you. My word selection leaves a lot to be desired but then again, it's not me who has to pay up now. Normally my words are tagged on the steeper side but for you I can whip up a special one week discount. And that should be time enough. For the spotlight to have moved on from you. So. Deal you say?

When I am not daydreaming of striking instant riches without as much as raising a foot, I am lunching on Doritos. The best way to eat them, as I have discovered, is to crunch and crush them to small, eatable, bite sized pieces before opening the pack.

Think you can do better than such updates? What you waiting for? Send in a sample post already. Voluntary (non-paying) job. Type Guest (im)Poster in subject line. Faxed and snail-mailed requests will not be entertained.

Why does not the world not rot in hell?

Does it seem I live in a world where headlines don’t bother me at all? That’s why I cared not writing even a word on the London blasts? Or the Ghotki disaster? Or the earthquake that jolted the city but was not enough to get itself registered on my scale? Or the Harry Potter mania? Or His Doggyship PM’s speech to the nation last night? I do blog. Mentally I am blogging all the time. And that is when I don’t even have to pause for a minute and check if my fingers are fast enough in transferring words and thoughts onto the screen. So. I blog. Regularly. Sometimes as much as six times a day. Or three times in half an hour. But tangibility escapes them all. But I am sure all my blogs are great. In fact, I believe that the blogs I have not blogged yet have to be the best and best saved for my own self. It does not really matter whether or not I can recall them at will. See. That is what I meant. The moment I sit down with intentions to actullay commit words to a proper readable blog entry, it’s only nonsense that manages to escape the grey recesses of my mind. My mind has a mind of its own and mins everyone else’s business but its own.
So.
There was this pic I came across in the papers a day or two after Potter mania made headlines. It reminded me of another pic I was stupid enough not to save. But more on that later (or not).

These Bangladeshi street vendors are seen in this pic by AFP Photos, peddling copies of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The quality was grainy even in print and there was no mention if it was the original high priced edition or the pirated, cheap version. Somehow I doubt if street vendors would be selling the original version. That has to be found in air conditioned, swanky bookshops. Where pre-ordering options were available. Salesmen all but bowed to your purchasing might. Offered discounts on purchase of merchandise on credit cards. And the kids (or adults) lining up to get their hands on a copy of HBP would’ve probably come to the bookshop in a chauffer driven air conditioned car.
So. The book(s) in this pic has to be pirated version. I wonder if the kid peddling this had an idea of what he held in his hands.A publishing phenomenon? What was on his mind? To sell the stupid heavy book off - wondering why anyone would want to way that much money for some cheap paper instead of buying some food - and get some money to take home? I wonder if these kids could read at all. I wonder if they were caught in the jubilation that heralded the release of this book. I wonder if they were happy only because it meant more demand for the cheap version and hence some more money in their pockets. I wonder how they may spend the money they earn from such book sales. I wonder if they go home and tell their parents how some stupid girls and boys had gone ga ga over a cheap print book and bought multiple copies of. I wonder if they talk to their parents at all. If their parents are alive and concerned of what their kids are upto.
Sometimes these disparities just get to me. And I want to quit everything. It is not fair that one kid can spend an obscene amount for a book and another hope that there is a demand for its cheap paper version. I want to jostle up everyone I sight, slap them till they see this depravity all around us and actually do some work. I want to kill myself for not doing enough, I feel for them, but my feelings don’t feed these kids, it does not ensure them a childhood they are entitled to. I feel worthless, not capable of anything save an occasional festering. I rant and rankle here awhile and go back to my routine. I really hate myself.

Someone please rescue me from this self loath and do me a guest post.