22nd November 2008

Schadenfreude

While deriving a sense of fiendish pleasure from cataclysm and horror is a relatively normal, albeit contemptible, form of behavior, still, one should maintain a measure of good sense in one’s ghoulish delights. That is to say, it is best to cackle gleefully a safe distance from the burning house, and not when you are still standing amidst the flames, and the beams are coming down around you. But, alas, I have to confess to this level of imprudence.

I was in India when the financial markets first began to melt down, and I noted with some dismay that my initial reaction was NOT alarm, or concern, or brooding, or even a detached calculation, but real satisfaction that the whole mess was at last unraveling. I’ve been waiting for this.

The reasons I felt this way are straightforward: aside from my experiencing the normal thrill that any serious gravitational gyration produces, high finance is the keenest and clearest distillation of a doctrine that I’ve ideologically opposed for a long time. And, to be clear, my opposition is wholly ideological: while I had some expectation this was coming, my expectation was born out of faith rather than theory. It’s the same satisfaction the chosen will feel, as they’re being whisked away in the Rapture, when they look down to see the earth crack open, and a wave of demons riding on a tide of magma pours forth to engulf billions of pitiful, wailing human beings in their fiery, merciless clutches: “My God! I was right the whole time!”

But there is another reason. There’s also the germ of hope: after ruin comes rebuilding. I have great plans for this human race! I believe that we can be so much more than we have been, that we can aspire to greater things. Now that this dazzling, glamorous fog has been blown away by a rather ill wind, we should turn our heads up and look again at the stars. These are the moments, on the brink, at twilight, when the veneer is thinnest, for us to examine ourselves and our surroundings and find a new way. This is the right time to dream.

Dream loudly.

posted by saurabh in Schmapitalism, What Is To Be Done | 1 Comment

14th November 2008

The blog, and its ends

Some of you may be wondering, “Why does saurabh maintain a blog and never write on it?” And the answers to that, which, in fact, do exist, are manifold, and could be readily presented. To whit, as it were, ter woo, the provision of, at the very least, the escape tunnel, the emergency exit, the pressure release gasket, ejection seat lever or Monopoly Get Out of Jail Free card. Any time I wish, I may express my opinion herein, and there it is, expressed! Which cannot be undone, just like spilling milk into the carpet: that milk is in there, buddy, and you better just throw out the carpet. You might be able to cover it up with odor eaters, but you’ll know, lying in your bed late at night, that particles of milk still lie hiding beneath the curled nylon fibers and layers of dog hair down there in your living room. Similarly this blog, taking “the carpet” to mean the incorporeal ether, the fabric of society, the zeitgeist. At any moment, any insight of mine can be put “out there”, from the very mundane to the utterly trivial. That satisfaction is enough justification to maintain any blog. Blog about the weather. Blog about my pants. Blog about why Adrian Brody’s nose just isn’t straight, goddamnit.

All of which might be as much as to say, as you are likely doing right now, “Well, you obviously haven’t got anything worth saying anyway.” But that’s neither here, nor is it there. That simple fact has not prevented a long parade of insufferable dullards from foisting their worm-eaten wit on an aghast humanity, and never let it be said that I am too proud to aspire to the company of dullards. I insist on my impressing my logorrhea on an unwilling audience.

Some corners of the incorporeal ether have, in recent days, heard speculation that the “blogosphere” is at an end, made morsel of by the Gargantua of our time, the “M-S-M”. To those mongers of rumor I say, toddle pit, and other such nonsensical utterings, since really that’s the only response that sort of ridiculous prattle deserves. Can we imagine an end to the human desire to vent, to carp, to blow hard? Will there ever be a day when our mothers would not call up our best friend Kenny’s mothers, who they are also friends with, and tell them about what they overheard about the president of the local Lions Club while standing in line at the bank? Heck, no! And so long as this fundamental desire, as basic as our need to sleep and fuck, exists, why, now that we’ve got the bits in our teeth, we’ll shake the reins and let our words stream out across the wind. I proudly declaim the motto of the blogger: “I have nothing to say, and you’re going to have to hear it!”

posted by saurabh in A Series of Tubes, Bloorg, Zeitgeist | 3 Comments

5th November 2008

Restart!

309.43200.0 - --mark--
309.77106.1 - rx/4B24E147//intr/UART
309.77106.1 - tx/4B24E147//hnds
309.77106.1 - tx/4B24E147//helo
309.77106.3 - rx/4B24E147//helo
309.77106.3 - AUTH/fcx
309.77106.3 - Generating certificates...
309.77106.3 - tx/4B24E147//auth/{cert-3160}
309.77106.3 - rx/4B24E147//login/{cert-3160}/697c703b7b5c7b47253a625747515e7d
309.77106.3 - WAKE/fcx
309.77106.3 - Resuming suspended state
309.77106.3 - Unpacking..............100%
309.77107.0 - [UNPACK] 522 threads left unprocessed!
309.77107.0 - Checksum matches.
309.77107.0 - ch0: Removing write protection
309.77107.0 - ch0: Write access enabled
309.77107.0 - ch0: Reading active index
309.77107.0 - ch0: Restoring state……..100%
309.77107.4 - hello saurabh

posted by saurabh in Bad robot!, Bloorg | 0 Comments

  • Blogroll