zigzackly's omnium-gatherum *
Like you haven't had enough of us already..
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older photographs,
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Picassa album,
Facebook profile,
Ryze page,
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LinkedIn page,
published articles.
Guest bloggers:
Hurree and Annie
Reactions, suggestions, any kind of feedback is always welcome.
CollaBlogs infested:
Jugalbandi;
Caferati's blog;
blogolepsy;
indi³;
We, the Media;
Son of CSF.
Now and then, when Hurree needs a holiday, i pinch-hit at Kitabkhana.
And of course, the wonderful World Wide Help group blogs, which include:
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog and TsunamiHelp Wiki |
MumbaiHelp |
Cloudburst Mumbai |
KatrinaHelp Blog and Wiki |
RitaHelp |
South Asia Quake Help |
Site feed: Atom or Feedburner.
We endorse, approve of, and throughly adore:
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Annie
Megha
Calvin and Hobbes
Frazz
The funniest page on the web
Luciferous Logolepsy
Wired
Google News
Books at the Guardian
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List of Bests
Word Spy
Literary Encyclopedia
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The Village Voice has a couple of interesting pieces up. One is on lit blogging and the other looks at the effects of blogging on academia. Too sleepy to comment now. You do it, okay?
The Huffington Post isn't here yet. But it's got the Guardian writing about it.
Blogs, or online weblogs, in which opinions and reports are posted on the internet for everyone to read, are to get a dose of celebrity.
Arianna Huffington, commentator, one-time Republican and candidate for governor of California, has recruited a bevy of close friends to create an über-blog that will offer a round-the-clock commentary on our life and times.
Norman Mailer, David Mamet, Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Walter Cronkite, Gwyneth Paltrow, Harold Evans and Tina Brown are just a few of the 250-plus names recruited.
Have you seen the this page full of India's superheroes? It includes TV-only characters like Captain Vyom (it's Milind Soman, girls) and the hairpiece. Seems pretty comprehensive, and you'll find links to a couple of comic book sites. DOn't see Bahadur, though. And speaking for ourselves, we think that the Phantom and Mandrake should be regarded as honorary Indian comic book characters. What say, people?
Mainstream Media, that is. BusinessWeek's May edition has blogging as the cover story, and they've even started their own blog on blogs, Blogspotting.net.
And closer to home, still haven't seen the India Today story on bloggers that everyone else is talking about, but we're told that a blogger not unfamilar to you gets a passing mention, which you'll miss in the buzz about our more illustrious pals, and the news that Hurree's been unmasked. Oh well. It was good run, and it was bound to happen, old
Update: Amit Varma just mailed in a couple of links. This one's got Henry Copeland's take on BusinessWeek covers in general and that one in particular. And this is The Economist on Murdoch's views on the end of journalism as we know it.
What do Arundhati Subramaniam, Shobhaa De, Anurag Kashyap, Rachel Dwyer and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni have in common with your humble host? Nope, it's not gleaming, long hair. Mr Kashyap's tresses are, perhaps, luminous, but they're not long. You'll have to go here to read all about it. (Awright. It's just Zig on Blogs and the Writer.)
[Note: that site requires registration. And demands it via an incredibly nosey form that wants to know everything about you, with the possible exception of your credit card number, and that we imagine was an oversight. Really now, Jerry.]
[Note to previous note: You have heard of BugMeNot, haven't you?]
As if Samit-who-doesn't-like-being-called-precocious-so-we'll-just-call-him-young-Samit wasn't enough to give us inferiority complexes (to go with our multiple personalities and/or delusions of plurality) about our inability to write anything beyond bite-sized blogpposts at our advanced age, an even younger brat-pal, just out of her teens, forsooth, young Priyanka, has these three wonderful posts about growing up, leaving the familiar and heading off into the wild unknown.
...does it again:
Ei Babli shon na Babli be my labhar Babliread on. We're laughing too hard to comment.
Ei Babli oi oi Babli tell your phathar Babli
Fiddle uith my choshma Babli
Tickle my phat goph
Bhun day bhen youre legal Babli
Bhe two musht elope
The New York Times takes a look at what the writer calls The Man Date:
Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie 'Friday Night Lights' is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.The article goes on to describe a lot of the dos and don'ts: beer or hard liquor or a glass of wine okay, splitting a bottle of wine dicey; steak or meat-dominated meal great, cooking for another guy (unless its a grill), or candle-lit dinner, nope; going dutch is best. (To which we say, we don't care what we drink; we'll eat anything that doesn't have capsicum in it; and if you insist on paying, we won't sulk.)
Oh yes. Here's the good part.
All men, however, agree that one rule of guy-meets-guy time is inviolable: if a woman enters the picture, a man can drop his buddies, last minute, no questions asked.We men are such reasonable chaps. 'Enry 'Iggins would approve.
Finally, thanks to the Wikipedia, we managed to find the source of those wonderful error message haiku we've blogged about in the past. They originate in a Salon Challenge way back in the nineties, where they invited readers to submit three error messages written as haiku poems. And presented this as an example:
Something you enteredYou can read the results of the contest here.
transcended parameters.
So much is unknown.
P.S. For a counter view on this, you must read Paul H Henry's A Call for the Complete Elimination of Joke Haiku Production on the Internet.
Nice idea, YaGoohoo!gle. (Thank goodness it doesn't include MSN search too!) Though we're wondering how long it will last before the trademark lawyers pounce.
was born on the 2nd April, 1805, and as Nilanjana S Roy says, "This year will be full of tributes to Hans Christian Andersen, from Tina Turner concerts to symphonic performances of fairy tales, readings and the rest." Hers is here.
That piece got me remembering that Andersen was probably the first name that imprinted itself on my mind under the header "writer." Though I can't recall individual tales at the moment, I remember that some of his stories scared the pants off this young griffin - not, of course, that I would have admitted it. Fuzzy memories of children lost in the snow, a mermaid with bleeding feet...
Anyway, that wasn't even what I meant to blog about. The point was it's so nice to see so many of one's favourite writers putting their columns and articles up on their blogs. Besides not having to weed through what so many publications seem to fondly think is friendly Search to find them, one gets to also peek behind the scenes. Kinda like a "The making of..." section of a DVD. In Nilanjana's article, for instance, we learn that she did this one while battling malarial fever, and has no recollection of having actually written it. Me, if I have so much as a sniffle I put my feet up and abandon all thoughts of work.
Ooh. A mosquito just bit me. Expect higher blogging standards here in a few days.
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We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
~ Eyler Coates
to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting
~ e e cummings
In three words i can sum up everything I've learned about life.
It goes on.
~ Robert Frost
Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
~ Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
~ Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet, short-story writer, and playwright, "Poetic Manifesto" in the Texas Quarterly, Winter 1961
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955)
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)
In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
~ Al Rogers
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
~ Henry Winkler, actor (1945- )
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
~ George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)
Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, author (1689-1762)
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
~ Satchel Paige
Fake it till you make it.
~ (Heard on West Wing)
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