Ace of Hz

Did I tell you folks about that time I got caught watching porn? The gay male kind? No? Well, it was in the spring of 2010, the porn was quite good and I believed so was I, until my father caught me. Needless to say, there were trials and tribulations and helluva lot of drama, but that isn’t the point here. The point is that shortly after this accident, my desktop was taken from my room and moved to a new place, namely my parents’ bedroom. (Not that something like that could keep me from watching porn. Puhleez! I just didn’t do so on the computer anymore. For the most part.) Anyway, where were we?

Ah yes, bereft of our beloved and much abused desktop, my sister and I began to go insane in our spring sun illuminated room, slowly but surely. Then I went to Bangalore for a year (but that’s a whole different story). Coming back to the point (though I am not sure what it is anymore), a few weeks ago I moved part of my desktop system back to the room that my sister and I share. Which part, you ask?

I do not own a dedicated music system. My sister and I used our computer for such purposes until it was moved to my parents’ room. There we couldn’t crank up the volume so much because “all that noise” gave Mum headache. Meanwhile, subjecting my already delicate ears to hours of headphone usage was giving me headaches of my own. So, I took the sub-woofer system away from the desktop and installed it in my room such that my tiny music player could be played using it.

The same day that I did this, my cousins from Bangalore called us on Skype. The computer didn’t have speakers; Mother of Mine doesn’t like using headphones. Stalemate. It ended with me using headphones to argue with my cousins about what name our other newest cousin should be christened with. I suggested ‘Stormageddon’ but was voted down three-to-two. (Mad, I tell ya!) He still hasn’t been given a name.

I don’t suppose I am making much sense. Meh. Moving on…

Subsequently, I was forced to move my arse in order to buy another set of speakers for the computer. I didn’t want anything big; definitely not another sub-woofer system. This is New Delhi – which means cramped houses. I looked online, then I roamed the shops in Nehru Place for two hours and after much comparison, calculation and consideration, I bought these:

These are the V620 by F&D purchased for Rs 700. 2W RMS power each. Now let me tell you, these things are TINY but far from TINNY! These speakers pack a surprising amount of punch for something so small – and USB powered at that. They boast of something called “Acoustic Air Spring technology” (not sure exactly what that is; must find out in due course) and I am not lying when I tell you that they make my computer desk vibrate with their thump, yes! There is no distortion, unlike Creative speakers in the same range. Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to compare the sound quality with that of a 2.1 sub-woofer system and you might like to use an equalizer like Realtek to adjust the sound according to your preferences, but honestly, I think that these 2.0 speakers are the best that come for so little a price. These are more than good enough for Skype, watching downloaded TV shows and other general usage.

Plus point: Mother of Mine loves those pretty blue lights at the base! :D

(That day, I also bought a USB sound card. My old Plantronics one had somehow been broken by my sister. I took a screwdriver to it and fixed it the best that I could. Sadly, it was never quite the same. A cheap replacement was in order and this one was good enough at 100 rupees. Besides this, I replaced the worn-out nibs on my fountain pens with new ones.)

All this ballyhoo over trying to tell you folks that I freaking bought a bleeding set of tiny speakers that sound like anything but. Aren’t I precious? No? Damn yeh lot to hell!

(Ace of Hz is an awesome song by Ladytron.)

Out of Exile

Hey there, you! Yes, the two of you sitting right there in front of your screens reading this stuff. You are probably the only audience this blog has left now so I thought I would give you a special hello. :D

Alright, I know that I have been uncommunicative for several weeks now (months, to be honest) but that’s only because zipping around the galaxy and saving it from organo-synthetic overlords is such a demanding job, y’know. However, I have now decided to take time out for blogging anyhow, even if it means typing shit up on my phone right there on the battlefield in between sniping several robot-zombies each in the head. After all, zombies and such are just routine anyway.

</snap back to reality>
</oh there goes gravity>

In coming times, I shall be blogging about the following things (and then some):

• School: School is silly, crazy, funny, great. At school, I can’t usually be found doing much other than studying. (Home, however, is a slightly different story.) Yes, I have made more or less an about turn from my unfortunate behavior that persisted during my senior high years. Moreover, I have hence successfully initiated myself into the “Nerd Herd” in class. Though I should mention, I am a top nerd – yes! ^_^
• Gender: In an upcoming series called Gender 101, I shall relate my experiences with wibbly-wobbly, gendery-bendery stuff at school and elsewhere. No, it won’t be a primer on gender theory.
• Gaming: Get ready for mindlessly boring mini-posts on my various alter egos – Commander Ianto Shepard, Champion Norman Hawke and Daven the Dragonborn, with a few tidbits about Lance Sundermount, the local ranch owner thrown in between.
• Music: Sister of Mine and I have been consuming a lot of music lately. I say ‘consuming’ because we devour an album – really devour it – until we can’t stand to listen to it anymore and move on to another album. Since we share a room, we listen to the same music mostly.
• Other stuff: Self-explanatory. Includes TV shows, movies, creative shit that I get down to once in a blue moon, home, general shit etc.

Note #1: Lil’ Sis has been rechristened Sister of Mine because she has grown up quite a bit and it wouldn’t be accurate to call her ‘little’ anymore.

Note #2: Brownie points to you if you caught the Eminem reference. And the Audioslave reference. And the Doctor Who reference. Death by Vashta Nerada to you if you didn’t. I don’t much care for the Chuck reference but you may pat yourself on the back if you did catch it.

Currently listening to: Something hilarious which I like to call the “Shoulder Massage Of Death” song.

Obligatory New Year’s Post / Have Some Carl Sagan

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.

We are made of star stuff.

— Carl Sagan
(Cosmos)

No Singularity At The Beginning Of The Universe

A little over a month ago, The Times of India carried an article about young bloggers and surprise surprise – yours truly was featured! The article may be found here, and since I am a kickass galactic hero busy protecting all sentient species against doomtastic organo-synthetic overlords, I am blogging about it only now.

To be honest, during the short interview for the article I was a little apprehensive regarding whether it all will translate accurately, if you know what I mean. While the article got it mostly alright – for which I am grateful indeed – I believe that there is one very important thing that needs to be stated: I no more identify as gay or queer or genderqueer or anything else. The only thing that I identify as now is a person. Despite my explaining this during the phone interview, the article fails to clarify this and the reader is left with an incorrect impression that I still identify as such.

Those who are new to this blog may not be aware of my old blog. Well, there was one, and it was a damn good one. :P One of the questions that I was asked during the interview was why I stopped writing on my old blog and moved to a new place. I answered that it chronicled a part of my life which I had become complete with. Hence, I had concluded it and moved on.

In some ways, I am a very different person now. Many things that held true for me then do not hold anymore. That I am here is absolutely not a negation of what I wrote earlier nor of the experiences I had. It only ever means that I am here.

I am writing all this because I know firsthand that once people have formed a particular impression of you, it can be very hard to change that image. I may not identify as queer or straight or whatevergender or Captain Superpants anymore but that does not necessarily mean what I feel has changed. I can still go to Pride (One gets to paint one’s face and yell!) and gatecrash queer potluck parties (Teh delish food!) and invade those top secret meetings (Captain Secretpants!) and no doomtastic organo-synthetic overlord can get in my way.

Most importantly, you can curse all you like but I am definitely not giving back my free toaster.

“The final result was a joint paper by Penrose and myself in 1970, which at last proved that there must have been a big bang singularity provided only that general relativity is correct and the universe contains as much matter as we observe. There was a lot of opposition to our work… However, one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem. So in the end our work became generally accepted and nowadays nearly everyone assumes that the universe started with a big bang singularity. It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe.”

- Stephen Hawking
(Ch. 3, A Brief History Of Time)

My Father’s Glasses

Through jagged little pieces, littler grains and fine dust the sunlight refracts and reflects. A glinting patch of light in a poorly lit room, a kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories.

In faded black and white photographs my father smiles, younger than I have ever seen him. Lanky, sporting a darker moustache and wearing a pair of large thick black framed glasses. Along the years his photographs gain in colour, as his hair slowly loses its own. Looks, physique, clothes change. Those thin plates of glass between his eyes and the world remain as ever.

Along the years photographs record transitions from concave lenses to bifocals. From thick black frames to thin alloy ones. From old black eyes to youthful brown ones. My father’s glasses are a genetic inheritance, now balanced on my nose, only mine are rimless and younger.

Except they are not. They were, until a few moments ago. Now they lay broken. Although clinging tenaciously to humanity through generations, their fragility is intrinsic in basis. A bond lingering on something structurally weak. A physiological weakness that binds through time.

Jagged little pieces, littler grains and fine dust that tell stories of lives and losses, of choice and compulsion, of caution and error, of thoughts and memories, of something old and something new. A kaleidoscope.

They are neatly swept into a dustpan and thrown away.

Like Counting Sheep

(Written a few months ago in Bangalore, forgotten, then found again yesternight.)

She ran her fingers through my hair, caressed my head
She nuzzled against my chest and slept peacefully
I felt as if I had never before known such intimacy
That this was my first experience of human touch
But I knew it to be untrue
It hadn’t been ‘never’, no

I had been held by my parents
And their parents
And my aunts and uncles and cousins
And the next door neighbors

Why is it that as we grow up we grow apart?
We grow to want a different kind of love, different bodies
By which time we have already forgotten being held as children

Now I lie under a blanket
Alone on a queen sized bed
Save for three pillows
One under my head, one on this side and one thrown anywhere at random
I squeeze the second one
It is warm against my body

This body that craves human touch
This brain that may conjure elaborate fantasies
Mostly of romance and affection
To lull me, like counting sheep
To comfort me, a false attempt to satiate that innocuous craving

I drift off to sleep, alone.

This is math: Lesbian Utopia

I came across this math problem in my textbook and couldn’t help but grin. Why, you ask, what is so funny about this problem? Well, you will see in a couple of moments.

“Relation R in the set A of human beings in a town at a particular time is given by:
R = {(x,y) : x is wife of y}
Determine whether the relation is symmetric, transitive and reflexive.”

If you are not familiar with relations in mathematics, here is a super-quick overview. It is very simple, so don’t let those variables scare you! Those of you who know their R’s and F’s may skip right across.

In mathematics, a relation is used to describe certain properties of things. That way, certain things may be connected in some way; this is called a relation. It is clear that things are either related, or they are not. There are no in-betweens.

1. Relations can be symmetric. In a symmetric relation, if a is related to b then b is related to a. One example of a symmetric relation is “is equal to”. If X “is equal  to” Y, then Y “is equal to” X.
2. Relations can be transitive. In a transitive relation, if a is related to b and b is related to c, then a is related to c. One example of a transitive relation is “smaller-than”. If X “is smaller than” Y, and Y is “smaller than” Z, then X “is smaller than” Z.
3. Relations can be reflexive. In a reflexive relation, every element is related to itself. One example of a reflexive relation is “smaller than or equal”. Obviously, any number X is equal to itself, so it satisfies the relation X “is greater than or equal to” X.

A given relation is said to be an equivalence relation if and only if it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive.

(Sources: Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, and my head.)

Let us now solve this problem the monogamous heteronormative way (which is the recommended way of solving if one wishes to pass one’s math exam):

R = {(x,y) : x is wife of y}

• Let Polly be wife of Rolly.
  Then Rolly is the husband of Polly, which obviously implies: Rolly is not wife of Polly.
  Therefore, relation R is not symmetric.
• If Polly is wife of Rolly then Rolly cannot be the spouse of anyone else.
  i.e. Rolly is wife of Molly (some third person) does not hold.
  i.e. Polly is wife of Molly does not hold.
  Hence, the condition “a is related to b and b is related to c, then a is related to c” does not hold true.
  Therefore, relation R is not transitive.
• Polly cannot be married to herself.
  Therefore, relation R is not reflexive.

Let us now switch from this boring monogamous heteronormative point of view to a really, really queer POV of an über-lesbian utopia – where only gay women reside. Some of them are happily (monogamously) married, some are polyamorous… and a few love themselves a tad too much.

R = {(x,y) : x is wife of y}

• Let Polly be wife of Rolly (who, we can safely imagine, is a big hot butch dyke).
  Then Rolly is wife of Polly.
  Hence, relation R is symmetric! (Huzzah!)
• Let Polly be wife of Rolly and Rolly be wife of Molly. (Yay for polyamory! Yay for triads!)
  Then Polly is wife of Molly.
  Hence, relation R is transitive! (Double huzzah!)

[Just to make things a little more interesting in this imaginary lezutopia, let's say marrying oneself was allowed.. Nay, it was mandatory. Ilene Chaiken and her meta-masturbatory opus would be ecstatic.]

• The condition Polly is wife of Polly holds true.
  Hence, relation R is reflexive! (Triple huzzah!)

Thus, we have a very lesbian equivalence relation on our hands!

[Now you know why I am prone to laughing out at odd moments, while lost in thoughts. My mind goes places; you never know just where it might end up. You have been warned.]

How NOT To Clean Out Your Files

The other morning, I was doing physics sums and was stuck at one particularly difficult problem. The required solution was on my pen drive – a Kingston DataTraveler 4 GB. I reached for it into my bag, which is where I usually keep it, but it was missing. I turned the bag inside out, tossed the bed upside down and searched the shelves from top to bottom. The damned thing was nowhere to be found! Then it struck me:

“Hory crap! Did it go through the wash?!”

Horrified, I rushed to the previous night’s laundry hanging out to dry and checked those pockets that belonged to me. The black little pen drive was sitting in the right pocket of my black shorts, looking oh-so-clean and smelling oh-so-fresh. *insert massive facepalm here*

It had endured two hours of grueling machine wash – being rolled around in detergent, rinsed and then heavily spun dry. Obviously, the pertinent question was, “Did it survive?”

Of course, I was not idiotic enough to plug it in straightaway to check if it was still functional. In such cases, water + electricity = Kentucky Fried Circuit! Instead, I turned to the Internet to help me decide upon a plan of action. I ‘researched’ my way through a number of web pages. Of the few ways recommended to dry a washed-out flash drive, I chose the one which suggested putting it in a bowl of uncooked rice. Apparently, rice absorbs moisture very well. (Who knew!) I was afraid to put it in the sun lest the heat damage it. Some enlightened soul had even suggested soaking the device in petrol and shaking it dry. Ha!

So, I went into the kitchen and stuck the pen drive deep inside a packet of Basmati rice. The next morning I took it out. It now smelled like Basmati instead of lavender.

I took it to my cousin, held it up and said, “Dhul gaya.” ["It got washed."]
He looked at me and said, “Kaise?” ["How?"]
“Pocket mein tha.” ["It was in the pocket."]
He laughed a bit. I asked, “Zinda hoga?” ["Would it still be alive?"]
He shook his head and asked if I had plugged it in while still wet.
I replied that I wasn’t that big a moron. He said that his friend was and proceeded to tell me about how his friend, right after dropping his cellphone into a bucketful of water, plugged it into the charger and consequently ended up losing a few thousand bucks over it.
“Chaar ghante dhoop mein rakh do, phir try karna.” ["Put it in the sun for four hours, then try it."]

Though I was pretty sure that twenty-four hours of being buried under Basmati had dried it completely, I left it until evening under room temperature, just to be safe. I did not put it in the sun.

In the evening when my cousin was out, I sneaked a chance on the computer. After sending a couple of emails, I picked up the pen drive, exhaled and plugged it into the USB socket.

“Ting-ding!”

The default Windows 7 tune that greeted it was melody to my ears.

“YES!”

I clicked on “Open folder to view files.” All of them were intact and functional. Immediately, I made a backup of all those files: pictures, music, videos, random stuff I had written and lots of study material.

So, kids, when you forget your flash drives in your butt pockets and let them run through the wash, panic not! Here is what to do:

1. Do NOT plug it in right away (unless you are a complete idiot, in which case, go right ahead and give yourself a pat on the back from me.)
2. Let it dry under room temperature for two days. You might put it in the sun for a few hours but I would advise you against it.
3. Stick it in a bowl of uncooked rice for twenty-four hours. The Internets say that it should absorb the moisture nicely.
4. When you are satisfied that the flash drive has dried sufficiently, pick it up and plug it in. Cross your fingers if you want to, or say a little prayer. Hope it works out for you!

Just putting this out there in case another soul in need wanders by.

Doesn’t this give a whole new meaning to the phrase “cleaning out your files,” though? :D

Changes

Her voice resonates, echoes, reverberates
Between my ears and in my mind
Like a draught through an open window
In the still of a moonless night
Like a phantasma of a forsaken past, lurking
In the shadow of tomorrow’s light
Will she ever retrace her footsteps?
Will I ever again hear her laugh?

I had written this poem a few months ago about.. someone. It almost seems like another lifetime now.

Times change, tides change, the hardest of rocks turn into dust. How can we humans resist change? Modification, evolution, transformation. Change is nature.

“Keep moving
Keep changing
Keep flowing with the sun
Rivers rise
Oceans rise
People rise with the sun”

Today I move out of my uncle and aunt’s place and in with my cousins. These are my last few weeks in Bangalore. Then it is back to New Delhi, back to exams.. and hopefully to a good college after summer.

In case you were wondering, this blog post doesn’t really have a point. I had the chance to sneak away my uncle’s MacBook Pro earlier in the evening. Obviously, I ended up staying awake all night, browsing the web, commenting on a few blog posts, uploading not-so-flattering pictures of myself on twitter, the usual. Now here I am, rambling.

Speaking of blogs, there is a new blogger on the block: Anwesha. Y’all should go check her place out! I think I must be holding on to some really good karma from my past life because she has dedicated a rhyme to me! It’s really sweet of you, Anwesha, and much appreciated. *hugs*

(Song within quotes: Nitin Sawhney – “Sunset“)

New Kicks!

Remember that time when burglars broke in one night and stole all your shoes? No? You probably don’t – because it happened to me.

For my uncle and I, yes, all of them. As for my aunt, she has so many shoes that she couldn’t for her life figure out if some were missing. :-/ We kept our shoes in closets out on the porch and since we live on the third floor in an apartment building with (so-called) security, who woulda thunk that somebody would break in and steal shoes, of all things?

As it turned out those cursed shoe thieves burgled at least six houses on our street. Apparently, stolen shoes have a chor bazaar of their own somewhere around here. Makes sense, since the net worth of shoes stolen from our house itself reaches Rupees 15K-18K.

This happened the very same morning The Unsung Psalm and I had arranged to meet. I showed up wearing my aunt’s flip-flops, which they were kind enough to leave behind.

Over all else, I mourned the loss of those green Converses you can see in my avatar. All I could do was focus on the bright side: new shoes! The other day, I finally went and bought this pair from Adidas:

(clickity to embiggen)

Shiny, aren’t they? Now all that is left to do is convincing Joey to put together a snazzy outfit around them for me. Ain’t that right?! :D

Happy New Year, folks!