Today's Obsession

Bye bye Blogspot...for now

2007-06-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

I have moved to Vox.

Find me at: http://animukerji.vox.com

"The Landlord" starring Will Ferell

2007-05-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

The LandLord is the funniest internet video I've ever seen.

href="http://www.funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=3efbc24c7d2583be6925">The Landlord

Word!

2007-03-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Some time back I switched my allegiance from KQED to KALW. No particular reason. Just that KALW is the little NPR station here. One of my favorite shows on KALW airs on Friday nights at 8:00 PM. The show's called My Word!...a British show where "four professional writers compete for marks by attributing, or rather misattributing, quotations to authors and origins to words, and fumbling through foibled fables".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Word

http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/radio/myword.htm

Listen to the show:
http://jrabold.net/radio/2myw.shtml

Joe Frank

2007-01-15T17:52:00.000-08:00

I remember the first time I heard Joe Frank. I was working on my Masters Thesis and had an old walkman with a radio propped on the window sill next to my table tuned to KPFA. The program was a monologue in a deep almost conspiratorial voice (as if this person was speaking only to me) intercut with phone calls, voicemails, hypnotic electronic music. I loved it and tried to find it and listen to it every chance I got in those weeks. Cut to 4 years later. I am driving back from work and a Hearing Voices special on Circus is on the radio. The show features a most outrageous story by Joe Frank. I am back in his spell. I seek out his website and listen to all the free shows. You should too.

http://www.joefrank.com/

The bollywood I love

2006-12-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

If you were stranded in a deserted island and had to watch two bollywood films released in 2006 to save your life, watch Omkara and Lage Raho Munnabhai. 'Nuff said.

http://www.omkarathefilm.com/
http://www.lagerahomunnabhai.com/

PurePicturePost

2006-11-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

I like these pictures I've taken over the years..Enjoy!

The Best of...

RadioLab

2006-10-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Working late has its benefits. One of them is the pleasure of listening to public radio at 8PM on the drive back home and discovering new shows. The 8PM slot at my local public radio is dedicated to wonderful radio documentaries. A few months back I heard radiolab. It's difficult to describe what is radiolab. You really have to listen to an episode.

Go to: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab

(Actually the WNYC website does describe the show pretty accurately: From WNYC, New York Public Radio, its Radio Lab. Radio Lab® is an investigation. Each episode is a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea. On RadioLab, science bumps into culture... information sounds like music. But you still have to give it a listen to understand why it's so good.)

While you're at it also check out a few documentaries at American Radioworks

Me, Me, Me!

2006-07-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

I read Yiyun Li's stories a while back. I loved it and recommended it to a friend of mine who is an aspiring novelist. He called me today to ask for the name of her book and since I just couldn't remember the name, I had to google it.

In the search results, I found this article about about Yiyun.

I have been struggling to make sense of what disappoints me in most of the writing I come across here in the US. A passage from the article just explained it perfectly:

"McPherson's Southern accent flummoxed her -- "I couldn't understand most of what he said" -- but one particular point he made got through. In the Western world, and especially in America, he told the class, the focus is so much on the individual that "we have lost the community voice." But that voice is still present in writing from countries such as China and Japan.

Something clicked. Before long, Li was showing McPherson a story called "Immortality." Written from the point of view of an entire town, using the first person plural, its first sentence reads: "This story, as the story of every one of us, started long before we were born."

McPherson thought it was wonderful. "It's what a teacher lives for," he says."

Read the entire article: Will Words Fail Her?

Buy Yiyun Li's book

Hope Is Emo

2006-06-26T21:17:00.000-07:00

Every now and then...I get a little bit lonely....

Wait...that's not what I wanted to write.

Every now and then I surf the internet. This time a friend of mine posted his son's Pre-School graduation videos on YouTube. Now for those of you who don't know, YouTube is like Google Video. So...I was surfing YouTube and found out that YouTube is this place where a lot of Emo kids post Vodcasts. This one is undoubtedly one of the funniest ones I've seen.

And one I'd like to share with you...my solo reader. You know who you are!

Thank you for reading my blog.

A Funny Podcast About A Sad Girl. Hope Is Emo

The Glass Palace

2006-06-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

I am really enjoying Amitav Ghosh's Novel, The Glass Palace. I quote from a passage where the protagonist is at a loss to understand why the people of Burma are mourning their King who the British are in the process of sending to exile. The night before they had looted the Palace, and now as the King leaves the city in a procession, they're weeping.

"Rajkumar was at a loss to understand this grief. He was, in a way, a feral creature, unaware that in certain places there exists invisible bonds linking people to one another through personifications of their commonality. In the Bengal of his birth those ties had been sundered by a century of conquest and no longer existed even as memory. Beyond the ties of blood, friendship and immediate reciprocity, Rajkumar recognized no loyalties, no obligations and no limit on the compass of his right to provide for himself. He reserved his trust and affection for those who earned it by concrete example and proven goodwill. Once earned, his loyalty was given wholeheartedly, with none of those unspoken provisions with which people usually guard against betrayal. In this too he was not unlike a creature that had returned to the wild. But that there should exist a universe of loyalties that was unrelated to himself and his own immediate needs--this was very nearly incomprehensible. "

Brilliant!

http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Ghosh.html
Buy the book

Big Corporations Care

2006-05-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

I wanted to find out if I could cancel my cellphone service online. So I went to the support section of their website and typed in "Cancel Service". While I didn't find an answer to my question, I did find something that restored my faith in big corporations.

Q:What is the policy for cancellation of Cingular Wireless service due to customer death while under contract?

A: During the difficult time of loss, Cingular Wireless offers you its condolences. The policy for cancellation of Cingular Wireless service due to customer death while under contract is the following:

1. The customer's spouse or power of attorney needs to call Customer Service at 1-888-CINGULAR.

2. The caller will be asked to verify the deceased customer's account information. Please have the deceased customer's social security number available or two of the following: account number, zip code or two recently dialed calls.

3. Early termination fees are not charged for cancellation due to death.

4. Balance on the account is the responsibility of the account holder's estate.

5. Transfer of service fees are not charged for account transfers due to death.

6. The account may not remain active under the deceased name and social security number.

http://www.cingular.com/

Javier Marias

2006-03-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

This extract from an article in the New Yorker about the Spanish Author Javier Marias is the best writing I've read in the past months:

....The first page of his novel "Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me" (1994), for example, features this excursus on the misfortune, and humiliation, of sudden death:

Seafood poisoning, a cigarette lit as the person is drifting off to sleep and that sets fire to the sheets or, worse, to a woollen blanket; a slip in the shower—the back of the head—the bathroom door locked; a lightning bolt that splits in two a tree planted in a broad avenue, a tree which, as it falls, crushes or slices off the head of a passer-by, possibly a foreigner; dying in your socks, or at the barber's, still wearing a voluminous smock, or in a whorehouse or at the dentist's; or eating fish and getting a bone stuck in your throat, choking to death like a child whose mother isn't there to save him by sticking a finger down his throat; or dying in the middle of shaving, with one cheek still covered in foam, half-shaven for all eternity, unless someone notices and finishes the job off out of aesthetic pity; not to mention life's most ignoble, hidden moments that people seldom mention once they are out of adolescence, simply because they no longer have an excuse to do so, although, of course, there are always those who insist on making jokes about them, never very funny jokes.

Into the two hundred and one words of this sentence, resourcefully translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Marías crams many tiny triumphs of imagination and elaboration: a slip in the shower enhanced by a locked door that protects no one; decapitation made oddly worse for happening on vacation; an incongruous postmortem shave made comically touching by the phrase "aesthetic pity"— piedad estética.

From:
A MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
by WYATT MASON
The clandestine greatness of Javier Marías.
Issue of 2005-11-14

Read the full article at: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051114crbo_books

Fresh Air with Terry Gross

2006-03-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

On most days, when I drive home from work, I listen to Fresh Air with Terry Gross (an interview program on Public Radio). I get bored whenever it's to do with the US Government, US history or Politics. But I particularly enjoy her interviews with musicians, authors and other artistes. Here's my top five:

The Rza
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4829782

DJ Cool Herc
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4821646

Joan Didion
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4956088

Rock historian Ed Ward profiles New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5237296

Bruce Springsteen
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5079313

Konono N°1

2006-02-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.crammed.be/craworld/crw27/e/index.htm

It was late on a Friday evening at work. Both my colleague and I weren't in a hurry to get home. And he played Konono. The minute I heard them, I knew they were a candidate for a google search. These guys deserve a listen. They've been playing this music for 25 years. You need to listen or watch (Quicktime format) them today.

While you are at the crammed website, be sure to check out the other acts on the label.

P.S. There are 854 posts about Konono. 305,096 about Britney Spears. Where's the justice in this world?

Source: Google BlogSearch

Trader Joe's

2006-01-19T16:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.traderjoes.com/

This post doesn't really fit in with this blog. But here's the rationale.
For the past two days the article about a Trader Joe's store opening in New York has been one of the top 5 most e-mailed articles on the NY Times website. And I can understand why. And I have been talking about it to whoever will listen. And maybe I don't have much else to talk about.

Semiconductor

2006-01-15T01:11:00.000-08:00

http://semiconductorfilms.org/

A piece of software where sound influences (and creates) video and then the video created influences (and creates) sound...interesting. That's an oversimplification of what Semiconductor exhibited (performed?) at 21 Grand. It was pretty awesome.

I really liked their demo/show reel. You can buy their work on DVD. Make sure you have a 30,000 watt 5.1 surround home theaters if you do.

And these cool people were doing a fellowship at the Space Science Lab in Berkeley!

Songs in Car Commercials

2006-01-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.hummer.com/
http://www.pontiac.com/

Every now and then I see a 30 second TV commercial and the music really sticks. Well it happened not once but twice some months back. The Hummer commercial had this great electronica score and the Pontiac commercial (I don't know if it was for the Solstice or the G6) had this big arena rock piece. So I did what I always do. Waste sometime on the internet looking for them. I found both a few days back.

Hummer: Midwest Product/Swamp
Pontiac: Kasabian/Club Foot

(Click the link to download the mp3s.... and yes, these links will expire soon...like all links on the Internet)

Your vs. You're

While looking for the songs featured in the aforementioned car commercials, I found this exchange between posters on a bulletin board:
------------------
cameron
(no login) im 14 too November 14 2005, 9:08 PM

the song your talking about is on the cadilac comercial and its by Led Zeppelin its calld Rock n Roll not anything else buddy and im 14 too

Some
(no login) Re: im 14 too November 27 2005, 5:41 PM

Your is a possessive pronoun. You're means you are. When you use your to mean you are, it changes the whole meaning of what you're trying to say. It's really not that hard to learn the difference between your vs. you're and how to use it correctly.

johnnyenglish
(no login) Re: im 14 too January 5 2006, 3:47 AM

What part of grammar and compostion does, "Shut the FUCK UP!" fall into?

Regina Spektor

2005-12-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.reginaspektor.com

I was searching my e-mail for a word and came across an e-mail I had sent myself months back with a playlist from KCRW...a set of music that was close to perfect. And I found her.

Click here to stream a Windows Media Format music video.

Morningwood

2005-12-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.morningwoodrocks.com

"A monster truck having sex with a Bond girl. " Thats how this band describes itself. That's gold. Morningwood rocks!

Goldspot

2005-12-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

http://goldspot.net/goldspotnew/index.php

I am so happy to be obsessed with something other than what I am going through. Its been on repeat play ever since I found the site sometime in the afternoon. I love 'rewind' and 'friday'. Check out their 'Morning becomes eclectic' performance at www.kcrwmusic.com

Aperture

2005-11-11T17:19:00.000-08:00

http://www.apple.com/aperture

Every few weeks I go to the apple website to get inspired. The other day they were promoting their new software for professional photographers Aperture on their homepage. I decided to check it out and viewed a few demos...I was blown away....they are so good. I loved the "loupe" tool in the software.

A few months later I found Adobe's answer to Aperture: Lightroom.

http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/

Pizzicato 5

2005-10-27T11:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.risingdragon.net/nonstoptotokio/

I uploaded the picture sometime back. Now here's the post.
It was slow day at work and P5 made it go faster.

klipFolio

2005-10-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.serence.com

I started looking for a Hotmail notifier so that I stop checking my Hotmail account every 10 minutes. The search led me to klipFolio, a really cool RSS Dashboard. Its interesting to see the dashboard making a comeback (Anyone remember Dashboards for Windows 3.1?).

The Mighty Boosh

2005-10-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/mightyboosh/index.shtml

A call at midnight woke me up and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I started watching BBC America and watched a couple of episodes of "The Mighty Boosh". This is undoubtedly the funniest and most absurd show I have seen in years.

Rideshare

2005-10-07T18:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.craigslist.org/rid/

I wanted to go to LA today. I posted an ad on Craigslist offering a ride. I found a guy. We fixed a time. He called me 5 minutes before I was to leave work and dropped out...I am so bummed out!