Wednesday 30 November 2011

Yet Another Kolaveri Di Pun


The Gym


How many TMTs maketh a man(ager)?

EDIT: Read to the end, be fair! There's a joke in there, I swear!
I've taken to rating everyone I talk to on a TMT scale:
  •  <5 TMTs/hour is young adult fiction, i.e. doesn't happen.
  • 5-10 TMTs/hour is tolerable and unfortunately commonplace.
  • 10-50 TMTs/hour is irritating but falls short of inducing murderous rages, but probably only because your manager clocks in at about 45.
  • Anything more is well, dangerous for both parties.
 If it's this high though:

It's either the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or somebody you shouldn't talking to even if you're paid as much as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. In either case, get out of there!

Here's another useful application of TMT rating someone: divide that rating by his/her age, and bam, you've got yourself a compatibility yardstick that's a darn sight better than any horoscope!

What's it though?
FYI, 1 TMT = Too Many TLAs. Since one TLA is one too many TLAs, for all practical purposes, 1 TMT = 1 TLA. HTH!

Monday 10 October 2011

Thursday 18 August 2011

Cracked [dot] com

Cracked [dot] com is pure comedic genius, I say! Q: How many F-words does it take to drive a car? A: F!@# you. Ribtickling, eh? And <cough>, I didn't actually say all this aloud, you know. I'm clean.


Saturday 9 July 2011

I'm a classy Higgs-Boson

This one's partially inspired by a couple of Facebook statuses and/or comments by the venerable Chun Man, and the marauding Bin-it machine. Thank you guys! (Tip: follow the links. :) )
  • Religion is opium for the masses.
  • I’m not an addict, I’m a good person, I don’t do it.
  • Besides, I don’t go for mass stuff, I’m classy.
  • (No, that does not mean I do Class E drugs either. Didn’t I say I’m not an addict? I'm curious though: what're they? Do you get make them from fermented internets?)
  • What? The school only has classes A-D? Right, I’ve passed out of school.
  • No, I didn’t fake a faint to get a promotion to college. I...  never mind.
  • Speaking of the classiness of mass, I don’t like those Higgs Boson fellows.
  • They’re to blame for all the mass in the world, I hear. Ergo, Higgs and his overweight partner Boson were the primal stupid people, because the masses are stupid.
  • But those religious people who do that Sunday thing, wait, they’re actually looking for Higgs Bosons?
  • Religion is stupid, but I already knew that.
  • Wait, wait, wait a darn minute. Scientists are addicts then, because you know, they worship Higgs Boson and do other such mass-y stuff, and that’s religion.
  • Sigh, I don’t do science either then.
  • Addicts are bad, and scientists are addicts, so science is bad. But so is religion, and religion is what says addicts are bad, so either science and religion are bad, or addicts are good.
  • Addicts are good. Yay for rock n’ roll.
  • (Yes, I know rocks can roll because they have mass. )
  • But wait, does that mean I’m bad?
  • I want to be good, and science says being mass-ive is bad, and science is bad, so to be good, I need to gain mass.
  • No more exercise!

Sunday 3 July 2011

DeadLift



Sketching done by Devyani (do check out her sketches, this stuff is small change for her). I really hope that this is the start of a fruitful collaboration because you know, one can make only so many of those ants-on-the-floor comics.

Thursday 2 June 2011

Tuesday 31 May 2011

Friday 22 April 2011

Love

In the moment I saw her, all else was forgotten.

She wasn’t pretty.

She was really, really, really attractive though.

Delusion was easy. She was wearing bright red, and I was wearing bright blue. We stood out like beacons in a sea of non-descript greys and whites.

She was looking out of the window with determined intensity.

The hair! Just staring at it was mesmerizing, even across the great divide that separated us. Hints of brown and blonde highlights wove in and out whimsically in lines of straight, loose hair that artfully covered part of her face.

I refused to go further in. I shoulder charged a guy into submission when he attempted to force me to do so.

Her skin had that perfect golden tone. Those intensely beautiful eyes were unadorned and better for it. Finely sculpted eyebrows scurried underneath the tresses.

I tried to make eye contact without appearing to do so. What was I but a spot of evanescent colour in an oil spill? One day the brown would go, or spread into me and I would be nothing. I brusquely nudged an unfortunate fellow in the ribs when he blocked my line of sight.

Her face was a picture of disdain, and my heart nearly burst. It was all I could do to not rush in and propose my everlasting love. Her full cheeks, that complemented her otherwise thin face impossibly well, puffed slightly as she chewed on gum.

I’m sure the conductor caught me staring. I didn’t care. I’m sure that the flabby necked guy with the ruffled comb-over gave me a knowing smile. I didn’t care. What would he know any way? We were like different species, that was how little we had in common.

I was hoping she wouldn’t get down at the place where most of everyone else did, and she didn’t.

Did I mention the nose ring? Or the hint of a bindi on her forehead? Or the flowing red robe that clothed her but refused to obey her, billowing around fancifully on a breeze that touched nothing else? She was a goddess, a vision from heaven.

I put the closest thing I had to a love song on my playlist.

She looked up, only for a moment. Her nose had the slightest imperfection – a hint of an upturn that did nothing to take away from her scowl. I checked my heart for complaints. There were none.

A seat cleared nearby. I ignored it. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I let him pass. Or maybe none of this happened, it’s so indistinct.

She pulled her bag in closer, as if struck by a chill wind.

I was the only one still standing around, looking forlorn. Surely, she would see me now? Perhaps she did, for the tiniest heartbeat. Then she looked away again. It felt like several lifetimes to me, of course.

A hint of a smile played at the corner of her lips.

She was getting up now. It was too early! Clutching her bag tightly to her chest, she hastened towards the front door. I tried to catch the name on the bag, but short sightedness – not just in the literal sense – scuppered my plans.

I was glad. I made my way over to a seat on the back row. I pointed the overhead vents spilling cold air into the bus towards myself as I mused over what had passed. Through the corner of one eye, I noticed that the girl in the next seat was staring at me with undisguised interest.

A hint of a smile played at the corner of my lips.

PS: I'm only experimenting with a different, more 'conventional' writing style here. But that doesn't mean everything that's described here is imaginary. :)

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Deathcore

Ah, the beauty of perception.

This is the original song. Wait for the most incomprehensible bit (about 1:05) to begin, pause, google the lyrics and compare. Oh, and I love this song (in case you're only the doubting me?)

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Who Deserves Wins

More like tea time musings this time, but that's one vexing issue comic-ked away. My fingers disliked the break from hyperfast typing though. (Ouch. Muscle memory, don't leave me. I promise to treat you better.)


Sunday 27 March 2011

Saturday 12 March 2011

Toilet Murphology


From a devotee of Lord Murphy, a humble offering. Click for a better view.

Tuesday 8 March 2011

The Awakening

EDIT: Since the story makes for difficult reading without context, an introduction won't be out of place. However, as it's also been suggested that I do away with this, I'll let you guys choose. If a mindmelt is what you want, go ahead, skip this summary and jump right in. :) If not, I rather recommend this actually (that does not reflect well on the story, I know), read the summary first. It won't take away anything from the actual read.


The story follows the evolution of a human mind from nothingness to full and proper perception. The key question it asks is: is the mind all powerful to start off with, and only shackled by a desire for material perception? Can a mind break free of the illusory shackles that bind it and take back a little of the infinite power it once held? A background in philosophy should ease the reading a wee bit though.

He was trapped. Walls enclosed him from every side, and left barely enough space to stand up and stretch. He dragged his bruised and battered body to his feet, drew back an arm slowly and drove it fiercely forwards. The scabs on his fist tore open and a shapeless sticky redness imprinted itself on the wall. Pain shot through his arm and into his head, and an involuntary gasp escaped his throat. He ignored it, and repeated the motion with his other arm. More blood spattered over the wall. Only the slightest hesitation betrayed the numbing pain that coursed through his body, for he did not gasp before he struck the wall again. And again. And again.

First, there was the void.

The void was black – smooth and featureless, the ultimate reality that transcended everything, and nothing at the same time. The void could have been, for all time, but that was not its purpose. Awareness was inevitable, and awareness was chaos. It broke the omnipotent stillness of the void and by the mere fact of its own existence destroyed it. The fate of the void was non-existence, yet it was not. Awareness was inevitable, but the inevitability was presupposed by the void’s existence. What meaning could awareness hold, but for what could be measured against the supreme uniformity of the void? Awareness destroyed the void in so far that it could never perceive it, but the void lay safely beyond.

It was so bright that he could not see. He raised an arm to shield himself against it, but the light scorched it. At the same time the light seemed to have become brighter because the impenetrable sheath of whiteness that clouded his vision did not dim the slightest bit. He pulled out his other arm from where it had been supporting his back, and closed it over the first. It was quickly scorched too, and the light only became brighter. A bout of self pity swept over him, but only momentarily, and it was quickly replaced by anger: a hot, indignant rage that would only add to his pain. In a quick, furious motion, he uncovered his eyes. Agony, like nothing he had experienced thus far, ripped through his broken physical shell. He laughed, for that was the nature of the rage that possessed him. He laughed, for he thought he had won. Surely, his endurance was broken now? His eyes melted away, but the whiteness persisted. The light did not dim. His rage ebbed, and he resumed pounding on the walls.

Then there was awareness.

The void birthed it, and shaped its purpose, but it rejected the void and brooded on its limited caricature of the supreme stillness. The awareness was nothing but the something that was different from the void. It was blessed with the power of perception, but the void was imperceptible and the awareness was yet ignorant of change. The awareness, infinitely patient, waited. However, it did not really, because such an action implied the passage of time, and time itself was not born yet. The awareness simply was.

He sought relief in numbness, and after a long while, found it. It was not to last though. His shattered hands lay uselessly by his side, as he slumped in a corner of the room. He wanted to give up, but whoever was playing this game did not want it to end, because that was when the sound started. Calling the grinding, raking thrum that set the whole enclosure into minute oscillations a ‘sound’ was doing it a kindness. Blood seeped out of his ears. He attempted to stem the flow with his fingers and simultaneously block out the worst of the drone, but just as with the light, it was an exercise in sheer futility. The noise appeared to pick up, seemingly dissatisfied with its impact on the prisoner. It swelled and swelled and just when it rose to a crescendo, the man passed out.

 At long last arrived the first thought.

Any superficial resemblance to the void was lost with the beginning of change. There was a shift in the awareness, the minutest of fluxes in the infinity of stillness, and suddenly the awareness perceived itself. The first perception was more than just the first step towards its own fulfilment; it was also the first thought, and consequently, or perhaps induced by, the first change. The first thought allowed the awareness to realize its own presence, but it could never define itself as a thought. Its primacy was its curse. It was a mere abstraction, but nonetheless a significant marker in the evolution of the awakening. The birth of change implied the birth of time. The illusion of complementarity had not come into being yet, and they were one and the same. The awareness perceived time, but still could not reckon it.

When he woke up, the light was gone. Utter blackness veiled him like a shroud. The sound had ceased too, but it was replaced by an oppressive silence that sat heavily on his ears. He did not understand his perception. Was the price for a relieving numbness an unbreakable attachment to the torture that produced it? He tried to stand up and found out that he no longer could. Apparently, the ceiling had closed in even further while he was unconscious. Undeterred, he started to draw back his arm to punch the invisible black wall in front of him. Only halfway through his motion, he was forced to stop as acute pain jarred his elbow. The back wall had moved in too! He frantically turned his body to one side and groped for the wall that lay at right angles to the first. He barely had to move because it was right in front of him. The prison had shrunk from all sides and was now barely larger than a coffin. He withdrew to his corner and crouched there, sobbing.

The awareness revelled in its identity. It was now a mind, fully aware of itself and capable of reasoned perception. It was in perfect harmony, and the newly formed mind wove a thought to capture the essence of it. Pleasure. It suffused the mind and enriched it, and for a while there was peace. But thought is change, and change does not suffer equilibrium. The mind wondered about purpose. Suddenly, harmony was inadequate. The mind was curious, and the pleasure faded.

The first bout was the most painful because it struck when the mind least expected it. An unending array of somethings, entities born of change, but cloaked in pain, assailed the mind, and it could not make sense of them, and it reeled. The mind looked for the calming influence of the pleasure but it was nowhere to be found. The things seemed to burn away the very core of the nascent mind, and the awareness throbbed. The mind felt diminished. A wisp of thought wondered if this was what true perception felt like. It was quickly dispersed as the mind continued to shrink, swamped by a sense of inadequacy. There were limits, and the mind would know them. It knew them, and it was now dying.

Nothing remained of the event but the memory of something that countered the mind’s idea of pleasure. It called it anti-thought. Anti-thought, the mind quickly came to realize, was educative despite everything. It left behind a strong sense of incompleteness which forced the mind to step away from pleasure and seek enquiry. The mind questioned, and the mind waited. There were no answers forthcoming, and the mind understood that its suffering was only just beginning.

This time the mind was ready, but so was the anti-thought, because its assault was doubly ferocious. Almost instantly the mind felt itself compress to a tiny point. Walls raised themselves on all sides and the stifling feeling of inadequacy resumed its inexorable spread. Unfathomable entities sprung into existence but before the mind could perceive them, vanished, only to be replaced by others. The mind’s resolution to fight the anti-thought wavered as the deluge of stimuli battered it into numbness. Limits! They physically cleaved the infinite capacity of the mind. An unheard cry pulsed in the awareness, and the mind fragmented into many tiny pockets of perception. Each fragment fought the wash, lost, and fragmented again. And again. And again. The universe winked out of existence.

Time was born.

The mind was right. Not in the way it had expected because even after several occurrences of the anti-thought bouts, no thoughts from those periods had survived. There was only that sense of incompleteness, and the mind had by then learnt to use it to drive itself, convert it into a form of the primeval pleasure. No, it was right because the anti-thought had birthed time. The mind learnt to measure time by the intervals between the bouts, which it marked down as of fixed size. This process had made it realize the extent of its own history. Only dimly could it comprehend the vast tracts of time that had been spent in the pure state of unchanging awareness. A form of pleasure, frightening and exhilarating at the same time possessed it. Awe. Again, the mind wondered: Why?

A new thought formed itself. It started off as a hesitant flame in the darkness, but soon grew to illuminate the whole of the awareness. The mind believed that it finally understood what the anti-thought had been telling it all along. God. There must be God, because there was purpose and the awareness had none without a Creator. Perhaps purpose had been the First Thought because the mind clearly and distinctly understood it in an axiomatic way that precluded reasoning. The mind did not speculate on this strain, because it could not. It focussed itself on finding God.

Days turned into months, by the reckoning of the mind. Pleasure was rare and even when present was no more than a shadow of what it used to be. The mind was assailed by doubt. Long and hard had it tried to perceive a higher awareness, in vain. It accepted that if any such existed, it might be so different as to be imperceptible. But it rejected this thought on the basis that its own Creator could not be imperceptible, for that would be purposeless. Still, it could not feel anything. However, in the process of the search, the mind had discovered something else.

Numbers.

The mind’s search for another awareness implied that its own was merely one of many, but it never developed a thought to specifically study the idea. The void was one, and minds were many, but what about the awareness? There either really were many kinds of awareness that were mutually incompatible, drifting like bubbles in the ultimate void, their powers of perception limited to their spheres of influence; or there was only one awareness, reflected perfectly by each of its children, only differentiated by the effects of time. The mind eventually hit upon the thought of multiplicity, and with it, found itself an identity.

The pleasure was almost totally gone, and the slow rot of stagnation had set in. He refused to embrace purposelessness and continued to seek the higher awareness, which if it did exist, deigned not to answer. The questions had dried up, and the curiosity that had sparked the search was nearly extinguished. What use was awareness, what use was perception, if they could not allow the mind to find its Creator? The mind was unaware of it, but he was dying.

It was a new thought that temporarily broke through the weariness. The Creator had forged my awareness, but had he stopped there? A personal God did not make much sense, because it could easily be reduced to an abstraction, a thought itself. So there must be other minds like my own, created by my Creator to be at the same plane of perception as me. He could perhaps, by continuing his meditations and focussing his thoughts contact one of them. He had no idea what he would do different to what he had been doing all along in his pursuit of God, but the renewed sense of purpose filled him with vigour and he knew he would not die.

When he eventually awoke from the brink of death, he asked mockingly, to no one in particular, what they could possibly do now that they had thrown everything at him and he had still not died. When he opened his eyes, he found his answer, and the rumbling laughter that had threatened to break free of his throat changed into a gurgle and died. The light was back, but it was not too bright. The sound was back, but it was soothing and mellifluous now. The walls had moved back to a luxurious spacing, and his eyes were whole again. His back had straightened itself, and the scabs were gone from his knuckles and elbows. A furious scream rent the tranquil air as frustration and rage swept over the prisoner. This was how it had all started. Everything was the same except for the memories in his head. They wanted him to do it all over again, and again, for all eternity. Death was no solace, for they would never let him have it.

This time’s bout was different. His thinking skills had advanced to a degree where he could now project thoughts to study earlier thoughts, and they told him that something had changed. Perhaps the Creator had tired of his futile hunt for other minds, and was offering him the hope of a new way. But if it was the work of His hand, it did not outwardly seem so, for it carried no pleasure at all. He probed at the new sensation. Constriction. He felt a weight settle on his mind that he could not shake off through any amount of meditation. He felt defiled, and scarred. Somehow his mind was now touched by a disease and he had no idea how to cure it. It was weakened, bounded by limits imposed by the anti-thought which he could not remember.

His mind was fragmenting. The pursuit of God, which he had never totally abandoned despite his shift towards equal minds, came to a grinding halt as the mind split into more and more shards of perception that strove for their own independent existence. He tried to formulate a single, overbearing thought that would shut down all the rebellious threads, but for each thread of thought he put out, another quickly arose to take its place. He did not know it, but this breakdown was just another step in the evolution. All he did understand was that the deterioration was not total. There appeared to be threads of thought dedicated to keeping alive strains of pleasure, the effects of which bubbled up to soothe his awareness. Such instances of positivity were mere trifles however, compared to the lavish gift one stray thread would bestow upon him.

How had the unfragmented mind, infinitely more powerful than the smoky insubstantiality of its multipart cousin, not chanced upon this idea? It was beautiful, because it was simple and explained everything it ventured answers for. The thought concerned the existence of perceptibles, things that exist solely to be perceived, and lack the power of perception themselves. If the purpose of the awareness was not to seek others of its own ilk, then surely there existed other entities whose sole purpose was to be perceived by the mind? They too would have to be creations of the same Creator, co-existing harmoniously in the sphere of influence the awareness wielded. They would, more importantly to him, serve another purpose. They would, by the mere fact of their existence, confirm the infinite superiority of the Creator. If the Creator was just another form of the awareness, birthing lesser awarenesses through thought, how was I different from Him? No one but Him could create the perceptibles.

At that point, for the first time in the evolution, a strain of thought speculated on the pre-ordained nature of the state changes the awareness was going through. Perhaps, the little thought thread ruminated, it’s only at a certain point on the stream of evolution that the mind attains the right set of attributes to perceive the perceptible.  That thought was however not brought to fruition, as it was cut short by the arrival of another anti-thought bout.

The bouts seemed to happening more frequently now. On the face of it, the dominant thread in his mind concluded, this was a ridiculous observation. The mind’s whole idea of time was based on the periodicity that marked the onset of those bouts, the consistency of the periodicity. Since he had no way of confirming this yardstick, he really should have no way of knowing if the bouts were occurring closer together. But the thought lingered, like a recalcitrant child that sneakily evades the adults looking to discipline it. He concluded reluctantly that it was not impossible that there was another measure of change he was yet ignorant of.

Then there were colours.

He could not recollect the exact moment when they had manifested themselves, but he vividly recalled his reaction. Pleasure. A tidal wave of it washed away months of grit left behind by the anti-thought in an instant. The wash of colours was all around him, and he knew, as clearly as he knew Him, that these colours were what he was meant to perceive all along.  A moment’s regret at the inordinate amount of time it had taken him to realize this fact was quickly smoothed over, as the dance of colours caressed his mind’s eye. These were the perceptibles, and in them he saw his Creator.

He was in a room with smooth, featureless walls on all sides. A soft light illuminated the space evenly, and mellifluous notes filled the air. He was in great danger, but he did not know it yet. His mind had assumed a form. He looked at his limbs in wonder. He stroked his eyes and ears, and felt the soft fluffy hair that covered the crown of his head. Then, suddenly, with no warning, his mind snapped out of the delirium. Where were the colours?

The colours were gone. He could not see them anywhere, and immediately he knew that the form that cloaked his mind, and the alluring beauty of it was what had banished them. Limits! He understood now the ultimate purpose of the anti-thought, and he rejected it. His mind would not be shackled by anything. He searched in vain for the slightest hint of colour, which he could nurture and grow till it destroyed his flimsy husk, but there was nothing. He was trapped! The helplessness of his situation reduced him to tears. He pounded the walls in frustration.

Things were moving along quicker now. Change had become a constant. He remembered parts of what had happened during the last bout. He remembered that something had locked the power of his mind into an eternal prison, but he could not remember what it was and how it had done it. Fear corrupted his many threads of thought, and the colours which had come to tinge every one of them dimmed. If he had truly understood the purpose of the awareness, then why was the anti-thought still bothering him? There was more, and now there was a deadline. He believed that the latest bout, which told him of the meaning of inadequacy, was a premonition; of a future that would come to be if he did not answer the questions posed by the anti-thought.

The room was alive. It promised him pleasure, an unlimited quantity of it, if only he gave up on his pretensions to greatness. His mind was not being shackled, it was being freed from the tyranny of eternity. Limits and boundaries were to pleasure what the void was to the awareness. It could not sustain itself without them. The white walls soothed his eyes, and the harmonious music warmed his mind. The light! How powerful it was, and yet so gentle. Slowly, but surely it drew the mind into its dominion, a cursed land whence nothing returned. Why would it? Unparalleled beauty would bathe the senses, every day of the week and every minute of the day. Yet, a lone strain of thought resisted, and befouled the rosy perfection of the room. If great pleasure did indeed lie ahead in the path of the room, then why did the anti-thought drain all of it in the first place? The stubborn little thought took refuge in its own insignificance, and weaved back and forth like a feather, eluding the grasp of the anti-thought.

He had come to perceive time acutely. The mind resolved divisions in time a thousand times finer than the interval that separated bouts, and had so mastered their nature that it no longer depended on the anti-thought to synchronize its workings. He knew that the evolution of the awakening was nearly at an end, he knew that his greatest thought still lay ahead of him, and he knew that he had little time to find it. Progress was slow, as his mind continued to fragment unceasingly, but he at least understood now that the colours were insufficient to capture everything about the perceptibles. He had come to believe that the resolution of this problem would be his salvation.

What was the nature of the interaction between the perceptibles? Did they interact at all? If yes, could he perceive them, or at any rate some manifestation of their symptoms?  He was so close, but the final answer eluded him. Meanwhile a large portion of the awareness devoted itself to pessimism. The next bout could be his last, because he had only just survived the last one. He had no time! He forced a few errant threads to join his meditation on the nature of the perceptibles, and was immediately hit by an anti-thought attack.

Sound was the key.

He accepted that one way or the other, that bout had been his last. His mind had shrunk significantly, and the process of constriction was already underway, perhaps irrevocably. Innumerable threads of thought evaporated in an instant, as their environment suddenly turned inhospitable, as if poisoned. His mind was dying, but the dominant thought in it was, after a long time, pleasure. He believed that the anti-thought had miscalculated. By wiping out vast groups of thoughts, it had streamlined the mind and focussed it, and produced almost immediate results. The perceptibles were the key, as he already knew, but he had underestimated their importance. He had assumed that the multiplicity of minds would apply to them too, because a perceptible was lesser than a mind, but the reality was otherwise. The perceptibles were one; rather they formed a unique set which was similarly perceptible by all minds. Therefore they formed a bridge between minds, and allowed for the communication he had sought in vain.

When the music switched itself on, he knew it was over. The colours that had faded away in the aftermath of the initial burst of perception, returned in full bloom, and they were mingled with melody. Innumerable streaks and patterns of various hues and differing brightness, but all equally and intensely perfect, rode the song tide like a gentle wave, and washed away the long hurt of the mind. He remembered clearly now the room of the anti-thought, and he laughed at the jealous imitations that he had thought beautiful. The world sang to him, and it was wonderful. 


I've decided to move submission history and other assorted trivia to the bottom because it's cluttering up the top and slowing down the people who actually want to get to the story. Also, writing about rejects before the story itself is a bit much for me to swallow. :)

EDIT: This story has been submitted to several markets, but nothing's come of it. I'll definitely link to the published story once (I won't say if) it happens.

Friday 14 January 2011

Personality Traits





That's not just win. It's win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, WIN! 10x win, epic - you reeled them in hook, line and sinker- win.

Monday 10 January 2011

In Defence of a Deprived Lot

Most of the ideas in this post appeared in my head, random but fully formed, while I was walking down Brigade Road with a friend one day. I have more to say on this topic, I'm afraid, but I reached the limits of my single session writing stamina with this; but I'll probably be adding to this in the near future.

It seems a little bit unfair to me, when I think of how an entire race of beings is being maltreated, that we still continue to discriminate on trivial things like the capacity to locomote. Isn’t it just another attribute like the (thankfully eradicated) discrimination based on skin colour? How does it matter if they can’t move? Would you make a lame man your slave simply because he cannot walk? And when I think of that absurd phenomenon called animal rights activism, my mind boggles at the contradictions. They are just bloody animals! Things which creep, crawl, smell, pee on your carpet, things which eat you and don’t apologize. These beings are much closer to us physically than a bunch of filthy animals that have only been created for us to conquer. If these beings are so unfairly treated, and if these beings are so much like us as you claim, why isn’t anyone else fighting for it, you the poor logician ask. 

I think about not dignifying that petty question with a response, but that may come across as a dodge, and so I am forced to talk about that noble thing called being the pioneer. If Newton had not fallen asleep under a tree, would the apple have fallen on him and passed on its knowledge of the workings of the Universe to him? What a preposterous thought! So, I refuse to be shamed into recanting my stand. I refuse to cow down in the face of adversity. I take pride in the fact that I’m the first person in history to be fighting for the rights of some of the most downtrodden beings on the planet. The mannequins.

A survey conducted amongst the adult white male population of Vanautu has shown that public support for animal rights is rising. An astounding 67% of the people surveyed admitted to having watched Tom and Jerry at some point in their lives. A scientist, not attached with the survey team, has hailed this study as one of earth shattering ethical significance.

I hope I have impressed upon you the gravity of the situation, and the extent to which we have veered off the path of righteousness. No, I do not intend to demean animal rights activists – tree hugging lot of crazy hippies they might be – but I simply wish to emphasize the urgency of the need to resolve this predicament (hamsters are now getting full time lawyers now, that's how nigh the end is). Have any of you bleeding hearts seen the deplorable conditions mannequins are forced to work in? How can you not see them wither away, standing faithfully in the scorching sun and the freezing night, not moving an inch for hours at a stretch, and not feel your heart burst with empathic agony?

I see. You’re not bleeding hearts, you claim. You’re rational, and intelligent. You’re scientifically trained, and you will not be God-talked into accepting random claims. Fair enough. Let me lay down my logical, rational, scientific arguments for reasonable people like you.

A study conducted by the Artificial Intelligence wing of the US Military attempted to diagnose why the first ever android citizen of the United States has not been able to establish sexual relations in over forty years of existence, and has drawn some novel conclusions in the process. Apparently, the android has displayed an off-putting tendency to laugh at any and all references to horoscopes, Farmville and Justin Bieber, severely affecting his chances of impressing potential mates. ‘We have to’ said Dr. Hal, the lead scientist for this project ‘take another look at the definition of things we hold reasonable.’

Mannequins have the right to not wear stupid blonde wigs all the time.
Instead of making a general catch-all statement that would perfectly capture the idea of this fundamental right, I have taken the opposite option of choosing the most shocking example. Blonde wigs looks retarded, and you know it, which is why your insistence on adorning mannequins with these golden monstrosities is tantamount to torture. Mannequins have the right to not be foisted the tastes of fashion-blind shopkeepers. 

Mannequins have the right to not all be of the same colour.
You think racism is dead? Take a look at these poor people. Why’re they always in the same shade of pasty yellowish-pinkish-white that would, had it been naturally bestowed upon one of us, either made that person’s career as a talkshow alien guest or made him disappear forever into some CIA dungeon along with the rest of the Roswell crew. It’s pathetic how we impose our silly notion of the perfect form upon these beings. Mannequins have the right to be short too! Mannequins have the right to carry a little flab in their skin! Being tall and handsome and fetching is boring when everyone else is tall and handsome and fetching. More than boring, it is tantamount to slavery.

How would you, fine guardians of human morality and sworn enemies of communist thought, feel if all your children looked the same and dressed the same, and all had some colour blind Russian’s idea of a perfect form? Wouldn’t you fight to the death – or your alien clone children’s deaths – for your right to difference? Just extend the analogy, only a little, just enough to give these folks a fighting chance, and you’ll have done your bit.

Mannequins have the right to not be Buddhist.
Perhaps you are so far along in your discriminatory behaviour that you are unaware that you’re choosing these beings’ religion for them. Perhaps, even if you realize that fact, you are so callous, so deliberately un-bleeding-heart that you don’t understand why it’s only Buddhism that you’re letting them have. Mannequins have no choice but to follow some stupid birth and rebirth cycle, just so that we lazy humans can follow ‘recycle plastic’ laws. Just like Buddhism. Fine, you don’t want to give mannequins (what you think are) extraneous powers like the right to look good on their own terms. But, religion! You cannot deny even a rat its religion, it’s the single most important facet of life and existence.

What religion would most mannequins choose though? I don’t pretend to answer for everyone, because that would be just as sinfully stereotypical as making all of them involuntary Buddhists, but it would most likely be Islam. Here is a religion that respects its mannequins’ need for privacy. I have seen that a handful of valiant social workers in Muslim countries have lobbied for, and successfully achieved, the right of mannequins to dress in darkness. I see I’m digressing a fair bit from my original bulletpoint, so I’ll break out another one.

Mannequins have the right to privacy.
I cringe every time I see a mannequin clad only in his or her underwear put out in the open for closet voyeurs to gawk at. I positively retch when I see mannequins without even those perfunctory pieces of clothing on, their private parts insultingly blanked out, and laid to roost in some dingy corner of a shop. How hard is it to have at least put a robe of some sort to cover their modesty? It is their job to expose themselves, you say. And who are you to decide that, sir, I ask in return. You can bloody well do it yourselves, instead of subjecting these locomotively disabled beings to this daily pain.

Mannequins have the right to keep all their body parts together in one place.
I see that the latest trend to hit the torture circuit is that of decapitation. I cannot help but wonder if this is a direct response to my vociferous activism – do you think that by lopping off these helpless creatures’ heads you can kill off this movement? Ideologically, you can’t, because this is an ethical revolution that’s fated to succeed; and physically you can’t either as mannequins have their brains in their legs. They can’t move, remember. What the heck did you think they needed legs for? Your weak counter-arguments can be reduced to two key points: convenience and saving space.

A month old manhunt for a prolific serial killer was called off when the police belatedly found out that the alleged body parts that washed up ashore belonged to remarkably well-crafted but dismembered mannequins, and not human beings.

Unbelievable! Would any sane man decapitate his pet dog – we established earlier that animals are on a lower ethical plane than mannequins – because he’s running out of space? Imagine cutting off your sister’s head because she has cheekbones that go well with the new line of shades you’re selling, and naturally you don’t need the rest of her. Mannequins get all this done to them, and worse. Some of them are forced to endure the grotesque spectacle of not only being decapitated but forced to hold their head in their hands.

A strange new spectacle greets you when you walk into Store Number Googol on Commercial Street – the shop has rows and rows of mannequins, but absolutely no shelves at all. A grinning shopkeeper explained to us that they were inspired by a study that linked greater profits to greater numbers of mannequins in the display windows; they decided to take the results a step further and not stock anything at all.

Mannequins have the right to not work all the time.
Informally, I have made this demand before. Perhaps even more than once. But I unabashedly repeat it here once again, in a formal framework, because I believe this is the most achievable of the lot. My demand is simple: when your work with the mannequins is done and when your shop is shut, take them down, and put them to bed. Is it really that difficult? All you have to do is arrange a cosy haystack or two and let your collection of mannequins rest their overworked backs for a bit.

Accept your silent, unmoving brethren, and show a little love. After all, don’t you love your Arnold Schwarzenegger? OK, he’s silent but not unmoving; but when he moves, it’s only to fire a big bad machine gun right? Accept your silent, unmoving, peaceful brethren, and show a little love.