Save the "!"s

"Out of office for next few hours!!"

"having lunch at thai place!!!"

"Here it is! The OS we were all roaring about. Just upgraded!!"

"Robin hood !!!!" (means - watching it right now :/)

These are real updates, from real people. On emails/social networking sites. What is wrong with the world? Why are exclamation marks used out of place almost all the time, like there is no tomorrow? It's like the Lays chips commercial, no one can eat just one - no one stops at just using one. Like there is some kind of medal tally of how many "!" one uses.

I'm no grammar nazi. This blog is filled with all typos and types of mistakes. I don't like to correct people's its and it's. But for the love of god(or whatever you believe in) please be sober with those exclamations. You know how you feel, when someone uses too many smiley's in a text conversation. Like after every other word. Diabetic. With exclamations, it is something similar. High blood pressure.

My respect for a person's sensibilities is inversely proportional to the "!"s they use in their words. Yes, I'm judging you. Be sensible. Make the internet a better place - for you and for me and the entire human race.

An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

PS: And now you can laugh at how uptight I'm with this thing, which is true :D. But I get irritated seeing a million of these everyday, and so the rant.

What is Evil?

Just finished reading 'The Immortals of Meluha' by Amish Tripathi. It's an interesting read, blending mythology and fiction like I've never seen before, except may be in 'The Great Indian Novel' by Shashi Tharoor. It's a new genre of sorts.

But that's besides the point. I was intrigued by the concept introduced in the book by Tripathi, that evil is a relative term. What one person or community thinks is evil or bad is probably just a different way of doing things, which they aren't comfortable with. A good example would be, capitalism and communism. The capitalist world considers the communist as backward and bad as a way of living with highly restricted freedoms. The communist world have their own views of how capitalism is bad, leads to tremendous social inequality and stuff. There have been wars, many of them, over these differences and their incorrect interpretations. Why? Just because they don't believe in each other's opinions and feel that the other's influence may increase if they don't stop them. I'm probably over simplifying this, but it can't be completely denied.

Evil, if you look at it this way is then a difference of perspectives. Of course there are exceptions like pure badwill. But then it's just circumstances and perspectives causing distortion of 'what is right' at such an immense level that entire civilizations are blinded.

Evil is relative, just like everything else in this universe, conditions apply.



I await the next two parts of the 'immortals' trilogy, to see where the author takes the definition of evil to.

PS: This post was written on a phone with a brilliant predictive keyboard, SwiftKey.

Innovation & Art

I've these really neat conversations with my instructor at the art studio that I go to. She likes to dive into philosophy when explaining approaches to art, and what can be more interesting than that :) We have had many such conversations, I'll some day write on the others, which were equally interesting, but let me elaborate on the latest one which left me thinking for a while.

So, few days ago we were talking about a new piece I'm working on. I told her I know exactly how I would go about doing this, and I don't want to do it that way. I've this concept, which now in hindsight doesn't seem all that right, of not doing the the same thing again. By that I mean that, if I do use a certain idea and style I use it once for a piece, I don't go about exploiting it as such. My intent is to keep things dynamic, and to venture into as many things that I can(perhaps to learn more?).

But people like to make a series of paintings on a idea that they have, and they use a similar style for all of those. So you get a nice set of pieces that go very well with each other, and form what is called, a 'body of work'. This is what most artists seem to be doing, and that is how someone gets interested in their work. It's like Hitchcock making a series of suspense thrillers.

So, what she was trying to imply is that, dynamic ideas are good, but the dynamism should be paced out. In other words, she was implying that innovation is not always a good thing. If we innovate something, and keep working on that idea, we refine it and make it more sophisticated. And that makes for good art, which is appreciated and understood.

To conclude, innovation should be accompanied by refinement. And refinement reaches a stage where we call it 'art'.

Talk about refinement, here's a Hyundai commercial for that. Needless to say I really dig what this company is upto.

Design of a Wallet

Now this is one thing really dear to men, the wallet. It pays to have a good one, literally. Mine was tethered and tortured over the last few years, and it was finally time to get one before someone at a cash counter said something embarrassing.

I never really bothered about how my wallet should be, till now. It happens to be that all the ones till now were given to me, and all of them had plenty of room. Sometimes more than required. When I decided to get one for myself, I wanted something really slim and 'non-disturbing' to the seating arrangements to be precise.

Men's wallets, are inevitably fat and they keep swelling till one day the dude realizes that he can no longer sit straight. The contents are then pruned. It's an interesting exercise. Delayed free or garbage collection in more technical terms.

So now with a slim wallet, I've fewer compartments. And my priority goes to fast access to cards, since that is what I (or any sane person these days) use the most. So I had to group them by priority. High priority cards should have fastest access. By fast access I don't mean fast to look at, but fast to take out. If you keep a card in the card holder, boy your cashier would've a soda by the time you swipe your card. So keep it free, like where the cash is, just this one card that you use all the time.

Or you could use two wallets, one for the cards, the other for the rest of the things. I've seen a friend use two wallets, and I think it's just too much maintenance, and as Cartman would say, it's gay.

And please for _ sake, use a bifold or lesser, no triflolds, they have too much self-baggage, and they don't look like men's accessories in the first place.

So do yourself a favor, get a nice slim, tight, snug piece of soft leather, and be happy. I bumped into one at a Macy's store, and it made all the difference. The make - Perry Ellis Portfolio Slimfold- recommended.

G.C.

Her curvy figure, 

glitters with all the glory.

She exudes an aura,

when she walks by the light.

She looks in her element,

when she is in fury.

The piercing eyes,

the thunder, the aplomb.

Her contenders burn with envy,

when she whooshes past their egos.

She is the real deal.
She is, 

the Genesis.

PS: Absolutely love my new car :)