Counting Crows!

Me! Me! Me!

I want tickets to see the Counting Crows.

Pajarito, I mourn thee...

I mourn the death of Pajarito, one of the few bulls that decided to give back to the idiots who annoyed it, and other idiots who watched the "sport". In my opinion, Pajarito stood for every oppressed living being who decided to fight and die rather than be put through this ridiculous crap.
In the name of "culture", humans still hold on to their barbaric roots, and the rest of the earth pays for it.

Hope the bushit is over soon...

I hope I wake up tomorrow in a free country. The Worthless man has imprisoned us in a country of fear. Everyday for the past few months, I have woken up feeling frustrated - The dimWit is still leading the polls or it's a dead heat.
To me, the issues are clear:
When going to war, would I trust a man who has never fought in any, who in fact used every possible means (his dad) to wriggle out of his country's call for soldiers, or would I choose someone who's actually fought in them, witnessed them first hand and knows the cost and the right time for a war?
I DO NOT trust this man and his holier-than-God followers, who think that they are the "preservers of life" with their silly anti-abortion campaigns? When the Lord gave Adam and Eve the choice between eternal life and exile from Eden, who are these idiots to take that God-given choice away from humankind?
Let me make this clear: Every democrat, in my opinion, thinks abortions are undesirable, that we should do our best to find alternate ways, BUT: ultimately every human being is free to make that choice for themselves and nobody can take that choice away.
I do not trust the man who has had close "friendly" ties with every maligned corporation (Enron, Taliban, Halliburton) and continues to shelter these morons from the law.
I do not want America to be the lone ranger, going into countries at will, and doing a shoot-em-up-bang-bang out of every situation. I would like us to move towards global citizenship, where all countries are working together. Of course, nobody will compromise national security. Least of all John Kerry and the democrats.
Mr. Waste of space, there is this thing that most sensible folk do: it's called THINKING. That is why we vote differently on different issues depending on what the entire story is. It's not like kindergarten where there was just one way to do everything.
Too bad the "no child left behind" program wasn't available when you were going to school. Maybe you wouldn't have been in such bad shape intellectually then.

And so, as I lay me down to sleep, my fervent hope is that I wake up in an America led by an intelligent, compassionate, strong human being instead of an experimental chimpanzee...

Am I good enough for AdSense?

I broke free from my blogstrap to spew forth more unread jeremiads this morning, still hurt and insulted from the fact that no one is reading a word of what I write. I was wondering how to get people to flock to my site and become a messiah of the religion of blog. In such a state, I stumbled onto AdSense - it said I could get money from people coming to my page; i could care less - and I thought this would be a good way (yeah, right!) to get people to read my rantings. I filled up the forms and submitted them, and I have been told that my money-making potential, or lack thereof, will be evaluated.
I don't have any cool links on my site. I am a pretty bad surfer. So I don't have a lot of hope...

A tribute to Stevie Ray

Here's the bazillionth tribute to the greatest (unarguably, of course) bluesman ever. Okay, I guess it's more of a slam on Clapton. Clapton after a reaaaally short puritan blues approach in his early years sold himself to pop music for a dime. Even now, when he claims to "return" to the blues, all he does is play those standard licks that he can play even if he's dead (well, I think he is dead as far as the blues are concerned) with no feeling whatsoever.
Stevie Ray played every gig as if it was his last, and it showed. There was nothing but feeling and emotion in every guitar note. I could go on forever, but I don't have a charge code to charge this to, at work. They pay me to do far more mundane things.
Long live Stevie Ray.

On Planes, Trains And Automobiles

Planes: I don't know what it is about being in airplanes that gives me a sense of euphoria. Maybe it's the altitude, although I know the altitude doesn't affect me - physiologically, that is - in the least, since i'm in this pressurized chamber. Whatever it is, when I'm in an airplane, my limitations seem unable to haul their leaden asses up with me, and consequently, I'm in this anything-is-possible state, and I make detailed plans for being the best I can, short of joining the army, of course. Unfortunately, my limitations seem to have found an equally fast, ground transportation which means they are ready and waiting at the airport to greet me with open arms when I land...

Trains: As a young boy from a family with modest financial endowments, trains were my personal hypnotists. The rhythmic beat of the wheels moving from one section of the track to the next, with the accompanying echo effect of wheels following suit in the subsequent bogies could keep me entertained for hours. That was probably the main reason that my ADD kicked in only in adulthood :)
Honorable mention also goes to the illusion of tracks coming in under our train and then going out to meet neighboring tracks ad infinitum.

Automobiles: Now I drive a Jeep in suburban Dallas. After driving for six years in different states and cities, I have formulated the "Laws of Vehicular Attraction":
Law #1:
There exists a repulsive force between every car's front and the preceding car's back bumper, which means every time you drive faster, the car in front is pushed forward by this repulsive force, which makes it seem like the car in front has increased its speed.

Law #2:
There exists an attractive force between the sides of two cars adjacent to each other. Thus, when you try to overtake a car, this attraction pulls the car being overtaken ahead too giving the illusion that the driver of that car is speeding up either consciously or subconsicously.

Law #3:
The conventional wisdom that if you keep a safe distance from the car in front of you, you'll have more time to react is complete and utter illusion. Every person I've seen who keeps more than a safe distance is actually paranoid, and the moment the car 500m in front brakes, the safe-distance-person brakes immediately, and completely.
Corollary to law #3:
When you're in traffic with cars in front and cars behind, it's better to be closer to the person in front a.k.a tailgating, then staying behind and letting the person behind you be closer to your back bumper. That way, you're in control of the situation thusly:
If the car in front brakes, it's upto your reaction time and skill to brake and avoid collision. In the conventional wisdom, if the guy in front brakes, and you brake, you're letting the person behind you be in control, because if he's in the middle of an enchanting conversation on his phone, or too busy taking out the goshdarned onions from his whopper, you can say goodbye to your behind.

A classic case of misdirection...

or, should I say misadvertising that gets my goat is the Volkswagen Beetle ad, which compares its dome-shaped top to the arch used in roman bridges. It extols, and rightly so, the arch as a marvel of architecture, because it retains it's shape even when a lot of pressure is applied to it. They use that to say that the beetle has the highest safety rating.
Here's the catch: The arch was used in bridges that had the pressure applied from the top. A car designed with that principle would no doubt be extremely sturdy if it had heavy objects falling on it from the top.But to the best of my knowledge, a car's most feared adversary is the frontal collision,and it doesn't take a genius to realize that the arch when subjected to lateral force would not only not resist it, but in fact, it would readily succumb to it. Personally,I find it hard to believe that nobody in that ad campaign, and nobody in VW motors realized that the ad, though technically accurate in it's wording was really an ethical lie.

The Good Samaritan revisited

This is my first short story written in the comfort of ignorance, and darkness:

"Is there no one to help me? Please give me a chance!" rang out the plaintive cries, muffled and strangelydevoid of feeling for the words they echoed forth.

It was a typical city morning with desire, the eternalseductress, dictating the slave march. The morning sunshone, red and sullen, a grudging, mute witness to thethankless millions underneath, a nondescript mass drivenby unbridled greed. The numbing monotony of the steady footsteps maintained its rhythm, betraying no sign of the cries being registered.

This was the future. Man had learnt from his ignominiouspast, had emerged edified, and the present was unblemishedby any shades of feeling which might impair the gloriousvisions of tomorrow. But vestiges remain... if only to tieup loose ends - to remind those who forget.

A step faltered and came to a halt at the gaping mouth ofa black ditch. A young man with a feline disregard forthe curiosity that arose within, peered into the darknessof the pit that seemed to define nothingness. He couldn't discern anything it might be carrying within; give no face to the voice that begged for succour from its entrails.

Looking around, he saw the world carrying on with its duty.The voice seemed to fade before it reached any of those othermodels of efficiency. Stopping one of the passers-by - anotherwonderful man with a mission, he attempted to find more about the faceless voice which had so brutally exposed his own deplorably human nature. The answer was simple: "If this isn'tyour goal, why bother, man?"

Unsatisfied, the samaritan, after a few moments of contemplation,called down the pit, "Is there anyway I can help?" The wordsdrifted down the pit, echoing retrospectively, presenting themselvesin a new light to their speaker.

Suddenly, life seemed to stir inside. The mindless voice, shakingoff its languor instead assumed a tone of gratitude. "Please getme ouf of this hell-hole! I'll be forever indebted to you if youcould help me!".

"Easy enough", said the samaritan and began looking around for anaccessory, preferably inanimate, to assist him in this humaneinterlude to an otherwise tailor-made mold of existence. His searching gaze rested on, and transfigured, a derelict coil of ropeinto a lifeline for the unfortunate victim reinventing existencein the stygian depths of his enclosure.

Within seconds, he had secured one of the rope around a huge treestump, the remnant of an indolent oak tree, unable to justify itsexistence and consequently reworked to suit the more pressing needsof an ever increasing sedentary work force.

Dropping the other end of the lifeline into the ditch, he asked the man to hold fast. "Call out when you're ready, and I'll haul youout of your misery in no time", said the samaritan. A few moments ofsilence ensued before the voice called, "I'm ready!".

But for the fact that it arose out of the same ditch, it was difficultto identify this triumphant voice, suffused with an almost indulgentpleasure, as the same deadpan one which had been begging for helpa little while ago.

Evidently the ditch was fairly deep, for the entire piece of rope,nearly twenty feet long, had been swallowed whole. After a long inspiredhaul, he could finally see the silhouette of his beneficiary. Strangely,the voice had fallen silent after the initial excitement, which helpedthe samaritan regain his composure and remind himself that it was onlya momentary diversion from his real duty towards mankind.

At last, a head showed up; It was limp. Broken at the neck. He had neatlywound the lifeline around his neck like a hangman's noose. He had beenrescued at the first pull of the samaritan's able arms.

The samaritan wiped the beads of sweat from his brow, picked himself up,and armed with a lesson learnt, reported for work 13 minutes late.

The origins of Jo Atman

It's a pseudonym evolved over time. I wrote my first short story in the bygone days of silly idealistic, nihilistic youth, and signed it as Jo Atmon, which is an acronym for Jack Of All Trades, Master Of None.
Unfortunately, fate sent me to SUNY, Buffalo to get a master's in EE, and I had to give up my Master of None title. I was, undertandably, Jo Atmos for a while, before someone misspelled my original pseudonym as Jo Atman, and it was an epiphany. Atman is the sanskrit word for the individual soul, and Jo(e) is the common American term for Mr. Average. Combined, it stands for the individual average soul.

personally, the eerie silence of a blog is very unnerving to me. I'm reminded of the catch-phrase
from some sci-fi/horror flick - In (cyber)space, no one can hear you scream. Not too different from the oft-asked question, if a self-obsessed egomaniac writes about himself in cyberspace, and no one reads it, does he exist?