Ecchi Ninjutsu

The secret powers of Japanese samurais and ninjas that kept the Mongols at bay. (Courtesy the fabulous io9.)

Music for Airports

NF is visiting his hometown of Lucknow from December 14th to January 23rd. All those jobless enough are enjoined to visit.

शनिवार की सुबहें / बुरी स्मृतियों के गड़े मुर्दे

आओ श्रम के लिए, सेहत के लिए, हम करें रोज़ व्यायाम
देखे हमको सारी दुनिया, हम करें कुछ ऐसे काम

<*पेंपें-पेंपें-पें, पेंपें-पेंपें-पें, पें... पेंपें-पेंपें-पेंपें
पेंपें-पेंपें-पें, पेंपें-पेंपें-पें,
पें... पेंपें-पेंपें-पें*>

हम हैं नवयुग के निर्माता, काँधों पर बोझ उठाना है
हम हैं नवयुग के निर्माता, काँधों पर बोझ उठाना है
आगे बढ़ने की चाहत, पीछे ना कदम हटाना है
आगे बढ़ने की चाहत, पीछे ना कदम हटाना है
हम हैं मंज़िल के दीवाने, कर पड़े हैं हम अभियान
देखे हमको सारी दुनिया, हम करें कुछ ऐसे काम

...



कुछ यातनाएं अकेले समेटे रखना उचित नहीं है। उन्हें मित्रों के साथ बांटने से (सुनने में आया है) प्यार बढ़ता है।

For Chrissy :P

And so it was in the year of the Great Emancipation that the Ministry of Robot Affairs banned the use of sarcasm in the workplace.

The Loosest, Baggiest Monster of All

Underworld is a big, sprawling, savagely intelligent, breathtakingly ambitious and unbelievably beautiful work of art that confirms Don DeLillo's status as probably the best American novelist alive. 

It is the book David Foster Wallace would've wanted to write; but could never - despite his exceptional artistic wizardry and flashy, pyrotechnic prose. The reason has something to do with the difference between brilliant (which David Foster Wallace undeniably was) and truly deep (which Don DeLillo is and DFW wasn't - though he did sometime veer dangerously close to it).

It is a nonlinear (both in time and in narrative structure) fragmented-though-deeply-interconnected tale of several different characters whose lives are tied together by the ball that starred in the shot heard around the world and its journey through their lives; and another earth shaking development that unfolded on the same day - the successful atomic bomb test of the Soviet Union - which also affects directly, as well as indirectly, the destinies of the numerous characters in the book.

  

Don DeLillo has given us in Underworld, a true masterpiece, whose incalculable artistic merit confirms his status as probably the greatest novelist of our age - a fabulous, fabulous achievement indeed.

10/24/2012

El Ten Eleven playing I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool. And yes, they're even better live!

Better Later Than Never Redux

The great Lloyd Shapley wins the Nobel for Economics!

With this, the coronation of the holy trinity of Game Theory - Nash, Aumann and Shapley - is complete.

Time now for champagne to flow.

Cheers!

@Somnath: Yes, We Were There!

Although banal reasons like the absolute impossibility of easy access to the venue and scarcity of frequent train lines between the village and home cut short our little trip to the film festival and we ended up watching only the first half, NF can confidently assert that Somnath's fabulous animated short "The Candy Tree" was probably the best little gem out there! 

Somnath's film was the third from the beginning and although the audience was comprised mostly of old geezers with only a sprinkling of young blood, 'The Candy Tree' drew approving laughs at the right places and a thunderous applause at its end!

Another brilliant film to be showcased was Jonathan Ng's "Requiem for a Romance" - a fabulous tale of a breakup superimposed on a kung fu fight sequence. Yoko Ono (yes the Beatles' destroyer) also had a film on the show called "My Hometown" and it was the most retarded and third rate film of the festival. One imagines that her work was shown only because the fledgling festival needed big names to prop itself up!

And of course, given NF's fabulous impersonation skills, a local newspaper reporting on the film festival mistook him for the Director-in-Chief Somnath! Here's the link to the item: http://www.thedailymail.net/articles/2012/09/16/news/doc50553490c663c093171125.txt

For those interested in viewing 'The Candy Tree', here's the film on Youtube:

Somnath, take a bow already!

Naambaa One

#0: Do you speak Russian?

NF: <*???*> No. I'm Indian.

#0: <*begins singing in a slight accent*> दोस्त दोस्त ना रहा, प्यार प्यार ना रहा... (tr. Friend did not remain friend/Love did not remain love...)

NF: ...

#0: Do you know who's it by?

NF: <*knowing better than to mention Mukesh*> Raj Kapur...?

#0: <*with conviction*> Yes! He was the best. The number one!

NF: Da da!!!

Mi-ni-mal

Courtesy: Chrissy

The Documentarian

Although there are many a bone NF has to pick with Adam Curtis's spin on the nature of the state of the world, it is undeniable that anyone familiar with his oeuvre will not be thoroughly disabused of the notion that the technocratic impulses of scientists and economists are free from deeply embedded, almost-unconscious ideological biases; or that at least the manner of their use in human societies is impervious to abuse. His latest effort: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is another such three part attack. 

One may disagree with his conclusions, but it's impossible to not be a fan.

डॉक्टर साहब (उर्फ़ "दोक्था - थेन्मा")

The Dark Knight Falls

Shame on you Nolan, shame on you!

A Punchup at a Wedding

#0: You're the biggest hypocrite in the world.
NF: And your supreme powers of observation have just turned me into your biggest fan ever.
#0: <*smirks to #1*> This just proves my point.
NF: <*with an even bigger smirk*> Oh but this time I was just being ironic.

अथ नंगा फकीर उवाच

आज प्रेम चोपड़ा की बड़ी याद आ रही है!

That Paradigm of Science Fiction

Here's a short fanboy review of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction by the brilliant Paolo Bacigalupi (courtesy, Wired): How Cyberpunk Saved Sci-Fi. (For newbies, Paolo Bacigalupi is the writer of The Windup Girl - the fabulous dystopian SF novel set in the globally warmed, near submerged, future Thailand. It won the 2010 triple crown in SF - Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial award -  a feat previously achieved only by <*gasp!*> William Gibson with Neuromancer.)

Here's Bacigalupi commenting on what Gibson would've referred to as a "Nodal Point" in science fiction writing:

Science fiction had lost the thread of reality. Human beings weren’t going to the moon; we were going digital.

And at the end of the (rather short) essay, Bacigalupi points out another nodal point that his fabulous book internalized in its plot and narrative design:

And of course, the huge question mark is global warming. There are so many variables, from sea level rise to disrupted ecosystems to catastrophic droughts, that a bunch of our comfortable narratives about what the world will look like—let alone how we’ll adapt to it—are in play. Just as when we were on the cusp of cyberpunk and didn’t know it, I’m hoping now for another new breed of writers, people who can craft drive-by speculations that leave us gasping with surprise. Those kinds of writers don’t just see the future; they see the present.

This framework is an excellent way to understand the contribution of the cyberpunk movement to fiction in general and SF literature in particular; and Bacigalupi (and of course the great Ian McDonald whose River of Gods - an SF novel set in near future balkanized, dystopic India is a deeply thought, masterfully etched anticipation of such a nodal moment (On this point however, one must note that McDonald's entire ouevre is a tribute to such an exercise and in this respect, he's probably the leading SF write alive today!)) is a prime exponent of such a style. This movement within SF emphasizes narratives that are set in the near future, almost always dystopic developing nations (Bacigalupi's Thailand and McDonald's India, Turkey and Brazil) and tackle head-on the major themes that any writer worth her salt needs to intellectually grapple with - global warming, massive corruption, debilitatingly poor societies, staggering economic inequality and so on - the "low life" part of the deal. Add to it the "high tech" - the second half of the cyberpunk aesthetic - sentient financial trading algorithms, ubiquitous, frugal, improvised, genetic engineering, self organizing, cutting edge nanotechnology - and you have a smorgasbord of heady, complex, edgy ideas about the future of humanity.

Hurray for this new wave of science fiction; and hurray for the new crop of writers championing it!

 

06/15/2012

Yes! I Am A Long Way Away From Home

White Noise

I Know You Are But What Am I?

San Pedro

Mexican Grand Prix

Stanley Kubrick

Stop Coming to My House

Cody

Ex-Cowboy

How To Be A Werewolf

2 Rights Make 1 Wrong

Ratts Of The Capital

ENCORE

Rano Pano

I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead

We're No Here

(Photo courtesy: Ninja Awesomeness.)

जो बोले सो निहाल

<*एक मध्यवर्गीय परिवार, शर्मा जी चम्पक के माता-पिता का आतिथ्य स्वीकार करते हुए चाय की चुस्कियाँ ले रहे हैं*>

शर्माजी (चम्पक से) : बेटा तुम कौन सी यूनिवर्सिटी में पढ़ रहे हो?
आज्ञाकारी चम्पक: जी लंड यूनिवर्सिटी में.

<*सन्नाटा*>

शर्माजी (सकपकाते हुए) :  बेटा तुम तो जज़्बाती हो गए. मैं तो बस नाम जानना चाहता था.

What is Dead May Never Die

Alfie Allen is a fuckin' gangster! Cheers to Theon for stealing Tyrion's glory!

The Big Fucking Problem

Has been solved.

@Ninja Awesomeness

Here's to you Dookster! Welcome back home.

The Man, the Machine

Bleg

Why is irony, its verbal counterpart, sarcasm and the entire brand of humor derived from it (mordant, sarcastic, ironic, aloof) so deeply, so quintessentially urban?

Better Late Than Never

Shishir had described it as The Lord of the Rings meets The Sopranos. One month and five thousand pages later, Nanga Fakir nods his assent (though he's only vaguely aware of what The Sopranos is).

A Song of Ice and Fire - the epic fantasy series that everyone who walks on two feet and displays vital signs has read and critiqued - is very much what people have claimed it is, and more; a great, deep, wonderful, complex, layered, savagely intelligent fantasy series with a rider: it's for adults and adults only. (So if you're thinking of a gift for your little niece who's into Harry Potter and Twilight, you might want to skip gifting her this one.)

A major criticism of Tolkien and the fantasy movement he pioneered was that of lack of complexity of characters, simple bifurcation of the world into those who're good and those who've gone to the dark side and the sacrifice of realism for an over-abundance of high fantasy. Nanga Fakir agrees with such criticisms but still has deep regard for Tolkien in general for having single-handedly created such a high art form. In retrospect though, such oversights were rather obvious and the genre was waiting to be rescued by someone who'd add a dash of realism and complexity to the high fantasy narrative.

George R R Martin has done just that! A Song of Ice and Fire is mostly medieval fantasy - with a very large tract of the (very complex) story taking place as it could've been set on a (say) 14-15th century Europe. (On a slightly different note, it's very tempting to see the Dothraki being fashioned after the Mongolian hordes; the continent of Essos, on the Arabic and Egyptian civilisations while the continent of Westeros is mostly our 14th century Europe/decaying Byzantine Empire.) There is a hint of magic though, barely enough for most characters to deny its existence and yet significant enough for the more imaginative kind to entertain the possibility that it exists.

The masterstroke though, is treating the high fantasy universe as if it were the brutal, nasty and horrific era our medieval history actually was. And so you wouldn't see George R R Martin shying away from taboo topics like rapes, prostitution, incest, coarse, foul language; graphic, detailed portrayals of very gory violence; moral ambiguity, opportunism and yes, deaths of very many central characters. All these were a strict no-no for the genre starting from Tolkien and spreading from his work to that of his emulators (Christopher Paolini and his Inheritance series is a good example (although it tries hard to avoid some standard criticisms, it doesn't totally absolve itself of all sins that the genre is accused of having committed); in fact Chandrakanta - the very popular Hindi medieval/high fantasy series written in the 19th century suffers from these same defects, although being the pioneering work it was, one must learn to appreciate it for what it did given the time at which it was written). Women of common birth, for example in these traditional novels of high fantasy, are not treated as carnal objects, nor is the description of violence serious or detailed; descriptions of torture are almost entirely skipped. (One notable exception is the manga Berserk whose incomplete anime adaptation left NF raging in exasperation for days on end.) Such details shift A Song of Ice and Fire into the realms of Dark Fantasy and Historical Fiction.

And of course, no one who'd ever review the series would forget the complex, morally ambiguous characterisations that are the crown of the saga. The wonderful characters of Tyrion (played by Peter Dinklage in the HBO series, who eventually went on to win both the Emmy and the Golden Globe for his performance); Daenerys, Jaime, Jon Snow, Cersei, Varys, Littlefinger - there is a brilliant array of excellent characters populating the universe of the novel throughout. Add to it the dense and very detailed, complex plotting, and you get the greatest fantasy book NF has ever read!

Bravo George, bravo!!! 

...

PS: Although Nanga Fakir loves the HBO series, what he's really rooting for, is an anime adaptation by, perhaps, the great Shinichiro Watanabe.

Market Economies and Market Democracies

Although the States has been ever the evangelist when it comes to peddling the wonder of market economics, the axiom of choice and the miracle of competition when it comes to advising/chastising developing/underdeveloped nations the world over, they've insulated their polity from being a market democracy by willing themselves to be ruled by a truly very inefficient duopoly - The Elephants and The Donkeys. There's competition in the industrial sector but not so much in the electoral sector with hardly much to choose from.

Contrast this with the fierce, cut-throat, ruthless, Darwinian competition that rules the Indian electoral sector - a true free market for representatives - with every hue, color, whim, creed, caste and class to choose from.

What quirk of fate decreed that the US champions one and not the other?

The Trench Warfare of Male Friendships

A fabulous essay at The Rumpus - dissecting male friendship and describing it for what it is.

Contrast this with the essay on female friendship - also on The Rumpus (which by the way, is a wonderful little treasure trove).

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

The passage of time seemed to weigh heavily on The Boy who had never been accused of having a cheerful disposition anyway. With each passing month, he retreated further and further away into the recesses of his own imagination, staring at the repetitive wallpaper patterns that adorned his room's walls, blank noise slowly spreading like cancer and whitewashing all his senses and laying to sleep all centers of vitality and agency. Like clockwork, on the 29th of each successive month, his body became less corporeal, his constitution less sturdy, his eyes more hollowed out and his color more blanched till eventually, on the stroke of midnight in what would've been the 29th of February in a leap year, his ghostly white apparition spontaneously floated up to the ceiling and became one with the wallpaper, absorbed in that tiny twinkle of its cartoon eyes, visible only to those who care to look hard enough.

Cheers!

It's heartening to see Tigmanshu Dhulia finally get the recognition he deserves. Both Paan Singh Tomar and Shagird, which NF saw back to back are wonderful films. (In fact, NF totally hearted Sahib, Biwi aur Gangster as well.)

It is also heartening to see Anurag Kashyap act (spoiler: he acts rather well!). His part in Shagird as gangster/shooter Bunty Bhaiya is perfect. 

Here's to the new face of Hindi cinema and the brash, young, crop of new directors that is taking over (nay, has already taken over), telling us stories about India in Hindi's numerous local, multifarious dialects!

Cheers!

The Fanboy Awaketh

NF has had a long term fascination with almost any form of art/entertainment that features strong (read hot) women with katanas, or guns, or bare knuckles, or in the limiting case, just bad, fiery attitudes.¹ Your usual, run-of-the-mill postmodern theorist will ascribe it to being born and brought up in a Shakt, Devi-worshipping Brahmin household and pooh pooh his critical sensibilities when it comes to reviews of such artforms.

And so it should come as no surprise that he totally hearted the fabulous, blood soaked, fight intensive anime series Claymore. Of the many, many great anime series he's watched last year this was easily one of the best (though the crown for the best series undoubtedly goes to Denno Coil - the Miyazaki meets Ghost in the Shell anime series that's so brilliant and intelligent that perhaps NF should devote a separate post to it).

Claymore is about an elite group of claymore wielding (almost always hot) female warriors who battle and kill Yoma - a beastly species fond of eating human guts. The fights are exhilarating, the plot is tight and the drama is gripping. NF was captivated for the entire 26 episodes.

Teresa (of the faint smile) is a fanboy's dream, Clare - the protagonist - is a wonderful, intelligent, revenge-obsessed character. People die (mostly very violently) when they lose to enemies (take that most of you Shonen anime!) and almost always there is very little talk and much, much more satisfying no-holds-barred intense, gory, power-up laden fighting.

Very, very satisfying!

Fellow otakus - you know what to watch next.

BACK TO POST

1.

Which is perhaps why in his childhoood, he was so taken in by that classic revenge drama Khoon Bhari Maang (tr. Blood-filled Hair Parting (really?)) and perhaps that is why he worshipped Uma Thurman for the longest time ever.

The Nihilist's Comeuppance

From the fabulous SMBC:

(Click for larger image.)

The Killing Joke

Courtesy: Tyler Cowen of the Marginal Revolution.

Inexistentialism

NF's often been led to wonder if the existentialists' claim of finding subjective meaning in a meaningless, objective universe via love or religion or music or art or whatever isn't the classic case of the placebo effect's surprising efficacy even when its being placebo is known to the subjects.

The Reader

Books read in the last year: January '11 to January '12

1) Sacred Games (Vikram Chandra)
2) The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
3) मंटो की विश्वप्रसिद्ध कहानियां (सआदत हसन मंटो) (Manto's World Famous Stories (Saadat Hasan Manto))
4) Through the Glass Darkly (Donna Leon)
5) The Big Short (Michael Lewis)
6) Our Band Could be Your Life (Michael Azerrad)
7) 2666 (Roberto Bolaño)
8) The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Nikolai Gogol)
9) Death in Venice (Thomas Mann)
10) The Immoralist (Andre Gide)
11) Between Parantheses (Roberto Bolaño)
12) Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
13) Liar's Poker (Michael Lewis)
14) River of Gods (Ian McDonald)
15) No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)
16) The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi)
17) What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Haruki Murakmai)
18) सतह से उठता आदमी (मुक्तिबोध) (Man Rising From the Surface (Muktibodh))
19) Sputnik Sweetheart (Haruki Murakami)
20) Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami)
21) Demons (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) (reread)
22) The Blue Bedspread (Raj Kamal Jha)
23) The Third Reich (Roberto Bolaño)