It’s the end of an era, I guess. My trademark is no more. I’m serious. It’s gone. My built-in cat-toy… my man-leash…—whatever you want to call that strange braided patch of long hair that I have had for what? Fifteen years?—met its fate with a pair of scissors on Sunday, March 23, 2008.
Seeing that I had shaved my beard some two weeks before that, I guess it is going to be a lot more difficult to do self portraits now (see Exhibit A).
Oh well.
… but I’ve been enjoying this too much to not point it out for people who aren’t following what goes on in the Nine Inch Nails world. Reminds me of the kind of stuff that John would probably do….
Oh, and if anyone wants to buy me the $75 version available from Artists in Residence, my Indian bank account and I won’t argue….
There are times when India really makes me laugh….
… I mean, other than things like watching Bollywood videos where it seems like people are always going through weird mating rituals replete with bright costumes, head bobbing, and peculiar synchronized dancing….
… or like the time that a student asked me to download a song for him. “There is this Hindi song, Hum Honge Kaamyab,” he said, “and it has been remade into an English song called ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Can you see if you can download it for us to play at next week’s cultural event?”
“Sure,” I said, deciding not to correct him. “I’ll see what I can do.”
But I couldn’t help sharing the story with someone else.
“No. You’re wrong,” they told me. “Of course it’s a Hindi song.”
“How do you know for sure?” I asked.
“Because we have a version of it in all our local languages.”
Pete Seeger, you’d better relinquish your copyright….
Anyway, this post isn’t about “We Shall Overcome,” but, there is some happy “overcoming” in this story. This post is about the mithun—and animal whose appearance “gave endless hopes to the people and fulfilled their aspirations.” The following is the text of a story, The Birth of Mithun. Because the text is a little too funny to be believable, I’ve also included a scan of the three pages from the book as proof that, unlike my claim that We Shall Overcome is an English song, this isn’t something I’ve made up in my spare time.
What an interesting morning. We all woke up very well-rested from our comfortable business hotel, but nevertheless, were dissatisfied with the pricing, location, and so on. We were most dissatisfied by their treatment of our driver, however. They wouldn’t provide a room for him (most hotels make some form of accommodations for drivers) and when he asked for a blanket so he could sleep in his car, they wouldn’t give him one! Since they hadn’t confirmed us for two nights anyway, we decided to open up our options.
Henny went to Amy, and speaking in part for Karin, but I think more for herself, said she wanted to stay somewhere nice for this, our last night of traveling. She put out a very luxurious budget that had Raj scratching his head in confusion. Raj was even more confused when we finally settled on our hotel for the night: The Imperial. Well, with a name like that….
Good roads really do make a difference. The drive from Jaipur to Delhi was totally painless and quick. However, it seemed to be very disconcerting to Henny, who really didn’t like all the big trucks. She actually said at one point how terrible it was, and how she would much rather take the small bumpy roads than this highway with all these 16-wheelers…. I can’t quite figure out where this emotion is coming from….
We first checked in to our hotel, which, while very nice in terms of cleanliness and modern-ness and whatever-else-ness, was really inconveniently located far away from central Delhi. Essentially, it was a business/conference hotel—located close to the airport and catering to those types of customers. But what can be done, right?
Henny wanted to know the whole time in Jaipur, how can people who built these impressive forts and who were so smart still be taken over in battle? I don’t think I was paying enough attention to the guides or reading enough of the stuff at the sites we visited to find out, but they did really build some pretty impressive forts.
The first place we went today was all the way up a meandering road up into the mountains. From there, we could get some beautiful views of the city—that is if the city weren’t obscured by the pollution below. Raj tried to point out where our hotel was—and I nodded confirmation though I couldn’t really tell buildings apart too much when covered in the haze of grey.
I still like hardcore…
Although, I guess that by posting this here for free, maybe I’m now giving away my hardcore soul. Hmm. Not sure.
Anyway, here are two cool hardcore comps: Give Me Back and Toxic Waste on Yer Plate. The first is from an LP put out by Ebullition, and was one of the first records that got me into the hardcore scene way back when. The second is from some tape I got from (I think) Green Earth Tapes or something like that and had lots of cool crusty/pogo stuff to listen to. (Read on for the downloads….) Read More »