jumabazaar.org

Archive for the 'Philosophy in a can' Category

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

return to normal.

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Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Playing Classical Cricket?

This article on cricinfo actually does a good job of summarising my discussion with Atomsmasher on the decline of traditional disciplines in the arts. The following paragraph is particularly insightful in drawing out the similarities between classical training in music and cricket.

People frequently say of Indian playback singers that this singer or that was classically trained. It is generally meant as a compliment. Lata Mangeshkar’s virtuosity and longevity were attributed to her classical training. But over time it has become clear that classical training is an optional extra for the successful playback singer because there have been so many who never had any, starting with Kishore Kumar. In the same way, Twenty20 tournaments like the World Cup and the IPL have thrown up players like Yusuf Pathan who have achieved great success and recognition via this upstart form of the game without any sort of track record at the Test level.

What do you guys think about the qualities of say opera. Is a lot of it pretentious and elitist or should I not blind my classist sentiments from appreciating the beauty of the art? I’m inclined to think that its somewhere in between. That while a lot of people are part of the ’scene’ or are patrons of the arts in order to gain social status, i shouldn’t let that cloud my judgement in trying to appreciate art in all its forms.

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Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

No pizza for you, uk

Why indeed? Pizza* here tends to be abysmal, and if you care even half as much as these people do - this discussion (which routinely uses words such as vulgarian to describe people who eat at Pizza Hut) will be absolutely riveting.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2007/05/it_takes_an_expert_pizzaiolo.html

I’ve never been to naples, but i remember a tiny shack called ‘tom and jerry’ in a decidedly unfashionable part of rome that made pizzas that brought torrents of tears to my eyes. Pizza express does that to me too, but for entirely different reasons..  

Actually, i think Dominos may be even worse.

*just like good desi bbq

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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

beating the system

sorry for not posting for a while. did you guys happen to come across this article last week?

This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.”

his theory is that as women who have been dealt stronger hands are more likely to be choosy and wait for ‘mr right’ to come along. meanwhile less “desirable” women, sensing the weakness of their position, will snap up most eligible bachelors.

as a male, i’m going to take away two lessons from this.

1) don’t get suckered into marrying early

2) even if your dream girl seems out of your league right now, by the time they hit their mid 30’s you’ll seem like a superstar :p

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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

desi’s and ayn rand. who knew?

following on from atomsmasher’s last link, here’s a discussion on the NYT books/dating article at Sepia Mutiny.

apparently a lot of american desi’s end up becoming big ayn rand fans at college. i know one such person - although he studied in canada so i’m not sure that counts. al-tahafut, can you enlighten us further. are you a closet ayn rand admirer??

i’m going to guess that part of this correlation has to do with the fact that american desi’s are generally rich and so wouldn’t be averse to a capitalist philosopher. i could do some pseudo-psycho analysis on the role their parents play but i’ll leave it to ‘randomizer’.

Also props to this comment by Minkey Chief.

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Thursday, March 27th, 2008

And your pants too..

Apologies if this breaks the cycle of philosophically grand hogwash i usually reserve for JB; (yes Al, you can stop gazing at my navel now, thanks ever so much) but since i am, for once, not making powerpoint slides that break new ground in the art of meaningless verbosity until 4 this morning, i thought i would blind you with the brilliance of some of my orginal thoughts instead.

The point I am trying to make is, that I am as open to sleeping my way to the top as the next person, but frankly the Macca settlement has me appauled - surely this cant be just (Rod Liddle, Sunday Times):

Tucked away in the small print of the entertaining McCartney-Mills divorce settlement was a £50,000 annual sum payable to the lovely Heather for “charitable donations”. Nobody seemed to think this odd apart from Heather, who, being an extraordinarily generous woman, had asked for £627,000 per annum to “donate to charity”. This sum included £192,000 for private flights, not including helicopters (that was another £120,000), so she could give of herself to the poor, the needy, the dispossessed millions – always travelling first class, natch. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Atomsmasher | Filed in Philosophy in a can, Politics, Terror | 1 Comment »

 

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

english chelsea fan, this is your last game; we’re not galatasaray, we’re sparta f.c.

how strange is this?

and what is the legacy of 68? i find it difficult to read accounts of the events of that year around the world, since i’m not sure how much of it is simply nostalgia and romanticism.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by al-tahafut | Filed in Books, Culture, Music, Philosophy in a can, Politics | 3 Comments »

 

Monday, March 17th, 2008

koka kola, advertising, & cocaine

i guess the question is this: what do we want jumabazaar to be? it started out as a dedicated space for the on-line conversation we were already having, but now it’s something slightly different, although i think we’re still writing for ourselves, and not for an outside audience. and that’s a good thing - we should be our audience before anyone else.

at the same time, i think one reason we moved to JB is to have some sort of interaction with other people via comments, etc. so, we need to put links out there and hope that some of the people who follow those links share our interests. so, it would be nice to have more active readers, but it won’t kill JB if we don’t have more.

as for overload, i actually liked the two videos i’ve seen of them with pappu saeen and jhoora saeen - ‘cursed’ [from my last post] and ‘dhamaal‘. i think, for me, the absence of vocals is a plus. and i haven’t heard anything else about overload - are they still around?

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Posted by al-tahafut | Filed in Bazaars, Culture, Philosophy in a can, Video | Comment now »

 

Monday, March 17th, 2008

I want you to want me

Good to see a pappu saein has made its debut on youtube – I couldn’t find one earlier.. although, admittedly it does do a grave injustice to pappu saein and the whole bhang-infused pall that hangs over the thousands of mesmerised, perpetrating and incredibly stoned people I saw crammed into the mazaar, lounging under the throbbing overpowering beat of some incredibly primal percussion.

Oh, and how can I forget the searing pain of stepping barefoot on some charsi’s smouldering birdi..

That said, it still was a rather odd, and incredibly theatrical experience – if you ever do head down to Lahore, then a thurday evening could be far less well spent.

Overload’s atrociously insufferable noisemaking has given pappu a new stamp of legitimacy amongst the yuppies of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad – which is somewhat amusing, if only for its irony. Pretentious pop trying to lure a troubadour to the sparkle of lux style awards and jazz music awards, surely should be making anybody cringe. I just find myself unable to sit thorough overloads cacophony, what did you guys make of them?

Pertinently (and you’ll know why) I guess it brings us, inevitably, to why places like JB do what they do. It seems to me that art for it own sake is just such an appealing, clean and somehow morally attractive proposition, an yet, art really seems to flourish when its motives are far baser – the rich history of court art in the sub-continent for instance.. do you think we should be running a more aggressive PR campaign for JB? Why? Why not?

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Posted by Atomsmasher | Filed in Art, Music, Pakistan, Philosophy in a can | Comment now »