Thursday 22 April 2010

Intelligence

"I was born intelligent...reading your blog proved me wrong. I will now proceed to hunt you down and kill you"
-Anonymous Death Threat(I get loads of those...)

So yes..this is a touchy subject...and yes, I dont do touchy subjects. So, the logical question you would proceed to ask me now would be, Is there Life on Mars?? Shit, I knew I shouldn't have smoked that crap... But well and truly, this is one subject that most people I know have an opinion on.

Now I am (un)fortunate enough to have cleared the most reputed(and the shittiest) entrance exam in the country..the JEE. Yes, thats right...they are so "bhokaal"(a hindi word that means fried tomato...or undisputed unequivocal narcissism...i forget which) they are content to call themselve the (pronounce thee not tha) JEE. People who are in the same boat as me consider themselves highly intelligent. They think to themselves... and proclaim to anyone who's interested that they are smart...and who knows, they just might be..

But the point here is...a fucking entrance exam isn't really a measure of intelligence. It may sound like a weird concept...but think of it this way..there is NO feasible way known to mankind that allows us to measure intelligence easily and accurately. At best...we get a rough picture...so we call someone dumb, retard...or genius, brilliant... but we just don't know how intelligent someone might be. Now that isn't a very satisfactory answer to some of the biggest PITA problems in the history of mankind. So I have come up with a solution. And yes...it involves writing another long list of really fucked up absurdities. Diehard fans rejoice!!!

1.Get rid of your ego...with true intelligence comes humility

2.If you're intelligent you're also funny...and that means you GET the jokes targeted at you. Even better, you also get the perfect retort.

3. There are three types of intelligence in my book- Speed of thought, Visuo-spatial and Memory. Now this is something that I came up with while having a bath one day(one of many baths I shall have on the way to my degree). But think about it, does make sense... So the first kind become lawyers, the second kind are the artists, and the last crack the JEE and become absolute nutters.

4. Yes, people who are really bad at one thing may be really good at another.
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5. If you already knew all of this and think I am wasting your time, you are a fucking GENIUS. Now go somewhere else.

Its just plain sailing from here on in. Intelligent is as intelligent does, to misquote forrest gump. Yeah. Insight is easy. Intelligence is hard.

Thanks Goonj...and why my best writing is a parody of my best writing

Now the art of writing a good blog is to NOT be angry all the time. Yeah, I'll just pause and let that sink in for a bit. I got introduced to a really great blog(I call it a blog...its actually a fight) about 15 minutes back. Here's the link...if you're interested...http://khamba.blogspot.com/

It's a nice blog and everything(like the Holocaust was nice for the Nazis that is), but after a few articles you begin to wonder why the dude is actually angry at all this stuff. And then comes something that you like perfectly well...and HE goes ballistic about it. Now writing is meant to be cathartic...and venting your feelings is of course, one of the most cathartic experiences available. But this "dude" just decides to fuse the two out of no rhyme or reason. And of course the anger. The sort of shit that could give Rage Against the Machine a migraine and send them home.

Makes you wonder if the author of aforesaid blog has had a traumatic childhood, a series of unhappy(abusive?) relationships, or is a closet homosexual. Also makes you wonder if all that anger would rather be left alone.

And Goonj team, I really dont want to say something like "good work...well done...loved it" or account of it being so fucking patronizing. All I would like to say is that if you REALLY want a satirical blog to print in your magazine...forget mine...it isnt a minute's worth in front of this khamba "dude". But then again...if you are going to criticise EVERY Tom Dick Harry and Jane, you better remember that 4 people could kick the shit out of you anyday(yes..Jane too)...

Thank you Goonj. I actually read the whole issue cover to cover(something I dont do with Digit). I hope that's a compliment ;)

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Intramural Schadenfreude and what to avoid in posts on Facebook

"And fools who came to scoff...stayed to pray" -Ammonia Avenue, Alan Parsons Project(I kinda forgot the original source)

Well its about time i wrote a wide ranging blog. And since my scope is open to the extremely wide range of the tea shop outside my hostel, a certain hyderabad gate and that black bull outside the auspices of the highly inauspicious fruit stall that I frequent, I have decided to write on the almost infinite scope of the new favorite American and/or Indian pastime (yes, taking over from sex and meaningless blog writing) FACEBOOKING...

But first, a bit of elaboration on the title. Now for those of you who find my titles rather chic and discretely humorous, I would suggest you see a shrink, but for those of you who, rather disdainfully find my titles obfuscate, or at best perfidiously prevaricated, this is your day..oh joy... Well, most of the facebook retaliations that I am going to talk about come from the sort of schadenfreude that is to be expected among people who don't really like each other much. Now this usually comes from the sort of people, who might be in your branch(like the total dickheads in mine), your lobby, your city...or bear no relation to you at all(yes, I like to call that the random burn, and it IS the best kind). Now don't be mistaken, schadenfreude isn't the name of some late German shrink who could convince you that you wanted to kill your father...and other disturbing stuff...no its about a sort of malicious enjoyment of someone else's grief. Of course, this doesn't always happen if you don't like someone. It's what our ceramics sciences prof would call: necessary but not sufficient. Yes, I don't like his classes very much, either. Coming back to the point of course, now that you know what stupidity is, and oh yeah, what schaden...etc etc is too, you can look up the other few words on google. Or if you already knew what these words were and are now cursing me for being an utter and complete waste of internet surfing time, fuck you, and go watch your stupid porno..

But seriously, I am going to cease meandering, and come directly to the point. For those of you experienced enough at facebooking to avoid the potential landmines that you might encounter every day, good for you. However, I am going to be writing a rather extensive list on what the hell you should AVOID, on facebook anyway...

1. Stupidity. If someone makes a stupid, utterly brainless comment on a post that you just happen to have liked or commented upon, do what you do to Shoaib-Sania news stories these days, IGNORE IT. Telling someone his comment is precociously stupid is precisely like telling a drunk he has an alcohol problem. The best reaction you can hope for is a "HUH??" and the worst is a prolonged fight ending with the both of you on the floor together clutching each other like lovers.

2.Religion. Lets leave religious semantics to the priests and the old people in your colony, shall we? You don't know the R of religion, so don't go about spouting nonsense that you have no idea about. Also, you might not know this, but religion is, what we like to call, a slightly INFLAMMATORY topic. So, please just let it be.

3. Terrorism. Now one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and the third man's late realisation. Avoid commenting on posts that portray people as terrorists...for all you know, it could just be a ruse by the terrorists to get your home address...okay, maybe not, but don't do it anyway.

4.That weird status message that some girl put up last night thats now got 43 likes but doesn't make any sense. If you DONT get it..just like it. Pretty girls live in denial....

5.Any link to ANY page with the word fuck in it. Trust me,its not worth it...even though you might hate pakistan, or islam, or pink fluffy bunnies...its soo not worth it...

Yes..thats it. And keep facebooking/social netwroking please. Its exactly the sort of thing that will make cars, parents or education redundant 30 years from now...

Saturday 3 April 2010

JEErs and CATcalls...

The lamentable fact in this country is that entrance examinations are probably the national pastime for all young adults. Its an unnecessary act of heartbreak, emotional nerve-wracking stupidity that seems to have become a rite of passage to adulthood for most of the Indian teenagers around. However...this is not a blog of derision...NOT a blog about the inescapability and the inevitability of that gruesome monster that is the Joint Entrance Examination. No, this blog is about how, in a stupid, convoluted, rather fucked up way...it WORKS. Yes, everyone says its a fucked up system...that discourages, rather counterintuitively, the very principles it is supposed to uphold. Yes, the people who run the system KNOW that it is fucked up...and very broken(in the same way the government's welfare schemes are broken...or that expensive vase that you just decided was a frisbee one day got broken). But it WORKS!!! And how.. India produces over 350000 engineering students a year, it's world renowned for the (lack of)quality of its engineering graduates, and despite none of our colleges being in the top 100 of the world... We still produce some of the biggest names in corporate legend...and enterpreneurship history.

Yes...we are probably one of the foremost nations in terms of edcational prowess in the world today. Simply because Indians are the best sort at reverse engineering...and (legal)creative accounting(Ramalinga Raju notwithstanding). We have the unique ability of taking a system, and destroying it...before remodelling it to suit our very obfuscate(to ourselves that is) needs. Simply put...we can take any system...fuck it up...and make our own Indian potpourri out of it...don't think so?? I have one word for you... Rajnikanth.

So what we have done is taken a perfectly good aptitude test system...and twisted it into a rote learning, Kota-sightseeing, TIME classes joining, billion dollar enterprise. As a result...everyone is happy... the Kota tourism industry is booming, TIME classes are flourishing...and our parents are thrilled at their wards actually DOING something for their future. People are idiots, as a general rule, and where the herd mentality doesnt strike, the power of money does. Irrespective of the fact that a clerk in a bank makes more than a startout engineer, after the Sixth Pay Commission(yes I will be writing a blog on that too..), there is always that iota of hope that the erstwhile engineering graduate might just be THE one to earn some double digit salary(in lakhs...we aren't thaat poor a country). And now I'm just going to stop paranthesizing everything and get to the point...

Yes..we have a flawed system...but this flawed system works very well. Lets face it, we have shit colleges...shit profs, a really shit counselling system, and probably the most shit idea of aptitude tests in the whole world. And we are a bunch of really desperate, materialistic people looking to make as much money as possible in our rather short and meaningless lives. And while I would like everything about our educational system to change...rather radically...NOT that stupid bullshit that Kapil Sibal insists on doing...but REAL change... let's face it, it's not going to happen. When it comes to the Indian tertiary education system... it just has to be, in the most despicable way, said that All Izz Well. That just about sums it up. Oh, and DIE Kapil Sibal DIE. I do hope the CBI doesn't read blogs...but then, knowing the effectiveness of the Cyber Crimes division...it should take them a mere 29 years to find and arrest me...
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