Dont read this blog

I'm only wearing a loose t shirt and an orange colored panty. I didn't know whether I was more surprised to hear this or more turned on, because 2 minutes ago I was blabbering some agonizing shit about my guilt of having a very hedonistic relationship with her. But she showed maturity and turned the discussion back to the only thing that matters, SEX.
Now that I have your attention, I can talk about anything right? You must've figured out that the title and the first paragraph of this blog reeks of cheap publicity. That stunt was basically a comprehensive hint of what I want to talk about. I want to talk about twitter. I know millions and millions of words and hundreds of thousands of pages have been written on this very subject, but that was a long time ago and now is the time to rediscuss it. I won't put forth my profoundly fraud (inspiration: ZNMD) philosophies about the endless search for acceptance through twitter. Rather I'm going to show you a side reaction and it's catalytic mechanism in this micro-blogging autoclave.
Now, every new product with something different to offer, initially becomes a rage and blows uncontrollably. But it's just a newsmaker then. No matter how many sale records it breaks, it takes time for it to become a 'washing powder Nirma'. Twitter is no different. It has had it's boom n even though now it has plateaued, it certainly has stood the test of time. So now that we can safely call it a global phenomenon, do we really need a reason to waste our time on the timeline? Duh! Unless you posses mind numbing good looks [I have a theory that mind numbingly good looking people don't need to justify anything, but more on that later]. So why are people on twitter? I can see a plethora of advertising geeks, social media marketers and brand developers whose job demands them to be there. Then celebrities are as good as mind numbingly good looking people. Then there are college kids who have all the time in the world and are at an age where they should experience everything. Then writers, bloggers and critics who must show their intellectual diversity, hence building a fan base or in other words, bread and butter. Then other people with shallower reasons. For example, sports fanatics (not fans, because fans aren't shallow). But why are people whose career paths are miles away from the social networking BDSM on twitter? I can understand if you have an inherent attraction towards random trivia like those quizzers and news maniacs. Then that's just internet addiction. Nothing specific. I think the answer would come by digging the foundation stone of this 140 character cocaine. What thought went into developing twitter? To let people speak their mind and know other people's mind about a certain piece of news? Arguable hypothesis, but at least a decent premise to begin with.
But if I only want to know the popular word, why can't I follow a herd of twiple and whenever there's an opinion worthy news, I can just log in to read 20-30 tweets, why be active unless I want my voice heard? Well, there are two problems with this method. One is finding the right people to follow. This is fairly easy to tackle with the help of your twitfreak friends. Everyone has plenty. But the 2nd problem is where you witness the real layers of this onion. See, the public opinion is controlled by a public figure, much like the politics of 70s. On twitter, celebrities aren't the controlling devices. In fact, they are very simple people with more or less trite comments. What really controls twitter are the twitcelebs, the crocodiles of this river, which are the crux of our 2nd problem. They are active, quick witted and thick skinned, so nothing fetters them while taking on anyone from an utterly insignificant person to the president of USA. Now, what you want to see when a news comes out is what people think about it but what you get to see is an illusion of vaguely strong feelings and opinions, which are in most cases far from the actual sentiment. The crocodiles manage to achieve this by simply cracking a smart joke (though irrelevant) using innovative tools like wordplay or the trusted HASHTAGS. This is a beautiful example of how red herring works. I'm not saying people dumbly follow them. On the contrary, the avaam is smart enough to not form an opinion too early as and when the said news is fresh. But when this unsure, vulnerable, wet clay of a mind reads something even mildly amusing, written by the crocodile, who has a massive twitter following (=respect), then the mind is liable to follow up on the scheme of jokes or even outrage for that matter. Now people are just making jokes, they probably haven't even given a cursory thought to the real issue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying twitter has failed. But you just need to devote a lot more time than you think, to make good use of it. Our smart phones make us believe that our life has become faster, but actually for most people they slow it down tremendously. But I know I don't need to say this. Every user knows the truth.
So basically if your career doesn't demand social networking and you aren't the time passing college student then you are as good as the close friend of a rich guy who is taking loans he can't handle, just to maintain the gregarious lifestyle. Twitter demands regularity, for you to know the behavior of the twiples you follow which is how you can grasp the popular opinion. That means sacrificing a lot of time to know the real trick of this internet David Copperfield. But if *I* know the reality, why am I on twitter? Am I just another dude procrastinating the fuck out of his precious life? No. Actually I'm the rich guy, I can handle the loans.
PS: this whole perpetual mockery of Facebook on twitter is such a meta. But you know what else is meta? This blog.

Metallica concert (the one that was)

This is a the worst title for this blog because Banglore may have had the real concert but the Gudgaon one is still more fun to talk about. I see you are still reading it, so if you aren’t a friend whom I have begged to read or another human being who just happened to have time right now then I totally love you. Now i'm not only a bad marketer but also a slut. Anyway, the concert was worth every penny including travelling costs and as kickass as any concert for which I had to wait 20 odd years because I have been listening to Metallica since I was 1 year old (that’s not true but Hetfield kept saying it, so I take it as patthar ki lakeer). I know it’s too late in microblogging years to blog about the concert now but see I had to archive it somehow, especially when I hadn’t taken many pictures and when I was one of the few (~25000) who actually made it to the concert and how! [A subset of the ‘how’ part is covered in my previous blog]. So, yeah, the concert was mind blowing. They played all their best songs, which are basically their old songs, like ‘for whom the bell tolls’, ‘sanatorium’, ‘enter sandman’, ‘fuel’, ‘fade to black’, etc. For a brief gap, the members went off stage and then Hetfield returned with a small chair for our friend Kirk Hammet who entered with what looked like a semi acoustic in his hands. It was one of those moments when fans turn to each other and say, “dude I think he’s gonna play nothing else matters”. And ‘nothing else matters’ they played indeed. But no one expected a breathless stretch of the most incredible songs that followed, namely ‘one’ and ‘master of puppets’ back to back which if I try n put in the simplest possible words, gave us the fucking trip. Kirk Hammet looked high on acid with whitish eyes and a Hendrix like gaping mouth throughout, throwing random solos here n there. Hetfield as expected owned the place and gave constant goose bumps from the moment he entered. Lars Ulrich I like to believe gets his kicks from some kind of monstrous (see wat I did there) cocaine + red bull mixture because the guy is like a wild boar. Madness. Sheer, brain shearing madness. Well, that’s about it, because no one really cares about Robert Trujillo (the ugly bass guitarist, who’s getting chicks solely because of Metallica).
Now, ‘not caring’ brings me to the harder part of the concert, the part that the organizers (DNA) were supposed to take care of and which is more or less talked or trolled about in this: [ https://www.facebook.com/notes/jonva-madding/sad-but-true-what-happened-at-the-metallica-bangalore-gig/10150430713280240 ]. DNA didn’t care about security, which was practically less than half the size of a college fest contingent for an attendance 10 times of that; they asked the fans to keep their bags outside because they didn’t have the conscience to check the bags and let them in, which was required because they didn’t care to keep a cloak room in the first place; they clearly didn’t care to put any amount of planning into this whole thing because despite the above mentioned lack of security checking, it took the crowd in entry line at least 4-5 hours to move from the main gate to the ground; and surprisingly I can’t even say they cared about making much money either. There were only a handful of food and drinks stalls. No points for guessing that their stock got over before Hetfield could say ‘thank you, good night’. There were around 25000 hungry metal heads (some of them in munchies) after such a draining concert, ready to give away a limb for some food or water in a city where every restaurant closes by that time, and what do you do as an organizer? You don’t keep any food stalls! Apart from the thefts and the traffic mayhem, I must congratulate DNA for causing food riots in the few places that were open (like Empire), not to mention stomach ulcers to drunken rockers who slept hungry.
Now I don't know if it was the collective karma (spamming the twitter timelines of those not attending) but somehow the city wasn’t exactly helping the situation there. I know we should’ve known about the 11pm curfew, but come on man, it’s India. Plus somehow miraculously all the mobile networks just refused to work right after the concert, which was basically when ppl needed it the most, to locate their lost friends in all the mess. And no, 25000 ppl calling simultaneously doesn’t explain it. Anyway, on a more selfish note I say aaal ij well that ends well and I for one got drunk and had enough food but had to hunt the fuck out of it.
Abrupt ending.

The bus wala kissa

As I'm writing this right now, led Zeppelin is doing a private concert in my ears and I'm stretching my legs in this surprisingly spacious bus running on Gujarat roads, which are the single most admirable thing about the Gandhian state. I'm sitting in a bus full of mostly non gujjus (race joke alert). The high fashion quotient and the 2 cigarettes lying in my pocket are feeding me the momentary tranquility I so need. These are, mind you, not trivial things I'm writing here. They all took a great deal of effort on my part to achieve.
Now to begin with, I'm an employee of India's biggest private sector enterprise, Reliance industries Ltd. and I live in the township and work in the world's largest grassroots refinery, here in this chutiyap city of Jamnagar. Now if you are wondering, which I'm sure you aren't, but I must specify that I hate it here and I'm constantly making jokes about Gujarat and its alcohol ban on twitter, though all those jokes are effectively on me because well, I live here but I guess what I sent around came back around to anal me in the form of this incidence. Now this being the Diwali season and also the Metallica season (after 'Metallica' trending since weeks now it's only justified to call it the Metallica season more than Diwali), I had booked my tickets home in the only train that comes at this god forsaken place. The train happens to leave at 5 am and the all generous Mr Mukesh Ambani had arranged for a bus at 3 am from the township. But, as I had to surf the shit out of internet the previous night, I slept late and ended up getting up at 3:30 am, too late to catch that very bus. Since you already know I'm in the bus, there's no suspense but as if it mattered even when you were watching The Shawshank Redemption (sweating self confidence now!). So, when I got up and looked at the time I DID NOT think that there was a possibility that I had missed my bus, because had this thought in these exact words entered my brain, I would've never bothered to get my lazy ass up to try n catch the bus. Instead, my whole life flashed in front of my eyes. I got reminded of the enigmatic 4 years I had spent in Mumbai, living the life and dying several deaths in that city. I also got reminded of how many times my lips had touched the elixir of life, i.e. alcohol in the past 3 months, and the number is a pathetic 3. All this intertwined with some animated shots of 'my friends telling me to "be cool" in slow motion while leaving college' were running through my head. I must pause and say that our brain is a fantastic piece of machinery because this film which felt like eternity, played in a matter of seconds urging me to do everything possible to catch that vehicle which will help me get out of this place. So, I got my 'active' on and in seconds of getting up, ran to the reception wearing only boxers, asked him to call the township security and I called the shuttle (taxi) service using my cell phone which was the only thing I had picked up apart from the boxers. Now I simultaneously pleaded both to the security to stop the bus which they did and the shuttle guy to get to my building asap. Then I ran back to the room to get my clothes and travel bag only to discover that I had somehow miraculously NOT forgotten to bring the keys. This is important because we all know how Murphy's law becomes a bitch in all these situations. And in all the haste, I did not forget to get those 2 cigarettes which I'm so tripped out about because I will be needing those for the super early morning poop in the train. Kids, don't try this because it's illegal and of course because smoking kills but we all know there's nothing like a satisfactory dump. I felt like mumbai police that time. Doing everything perfectly and fast, but of course after waking up late initially. I swear if I had the physics Olympiad exam papers in my hand right now, I would've made my parents proud. My brain was and still is working so fast right now that I'm group whatsapping, writing this thing, listening to some good music and even stopping and staring. Yay I guess.