Better Blogging. Now.

I have been blogging for quite a while now, and although today is not any specific day like “exactly-two-years-ago” or anything, it struck me how far it has come, and how much further I’d like to go.

Now, a long time ago I stumbled upon sites like BlogBloke with expert advises on blogging and the like, but somehow never really paid much attention to it.

When I logged in this afternoon however, it suddenly stuck me how lame the whole thing really looks.
I mean come on, a terrible looking design template, less-than-creative URL (that’s my name there), minimalist stats tracking and comment control, and no RSS…it really doesn’t get much dumber than this.


With this in mind, I’d like to take a deep breath, and announce that effective immediately I’m putting all my current blogging activities on hold and working full time over this holiday season on getting my blog back on track and in better shape.

I’m thinking maybe I’ll switch platforms, to something with better control (and a much nicer custom template!) or maybe even go pro on an owned domain; with my very own CMS and all the fireworks.

Whatever I do, I just wanted to let you guys know that I haven’t quit, so just in case you come back a month later and still find this post on top, you know I’m still working on it!

Very Punny

"What should I write" I was thinking all night, when suddenly, it dawned on me!

(p.s. This was my quickest post ever; usually I spend hours, sometimes days thinking on a post. This one happened in less than 3minutes...hurray for anti-boredom!)

Getting "Bushed"

I guess it’s been all over the news more times than necessary that the outgoing US President George Bush was thrown a pair of shoes at during a press conference in Iraq. In case you missed the news, here’s a link.

Now, putting the serious and insulting nature of the issue aside, I’d like to take this as an opportunity to introduce a new phrase into English; and I really hope this catches on.

I mean after all, not so long ago, when J.K. Rowling introduced us to the world of Magic and Muggles, hey the Oxford English dictionary brought that out and officially introduced the word in 2003!

So here’s my contribution to the world of words in our beloved language:

Bushed [bůshΔ] (verb):
The act of throwing footwear at a person, either individually or in a group, with the intention of insulting or otherwise humiliating the person; see also Getting-[v]: being a victim of such an act; [v]-ing: throwing footwear, esp. as a form of occur disrespect and the highest level of insult towards the subject.

Here’s a few examples:

When the burglar broke into the barn, he took off after the boys bushed him with leather boots.
The local judge ordered the shoplifter to be tarred, feathered and bushed.
“If you do that again, I’ll bush you in front of the entire village” threatened the town Elder.

Although I must say, something like “The president was bushed” does sound a tad bit too insulting. But I guess that’s the way a language grows :D

The Blame Game

(Technically, this post should’ve actually been on Broken Fishtank which is the usual place I write stuff like this, but I just did a post there yesterday and I don’t want it to sink to second place already.

This is going to be a long post; and a serious one. If you’re busy now, please come back and read it later. But I do implore you to not skip paragraphs)


I’m probably the last guy on the planet to write on the recent Mumbai attacks, nearly two weeks after the whole thing was over; but in a way it got me thinking about a lot of stuff we seem to take for granted…including who we routinely blame for it.

First off, the politicians who are a bunch of idiots and we all know this. In fact, we know better because we’re the ones who put them up there in the first place, so in a way, we’re to blame for it.

And who can forget the “Deccan Mujahideen” who supposedly claimed responsibility for the attack…and then the media went into overdrive with home-grown terror.
Until someone was intelligent enough to expose this as a bad joke by some prankster, every news channel in India (and even CNN, but I don’t count that) was sure it was the Deccan Mujahideen based on one pathetic Email anyone could have sent.

…why?
Because Muslims were the bad guys. Muslims were the terrorists. Muslims were the people who like to blow up stuff.

Quickly, give me a no-hard-feelings answer: what’s the first image to pop into your head when you hear the word “terrorist”?

If you get an Osama-bin-Laden-look-alike with a turban, a long beard, wearing a robe, you’ve hit home base – along with a million others.

Now here’s where it starts getting confusing, because if you look at the one picture of the terrorist we’ve seen far too times on TV, there was no turban, the guy was wearing a black tee, cargo jeans and (gasp!) no beard. And then you have this other report that the terrorists apparently had stashed up 3days worth of food; chicken and liquor!

The chicken part, I buy, but alcohol?
I’m no expert but I’m guessing you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure who the only terrorists who don’t drink by principle – as opposed to not drink before an attack – are!

Now I’m not denying or alleging anything, but for all we know, they could have been college-dropouts or unemployed graduates taking out their frustration to the world…and the fact remains that no one still knows who the attackers were or where they came from or what they wanted (despite what you see on TV) but what makes me mad is that we’re quick to again blame the Muslims for it.

And again, why?
Because hey, if it’s not them, who else could it be?

In fact, a while ago during another bombing, an Indian news-magazine ran a story with the racist headline: “All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”.
Note here how the LTTE, The Naxalites, the IRA of Ireland and the FARC of South America all suddenly cease to become terrorist organizations just because apparently in someone’s mind; only Muslims do all the dirty work; with the dislodging clause that, “well, maybe not all of them though”

And thus, effectively alienate part of society by calling them the bad guys, throwing the blame on them and view them with suspicion at every turn in society.

No, it does NOT feel nice to be looked at as part of the problem and a potential terrorist when you have nothing to do with it.

In short: terrorists are our common enemies…and you can’t fight them by blaming a community or a country or a religion for it and alienating them.
Regardless of whether they are “jihadists” – that’s the usual term; or RSS extremists – we’ve seen this in the Melagon attacks; or by the United States – which pokes into Iraq, Afghanistan and pretty much the rest of the world; call a terrorist a terrorist.

And unite to fight them.