The West Wing - Playlist

I just watched the full series THE WEST WING - here is what I could gather of the songs used in the series... Awesome series..!

Absolutely Unjustified…..

Responding to How Free Freedom is? - From THE END VIEW by Addu

The Sh** Sena (no puns intended, please do not arrest me!) is a party or rather a congregation of unsettled minds who have suddenly lost the only man who had the aura that appealed. And the son, shadowed by a fairly popular nephew needed something to start making a mark finally (to his credit he runs the most popular Bus Service between Pune and Mumbai, although very very few people really know about it). This is how the father remained relevant – essentially making very drastic and controversial statements. The only agenda for his party was to encourage laziness in the name of a boundary that was loosely defined by a language. So the son does the first thing that is most relevant in his bereaved mind – get someone arrested.

Let’s see what one of the arrested women said. “Everyday 1000s of people die but still the world moves on. Just due to one political leaders death... everyone just goes bonkers. They should know we are resilient by force, not by choice. Respect is earned, not given and definitely not forced. Today Mumbai shuts down due to fear and not due to respect.” And for this she was arrested. Is it just me or do I sense a terrible insecurity in facing the truth. The raw truth! And her friend LIKED it. A police case was registered and the women were arrested the same evening. Besides my awe at the unbelievable speed of action on behalf of the Mumbai Police, I am at a lack of words to describe the level of stupidity and directionless sense of misadventure demonstrated by this action.

The fact that this was designed to fuel an agenda is further demonstrated by the Sh** Sena calling for bandh in Palghar district in protest against the suspension of two policemen for arresting the two young women. A spokesperson from the party said “….’s death has been a shock to the entire nation. Sainiks showed tremendous restraint in controlling their emotions”. Even if I consider an understanding of shock to a section of the country I do not understand the issue of “tremendous restraint in controlling their emotions.” This is a behavior I have seen once before when a South India demi-God (read actor) passed away. What would a lack of restraint have meant? Besides bringing the commercial capital of a country to a standstill, would lighting the city on fire be justified? Or just breaking and shattering a few windows? Or just a hammer on the knuckle of Freedom of Speech and Expression?

I was there and all I saw and heard were people enjoying a surprise holiday in the middle of the week. I even know a few who drove to Mumbai for respite from the humidity. If this is not something one can protest against in a public domain of expression, we are not an independent country but one that is run by the goons of public politics.

Thankfully for the women the soldiers have turned their attention now to the illegal monument they are bent to build and the tiff with the local Municipal Corporation. It’s almost as if the law of the land does not mean anything anymore.

PS: You would have noticed me using ** here and there and that is because I am scared of being arrested and beaten up without just cause.

DirectTV Ads - YouTube

A very nice series of advertisements.

These are funny and have a certain surprise value when you watch it for the first time that allows for probably a very high recall for the DirectTV brand.

The Royal BS…

I think that UK (and significant chunks of the rest of the world) is facing its worst identity crisis ever and a complete void in terms of a baseline on what is important in the culture. To fight this vacuum in their cultural timeline they have turned to celebrating the one thing that still is newsworthy; after many millennia of abuse, scandals and tyranny, the British Royalty still can be quite the bullshit spinner!

And, I agree to the point that the economy is in serious depression and probably facing a steeper decline (according to some); and people need a diversion to liven up daily misgivings. I also agree to the point of media being greatly proliferated since Prince Charles and Lady Diana got married, now that we have a billion TV channels and a million other channels to supplement what non-media time was left in our life.

But that kind of makes my point!

The Royal Wedding hit a new low (or a new height of farce) when the Canadian federal government this week released its official "Royal Tour 2011" app on iTunes, offering mobile access to photos, video and tweets about Prince William and Catherine's nine-day trip, which begins on June 30. The last time something from UK drove such extreme media and people frenzy across the world was probably when The Beatles sang Please Please Me with Lady Diana being (ironically) the unfortunate victim of paparazzi overdrive, a close second.

And, not only does the extreme commercialization of a family even strike me as odd, I also kind of feel sad for the couple depriving them time on their own without every worthy and unworthy journalist mongering for a piece of something that can be published on some media clip somewhere. The problem is that the frenzy, although full of good stuff at this time, will soon run out of positive steam (as is pretty much the case with all media BS) and give way to the ugly trio of invading into privacy, creating scandals for mass consumption and speculation. We know amply from the past that when those three musketeers cling swords around the Royal families, the outcomes are pretty steep and almost always downhill.

The Charles-Diana marriage started off with similar fervor among the press with the (thankfully) limited channels of news and information flow in the ‘good old days’ of the news paper and BBC guaranteeing limited coverage. And the short lived happy marriage was led into digging of the past, photographs invading into the privacy of a royalty and a victim of royalty to the point where it became the symbol of all that was culturally immoral in the society. Whether it was the absence of Royal mojo or just a lesser media blasted life that led to the affairs that were so explicitly pictured and portrayed, it did not go too good for anyone with the candle in the wind blowing out rather immaturely and undeservingly.

Prince Charles had his fame when his name was showcased over the news when wishing to be a tampon on secretly recorded tape, in conversation with Camilla Parker-Bowles, so colorfully renamed as the Tampongate scandal.

Before Princess Diana became the most written about and hunted royal in modern history, and pictures of Fergie getting her toes sucked were splashed around the world, Princess Margaret captured the imagination and the paparazzi interest from the 1950's right up to her divorce from Lord Snowden in 1978.

To give the due and deserved credit, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge do make a good couple but I do hope that the marital curse of British Royalty gives it not the same fate that has been repeated in history over and over again! With the history of thorns that adorns the Windsor, it is deemed unlikely. 

Women are thinkers….

1/21/2100
This shit is so true….

Jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam…

This song got me through many very sad nights even back when I did not know the difference very well between grunge and metal and the other varieties. I had picked this song up from an old audio cassette that was lying around a friend’s place and took it quite to heart. This is the MTV Unplugged Version as good as the original recorded and then some more….

John Mayer - Who Says [HQ]

This is my song for the day. One of my new year resolutions is to go back old ways of life and therefore I am dedicating more time going forward to listening to more music and watching less TV.