overheard at rao's

I'm blogging this from Rao's Coffee in Amherst.. I like sitting outside at rao's .. work.. read.. whatever.. except when the skeeters start attacking.. or when people start talking VERY loudly.
I happened to be reading "Me Talk Pretty One Day" - David Sedaris and he writes

"(Americans)... are a loud people. The trumpeting elephants of the human race. Questions, observations, the locations of blisters and rashes - everything is delivered as though it were an announcement."

Ironic/Coincidental???? - semantics... Well anyway, these loud people can be quite obnoxious when youre trying to work or read or just enjoy a muggy, mosquito infested summer evening in Amherst. :).. Especially when you know they are just talking crap... I hate it when people expatiate about something and I know they are talking utter bullshit. So I decided to post whatever memorable(??) junk I hear. Just an outlet for my frustration.. I don't think I'd be welcomed back at Rao's if I went postal on those loudmouths!! :D
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So here goes.
Overheard at Rao's today:
-Some guy talking about religion or something. "... like that Hindi (sic) god.. Vishnu. You know the one with the many arms and the elephant head? Vishnu, right?"
-Other brainless sycophant. "Yes, yes, Vishnu..."
-First guy. "Ya, this elephant headed Vishnu is ... blah blah blah"
--------------
Someone said that its better to keep shut and let people think you're a fool rather than open your mouth and prove it. Idiots...

I'm copying this idea from http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Alright, back to work.

I owe you guys a post about the Tom Petty concert. It was great. Will post about it soon...

p.s. If any of you Rao's speakers read this and get offended, please dont start flaming me. I won't name names (even if I knew them). Y'all know who you are. smolder in silent embarassment and please learn to pipe down your voices.

Atta boy - screw 'em all

Man, I know exactly how this poor guy feels...

----------------------------------------------
From Yahoo News
Man goes on rampage in tax office
Fri Jul 29,11:30 AM ET

BELGRADE (Reuters) - After twice receiving a tax bill, an enraged Serb stormed the tax office, started shooting and tried to set the tax chief and the building on fire, Serb media reported Friday.

Nebojsa Miladinovic, a saw-mill owner in his fifties, tried for days to convince tax officials in the central town of Gornji Milanovac he had paid his 192,200 dinar ($2,794) bill. They said he had not, sent the bill again and blocked his bank account.

After arguing his case Thursday, Miladinovic returned, doused tax chief Gojko Stefanovic and the office files with petrol, shot at computers and yelled "I was ripped off."

Two people were injured in the melee and parts of the office caught fire, with panicked staff escaping through the windows.

Police arrested Miladinovic, whom neighbors described as a hard worker who never made trouble. Witnesses said he even paid for parking his car in front of the tax office before the rampage

old favourite

time goes by, life moves, u see new things, like new things, get new tastes, experiment ... I'm mainly talking about music here (but I guess this is true for other stuff too)... And sure, you'll find something you like and are excited about.. But an "old favourite" is just so different.. You know how you can associate a smell with a flood of memories.. wierdly, for me a song can get associated with memories, including the senses of smell and feeling/touch.. it's all in the head I know, that's why its so great.. sometimes I feel we should let mysteries remain mysteries.. I dont want to know what neuron is firing and what networks are being activated within my temporal or parietal lobe when I hear a certain refrain.. takes the magic out of the reminiscing.

my "all-songs" playlist, on shuffle, hit me with an old favourite this morning. the kind that makes you stop, turn and maybe smile.

well... i'm going to watch an old favourite tonight!! :) Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with the Black Crowes, down at Mansfield, MA.

old favourites are good.. music and others. I miss those...

one year of slogging.. sorry, blogging

Today, July 28 2005, marks the one year anniversary of my first blog ever. Ooooooh break out the champagne, the caviar and blah blah...

big deal right??

I'm sposed to be writing this paper for TRB and am stuck.. time for a break.

How about that Bombay rains huh?? man.. I saw some of the pics.. Remind me not to complain when it rains out here. Hope all you folks back in Bombay are alright, and dry!

go read this account - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4724245.stm

I would cut and paste the whole thing here.. but its more fun on that site with pics and all.. nicely written... the true mumbai spirit did appear huh?

Phew-- back to this never-ending paper.. Going to Tom Petty and the Black Crowes concert tomm. :D .... silver lining of the week.

antonio cam

On CampusCam outside Antonio's with Reddy and Nidhi... After hours..:D

Yes, we are the ones on the bench!

uprooting oneself

I've been looking at houses/apartments/rooms galore... But just cannot find one to suit my needs. Is it just coz those places really suck? Or am I just picky and finicky as hell? Or is it a deeply subconcious feeling against uprooting myself and moving out.

Dammit..

well, I guess #345 on my "1000 Things To Do Before You Die" list is:
- Get Evicted and Have your Belongings Thrown Out On The Streets.

So maybe that'll happen.. What a great story to tell the grandkids.

Sure.... (dripping sarcasm, for those oblivious folks)

Heart on my fuckin sleeve

Sorry about the french mes cheries.. or whatever

point being that i've somehow gotten to this point where my heart is on my friggin sleeve all the time.. and isnt that a vulnerable position? specially in the summer when u dont even wear sleeves?? ok - dumb one. But yup, thats it. No more. You lucky readers now will be spared my moans and cries and heartaches and heartbreaks and likes and dislikes and hates and loves.. too much of my emotions are mapped out now on anujpradhan.com. And who knows who's reading right?? Public domain and all.. I should probably get rid of all personally identifiable info, rename the domain to something like bitterandsour.com and then write in code and abbreviations!!

Oh well.. u wont be spared THAAAAAT much, but you'll be missing out on details, for sure. I mean I'd run out of material to write about if I didnt moan and complain wouldn't I?? And now that I've run out of sympathetic ears to bear my moaning and cribbing, YOU, my dear readers, will be my collective sympathetic ear.

---Hot news!!!
I just read that Yahoo! has bought Konfabulator! And so its gonna be available for free now. hehehe. Yahoo! rocks. (except for the fact that you have to type in the '!' after the word.)

- other stuff
Kristof's column in the new york times says:

According to monitoring by the Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year - and that turns out to be a credit to Peter Jennings. NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes - about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks.

and

If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur.

Shame shame ...

oh well.. sleep well everybody, there are monsters under your bed and in your closet.. the world is not nice, and dont let mommy and daddy tell you otherwise. So be careful, don't trust anyone - you'll be suckered.. and keep smiling, it makes your enemies, friends, teachers and everybody wary!

what a weekend

This is what a weekend is supposed to be like!!
Weather - oooooh man.. we want more please!

Tennis(damn, am I sore), biryani dinner (oooooh), Wedding Crashers (just too hilarious..), Beer sessions(getting too old for these marathons), music-exchange sessions with lava(is the RIAA listening??), Kotak's unexpected visit (was meeting him after 5 yrs.. good fun), Bub's BBQ(burp), Bowling(I sucked), pool(a little better).. and I even managed to get a couple of hours of work done!!

Like they say, I need a break from the weekend now! :)

- on the flip side - it all ends with the questions coming in afresh. Why? All it takes is just a glance. One glimpse, one non-message, one view, and BAM - ure the party pooper, the wet blanket. gimme a paper-cut and pour some salt in it.. while ure at it, squeeze that lime in there too.. No one's fault but just this fickle corazon, as juan would say!

oh hell - what the heck - god knows whos reading this even.. should be marked top fuckin secret, shouldn't it? Anyway, no comments on this one plz.

moving on... I may be a technology freak and a die-hard gadget geek, but the cellphone service in the US had given me a healthy (and totally valid) dislike for mobile phones!! But goddammit if i didnt have to go out and get one for myself.. circumstances, how they armtwist you. and as i expected, it sucks. IT SUCKS big time. Sure, I have a phone now, but i can only make calls, not receive them. Haha. God, I was so not surprised - and its not a cliche to use that phrase coz DAMMIT I wasn't surprised. And now guess what - this phone's just 3 days old and hehehehe its started freezing up on me!! If it wasn't so bugging it'd be just hilarious. It IS still hilarious. ... remember that paper cut?? How does chilli powder sound now??

Oh well... Aug 1st deadline for TRB. Need data from 6 more kids.. And of course, don't forget - I'm still looking for a new place to live in. Hoooha.. Its gonna be an interesting week. If I don't blog after Aug 1st, it's probably coz i'm out on the streets .. and u know, they still dont have plug in ethernet jacks in park benches!!

isoldmybike.com

SOLD... boohoo :(

Motorcycle for sale - '82 Suzuki GS 650 GL

1982 Suzuki GS 650 GL Motorcycle for sale.
4 stroke, 4 cylinder, shaft driven.

Doesn't run but needs very little work to make it run. i just don't have the time to work on it and will not have a garage to keep it in from the end of this month.

Am asking for $350/- or best reasonable offer. Comes with manual and a ton of parts and stuff that I've bought to work on.

Call me at 413-253-1379 or email me at apradhan @ ecs.umass.edu for any info or for pictures.

so true... that its painful

this is from phdcomics.com

dammit!!! so there IS a group out there.. of PhD students.. and we all think/act alike.. so much for uniqueness and originality!!! boohooo

Guns, goons and sissies

Follow this link ... my friends
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/national/19nra.html

(by the way, you might need to register with www.nyt.com to be able to read this. If you are not registered for new york times online, I would highly recommend it.. its free and a great source of news and information.)
-----------------------
The article is about the damn NRA shithead bullies

Trust these cowards, always needing guns to hide behind, to bully the city of Columbus, Ohio.. just coz they banned Military-Grade Assault weapons!! its almost hilarious.... Almost!

My readers from outside the US - what is your reaction? A city actually has to -

"...sign legislation outlawing the sale of certain kinds of military-style semiautomatic weapons and requiring people who purchased such guns before the law's effective date, Aug. 12 (2005), to register them with the police."

Can you believe that?? A city actually has to pass a law to ban these weapons - I mean, one would think that it's the USofA - an advanced, developed, educated country - and these laws should be automatic, right? Its not Iraq or Afghanistan or some other war-torn country where owning an AK-47 and owning a TV might have the same level of importance for a household.
But NO, a city has to pass a law to ban these weapons. And becoz the city banned the weapons, the NRA (National Rifle Association) is embarassing and arm-twisting the city by not holding their convention there.

"Thanks to the Columbus City Council, 65,000 people will not be coming to your wonderful Greater Columbus Convention Center in 2007," Wayne LaPierre, the rifle association's executive vice president, said in a news conference here. "The only thing the City Council can expect out of their decision is the gratitude of those businesses in the city we go to instead."

The city is losing $15 million coz the convention venue is changing. What blatant greedy blackmail - its disgusting. And the NRA is trying to scare other cities into not passing similar laws. I hope the city of Columbus shrugs off the losses, and snubs the damned NRA - the people of the city should be proud of not selling their services to a group of thugs who want assault weapons to be freely available in the country. Go live in Iraq if you like playing with guns.. or grow up - Rambo was just a movie!! dumb brainless stupid twits

marketing hype victim !!!

Those who actually look at my reading list will realise that I finished off "Shantaram"... phew.. that was one long book.. who is the anonymous soul that recommended the book to me? D'yu want to remain anonymous??? Having fun, huh?? hehe...

The book was long long long.. but for a mafia/ganster fan it's pretty good.. especially since it deals with the Bombay underworld. In the 80's no doubt - no cellphones remember?? - but still fun. The author's descriptions of the Indian/Bombay culture and lifestyle is quite good. From an outsider's viewpoint I guess.. but the outsider becomes an insider.
Unfortunately the writer is prone to a lot of extra flowery prose once in a while and this creates a break in the flow of the story. The story itself is pretty amazing if it is supposed to be a retelling of the author's life in Bombay. Like a bollywood masala movie!

Which brings me to the bollywood gangster movies cropping up nowadays - not bad huh?? :)
Altho "Sarkar" wasn't all that great - I think it woulda been alrite if it was some altu-faltu director/actors, but one would expect better of Ram Gopal Verma and Amitabh Bacchan right? I liked "D" better. "Ab tak chappan" was great. "Maqbool" was great.

Moving on now - I've started on the latest Harry Potter - The Half-Blood Prince. D'yu wanna know who it is?? :D.. I'd so love to put a spoiler up here.. but well, have only gone thru like 30% of the book so far so I don't know it myself.

I'm another victim of all that marketing and all that hype... :(

oh well....

Grrr...

Sorry Folks,

Normally I try and post a link to an article rather than the entire article on my blog - so that the interested persons can follow the link.. But today I'm copying the entire article on here - Please read it.

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Karl Rove's America

New York Times (online)
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 15, 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

Happy Birthday Manjusha !

Cheers!

eeewwwwwwwwwwww

OK, this website is just creepy!! Photoshopping gone wrong!!

http://angelswithattitude.faithweb.com/photo.html

This one is not photoshopped.. Its real - the guy injects saline into his face!!

http://www.chapter9photography.com/2005/bio/forehead_inflation.htm

Links found on www.boingboing.net

Ya ya, am in that creepy crappy kinda mood.. so buzz off

Mark Knopfler - Pines Theatre, Look Park, Noho, MA

Thursday, 30th June 2005
Pines Theater, Look Park
Northampton (Florence) MA, USA

Mark Knopfler's Shangri-La Tour 2005

Now some of you know that I left the conference in Maine early to make it to the concert right? A 5 hour journey, and I wanted to make it to the gates by 5:30p at least (opening time). So Lisandra and I left Rockport at around 10:45 am.. and did make it to Boston by about 2:45pm.. more like 3:15pm by the time we got to her apt..
By the time I took off from Boston, it was almost 3:30. 2 hours from Boston to Amherst/Noho is normally routine for me so I wasn't worried.. just cruised along.. at 65 (did I tell you about the ticket I got 2 weeks ago??).. confident that I'd make it on time. Then slowly the traffic starts slowing down.. wth longer and longer stopped periods.. and then finally we are at a standstill .. for almost a complete hour.. on I-90. Man, was I frustrated. I don't even know what caused the jam up. Anyway, as soon as it frees up, I take off.. and manage to make it to Look Park by about 6:30pm to find poor Bastien standing at the entrance waiting for me .. he'd been there since 5pm!! and since the tickets were on my name he couldn't even go pick it up!!

Anyway - we were finally in. The Pines Theatre - a tiny venue with a really nice grass lawn seating.. luckily we had brought our blankets/lawn chairs etc. and managed to finagle a decent enough spot to park our butts. Then I went around to check out the food/drink stalls and realised that there was absolutely no alcohol being sold on the premises!!! Oh man, if only I'd known! I had half a mind to go for a quick beer run and bring in a couple of cans of beer at least (that was permitted- no bottles though!!) but didn't want to risk missing out anything. Oh well.. by the way another thing that was bugging abt Pines Theatre was that it was an outdoor venue with absolutely no smoking allowed!! HUH????? Oh well..

An Irish + British duo, Bap Kennedy and James Walbourne kept the crowd happy for a bit with some fancy numbers... very acoustic, very smooth - almost like classic american country music. But they weren't what we'd paid an unholy amount of dineros to listen to!! The crowd's getting restless now. No Knopfler yet!! Luckily the crowd was older I guess, and less unruly?? Average age of the crowd?? Hmmm I'd put it at 50!! hehehe.. But trust these oldies to light up the good weed at a place where even smoking was prohibited!! :D

Any hoo haaa... come 8pm - FINALLY - and Mark Knopfler walks out and kicks off with the relatively obscure Why Aye Man from Ragpicker's Dream.. Follows it up with and the more well known numbers, bringing the aging (!!) crowd to its feet. (I'll have out the full set-list at the end.) So anyway, even though this was the ShangriLa tour he had just two numbers from that Album - Walk of LifeSong For Sonny Liston and Boom, Like That which was excellently performed. Great song!! It's about fast food and McDonald's founder Ray Kroc... hmmmmm McDonalds!!!!!! but I digress.. The undoubtedly well received songs were all the old Dire Straits songs - With people just going MAAAAAAAAAAAD during Sultans of Swing. Romeo and Juliet quietened people down - melancholic memories for all I guess. A duet for Done with Bonaparte with Knopfler on his classic Steel Guitar and the Richard Bennett on the greek looking (and sounding) Bouzouki and another duet (kinda) for Rudiger was excellently performed. These two were very very memorable - other than the regular Dire Straits numbers.

Remember this is about the first week in July in Northampton (Western Mass) and it's not dark till about 9pm!! But it seemed like they timed their set perfectly to coincide with the real nightfall!! Knopfler starts off with a wonderful wonderful playing of Telegraph Road... one of the longest numbers for the night.. Darkness falls.. the lights and the fog effects are perfect and the music, Knopfler's signature guitar sounds mesmerises the crowd. We didn't need the extra paraphernalia to be stoned on that heady mix of ambience and music. Oh wow - the song went on for ever and ever. And when it was done, the crew got together and said their good-byes. Of course, knowing that they'd be called back for an encore - and what a calling it was!! And what an encore!! They walked back to play Brothers in Arms and then Money for Nothing. These two numbers just drove the crowd wild!! If there were anyone sitting during the concert this part definitely brought them to their feet.

These two numbers completed, Knopfler and the crew take their bows, bask in the applause and the pleads for one more-one more-one more... and then - lights off- spot on Knopfler and he starts off with So Far Away as the Final Encore.

What a night - what a show!! just shy of two hours - fifteen songs by one of the legendary guitar masters. Been hearing Mark Knopfler since I was young enough to understand and appreciate music - and to get to see him, hear him perform live is unreal. I was hoping he'd play more - and man, there are so many he could have. I wanted to especially hear Your Latest Trick. But in a way I'm glad he didn't. There's always a next time isn't there?


The set-list:

Why Aye Man - From Ragpicker's Dream.
Walk of Life
What it is
Sailing to Philadelphia
Romeo & Juliet
Sultans of Swing
Done with Bonaparte
Song for Sonny Liston
Rudiger
Boom, Like That
Speedway at Nazareth
Telegraph Road
Encore:
Brothers in Arms
Money for Nothing
2nd Encore:
So Far Away

More Pictures Below:
Sorry for the blurry, grainy, noisy pics - This was the best my low ISO cam could do from that distance in that light! :).. Maybe when I get my DigiSLR!!! ooooh!!! enjoy these in the meanwhile.

The Maine Story

Sometimes everything happens at once. And if I'm to remain true to my blog it almost becomes a chore!! Now I've to write about my trip to Maine, the conference, the Mark Knopfler Concert, War of the Worlds... and I even forgot to mention that I went and watched a great play - The Underpants (yup, that's the name - an old play adapted by Steve Martin) - 2 weeks ago with Siri.. she had free tickets and I was the lucky one to be remembered! :D ... But my point is that its been eventful enough that I haven't had the time to sit and recount the events.. Don't get me wrong - its not been all fun and games!!! I wish it had been!

Anyway - Maine... the saddest part was that the conference was so good that I couldn't even take the time to bunk out and check out too many places - like in N'Orleans. But the conference venue was a great place by itself, on the ocean, with this fabulous golf course!! Well, at least I managed to sneak out and walk up to the lighthouse at the end of the Rockport breakwater.. really nice. Rockport is a really nice foggy, misty place.. I was looking out the window and I could literally see the fog rolling in from the ocean from miles away.. Scary, like John Carpenter's "The Fog".. scary movie!! But the coast of Maine is a very nice, quiet, picturesque place.. definitely on the visit again list. The conference overall was great - scientifically and otherwise - (highlights were the presentation on the 100-Car naturalistic study by VTTI and the Lobster Bake!! ) :) Yup, Geek I am.




Here's a pic for you guys.. as promised.. who said I cannot be generous.. kaun tha woh?? It's the view to the lighthouse from about the half-way point in the breakwater. (Click on it for a larger view)





And the walk back to the hotel... :)





Anyway -- My next post will be about the Mark Knopfler concert.. stay tuned.. :)..am too tired to write right now..

p.s. By the way - the wierdest thing. I saw a blog today that had a pic of Kalimpong (well, trees in the area) and the title - Kalimpong, India's Maine.. Now I cannot imagine why the author thought that Kpg was the Maine of India but I just thought it was strangely coincidental that a Kpg person was talking about Maine and a Maine person (I'm assuming) was talking about Kpg - at about the same time! :D ..
This links to that blog.