Post # 39 # Meditation on Porn and Career Switch

April O'Neil looks so mainstream on her blog!
Image source: www.heyitsapril.com

I recently came across a porn actress' blog, which looks legit from its authentic descriptions and images. What I'm more concerned is her career switch. April O'Neil, the actress, mentioned she used to work in a boring 9-to-5 office. She got fed up and through one of her friends' recommendation, entered into the porn industry. As far as her blog goes, she is enjoying the new profession. Unlike her preconception about the industry, it turned out to be quite a rewarding and satisfying profile for her.

Even if April finds the new career prospective, it sounds too deviated from the mainstream. I am not sure about how it is considered in the individualistic society like the US, but it is too deviated in ours. Yet, it sounds fun and adventurous... or this brunette has made an effort to make it sound like fun and adventurous. You never know.

Imagine her transferable skills that career gurus always talk about, when we make a switch. I doubt there is hardly any office skills, if there is any, that she can re-apply while she implores in front of the camera, asking for thousands of liters of fluids from her fans. If not for anything, I am envious of her bold leap. Promiscuity has found  a new name. Even if it hard for us to digest, we can see that the sluttish behaviour is quite mainstream; it is so ubiquitous. Seeing the human hypocrisy, there is nothing wrong in fucking and earning for living. All said and done, I can never imagine myself in this kind of industry.

If given a chance, would you be willing to perform in front of the camera? As April mentions in her blog, she can choose her roles and she does not always have to let all the holes inserted and poked, as we believe they do.                

Post # 38 # How to Undress in Front of One Billion People

We are what we wear

Cloth maketh a man; however, I do not become a superman when I wear underwear above my warmer pant. 

Possibly, I might have to wear the red or blue bum cover and a matching towel behind my back. For a mortal soul like me, it is better to remain fully dressed though, with cutting and stitching of our choice. We do not have to stand naked in front of one billion people to show how we dress. We do have some experience what lies beneath when we undress metaphysically.

A high sense of formality is inherent in our pants and shirts, and even in a pair of boot. Sometimes it takes all the fun out of what we wear, because we have to follow what other people wear, what other people say it is a social convention, what other says what is nice. This takes us directly to our work wear. How should we keep up with what we wear because of conventions and mores? We can wear what we want but we have made a boundary, separating ourselves, making a class division, creating newer sense of civility and what not.

Post # 37 # Declaration of the State

Image from kapilarambam.blogspot.com

Post # 36 # Have You Ever Been Kick Out of a Party?

You might be a political nutcase, who swears on living, breathing and s*****g on politics. When I say politics, I mean the political system of a land, rather than those representatives in some talking shops. That is what Hitler used to describe the parliament of a democracy. However, your opinions in certain social gathering would help others find a valid reason to kick you out. At least, let us hope, the hosts would tolerate your desire to be the general manager of the universe—if not for the drunken manufacturing of choicest expletives and putting on the mask of a universally accepted critic. Nevertheless, you get kick for one reason or the other. So pathetic.

Post # 35 # The Tragedy of an Activist

The only word I can use about writing as a weapon is resistance. This connotes a lot of things in my native place where there is too much political and social violence. One amongst those mess is the presence of so many activists, born out of the turmoil. I'm also an activist. Nobody knows me but I'm an activist. I don't do anything but it is not cool to say I'm not, so I call myself I'm an activist. I am. But I'm worried if I get a government job, which is the only source of white-collar jobs out here in Imphal, possibly I might end up writing elegies and obituaries for nationalists and patriots, who like me, are the activists.

There are people like RK Ranendrajit and Arambam Lokendra in my hometown. I feel self-conscious to introduce myself as an activist to them. Should I carry a gun when I visit them so that they know I'm into something activism? Should I take along some pamphlets? Should I show them my bio-data of the activistic things? Should I tell them that I give financial support to poor people, that I do a lot of social works that even my friends know not, that I don't even remember at times?

No, nothing will do. I'm just an animal who lays eggs and nothing is there beyond my comfort zone. When the police kill the people, in a Kafkaesque transformation, I become an activist. When the rebels kill the people, I become an activist too. Because I have nothing to do than being an activist; because I have also got a big heart that I care so much about other people. Don't call me my name, just call me an activist.    

Post # 34 # Strange City, Stranger Stories

It is a trend in my hometown, Imphal. After Xth Class, half of the students go outside the state for further studies, and most of them after the XIIth. People are worried, more than the critical situation of our civilization, about this trend which has reached an epidemic proportion in the last decade. In our parents' generation, most of them did pursue their higher studies outside, but they went back home for the jobs. Now the story is different. We study outside the state and have started working here. The reasons are obvious: lack of job opportunities, worst socio-political conditions blah blah blah.

So we arrived in strange cities, with sackful of dreams. Legally, we are in our country but the difference between us and our host-cities is stark. Needless to say, racial discrimination is rampant, cultural stereotypes are ripe and there is a sense of the proverbial us-and-them in many facets of our daily lives.

THE STORY
There is a place called Rohini in northwest Delhi. One day, a group of thugs came and snatched a necklace from a lady, who was left dumbfucked. A few days later, the same thugs came again, much to the horror of the passers-by and of course, the lady who was so unfortunate to meet twice her adversaries. Then the worst part of the story unfolded: the goons started beating up the lady. When asked by a gentle old man, they barked they had snatched a piece of jewelry from the lady but it was a fake necklace. So they barked repeatedly like a mad dog while punching and kicking the lady, asking her why she wore a fake necklace, while everybody was waiting was Shaktimaan.  

Post # 33 # Too Much Love Will Kill You

All along the years I have been building up a thought that work is a curse we have got for our existence. But lately, as the number of boring days increases so much in the last month, I have changed my mind. Work, any kind of work in personal and professional terms, saves us from the tiresome drudgery of life. Imagine a life in which all of we have to do is just sit and watch the sun and the moon and stars, all day, all night. It would be the ultimate disaster. However this does not mean we have to work to live our life.

Basically, I'm worried about too less of work as much as I'm about too much of it. It sounds good that the best way is to make the right balance between work and leisure, though it is easier said than done. In any case, we cannot love too much work or too much free time. Otherwise Brian May may entangle us in his long curly hairs and sing us Too Much Love Will You.

I want to break free from all the sticky cages of work and free time and make the most of my time in the most productive and cheerful way. We live only once, why should we waste it only in working our arses off to pay the bills and the rent and save for the future? Why should we spend it away doing nothing?     

Post # 32 # FML

I would rather rob a bank than work in a bloody office, sitting on my arse all day long. Where is the nearest gun shop? It will not be hard to find. I live in a supposedly democratic country, but in this tiny corner, the gun rules. On one hand, the government while fucking the concept of democracy is militarising the place; and on the other hand, the rebels are having a free run -- just because there are so many places to hide. In military term, we are called a frontier region, which is away from the mainstream but which has to be guarded with full military power. There are not many jobs around here, and I'm fucked up beyond any recognition. FML!!! 

Post # 31 # Graveyard Stalking: Killing on the First Night Shift

FYI, this is not me! I got the pic from a Google search
on the bloody graveyard shift!

Nothing is work
unless you'd rather
be doing something else.

So the unknown man continues his rants against work and anything that is related to these things called professional duties. But frankly, after all is said and done -- being put into the graveyard shift against all personal requests and squeaks is like selling away the million dreams every night, while keeping the shoulder to the wheel. Livelihood, seriously, should have a lot of options like a supermarket store that caters to whimsical teenage girls, otherwise it is a real pain in the ass.

Apart from the professional allergy, here is a credible excerpt from Wikipedia, why the graveyard shift is in fact more than a pain in the ass:

UCSF neurologist Louis Ptacek, who studies circadian rhythms, genes and sleep behaviors, has been quoted: "It's not surprising, we have evolved on a planet that is rotating every 24 hours. Our internal clock is more than just when we sleep and wake. It's related to cell division and it regulates our immune systems. When we battle our internal clock, that has complications."

Only ranting on the blog cannot cure the complications. Correct. Resignation is the best option now and i have already decided about it. But it will be quite unethical to google for sample resignation letters, after spending half of the work time on an idiotic blog and Facebook. Still the problem is far from over. Quite truly, I have heard people saying that being our own boss is only thing we can do to get the most satisfaction out of our profession. Am I too idiot to be my own boss? The night is very late, I cannot find any answer to this question.

Post # 30 # Being, Belonging and Becoming

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” ARISTOTLE

Little things, despite their smallness, make the whole difference in our life, as in the saying goes that the largest ocean is made up of little drops of water. Without the help of nuclear and rocket technology, we can presume that little bit of our life — things we are or we do — can greatly change the quality of our living that is to enjoy all the possibilities of life. Knowing what is of significance can further accentuate these positive effects and thus more quality.

The Quality of Life Research Unit (University of Toronto) distinguishes three areas where we can identify the quality of life: 1. Being 2. Belonging 3. Becoming. So what are these things? Quite abstract it may sound, but there is no room for doubt, for these areas are what we come across everyday. The only thing we need is to be aware about them so that we can fine tune them for potential utilization.

• Being is what we are; it can be our physical and mental conditions, plus our sense of right and wrong. 
• Belonging is how we relate to our environment and the place we are a part of. 
• Becoming is the action that brings result — any kind of result that differentiates us from what we were then and what we are now; for example doing a household chore. 

These are the brief outlines. Life is what happiness is and it will be sheer lacking to discuss it in one go, whether in writing or speaking. All said, a subjective understanding of these things — being aware of life, having a place to muse upon the things that make us and our lives more meaningful and becoming a more ‘knowing’ person — fill some of the vacuum that life has created for humanity. We can start from the little things we are doing now.

Post # 29 # Job Satisfaction (not guaranteed!)

Work is worship?

Been out of action for quite a while, you see, the work pressure is too much to handle. We are used to the proverbial 9 to 5, but how would you react when you hear about a 5-to-9 job? That's exactly what I have been doing for the last two months. No time for concert, for friends, for birthdays, this and that. All I have got is this irritating job. Slogging out for fifteen hours a day is too much but it's how you save an income in trying times. Well, I'm tired but I'm not knocked out.

And this takes me to the eternal question of job satisfaction. So fortunate is s/he who has found the ideal meaning of life in the profession s/he is in. On the face, it might seem asking a lot from the reality, but we cannot simply do away with these luck and harm things. Malcomn Gladwell in his best selling Outliers outlines one of the prerequisites of a successful life: Working on the choice of our profession/hobby for ten thousand hours to grasp the finer nuances as well as to stay ahead of others. I doubt, with my kind of a mechanical job of error-checking, even two thousand hours of effort will yield but more cynicism of the people and their defects.

This will somehow explain about my exasperation. I have failed to see the goodness in other people. Even if I got a little heart to show I care, I'm tied up in official work which they always lace it with a poetic truth that it's professionalism. To hell with professionalism. I don't work for my life, but for my livelihood, and pragmatic considerations keep me away from going straight to my boss to tell him that he is taking more than he can chew from his boss again. I desperately want to know how he shits out all these craps but I can see he does not like it either but is more interested to keep the principles of professional safe and sound.

It's no use, grumbling and moaning over the blues. There are three really important things we need from our job:  a little bit of creative satisfaction, a little bit of some sense of accomplishment and a little bit of reward now and then for the services we are offering our employers. Otherwise it's best to update the CV in some known job sites.      

Post # 28 # Little Ironies

What’s it like being filthy rich and wretched poor? The latter I am more attached to. I was wondering about the differences and taking a stroll and by coincidence, though unfortunate for the wounded, I saw an accident spot. People thronged the area and I could not see who has hit whom with what, but I was just conscious that there was an accident. Minutes later, the ambulance arrived and some people set down while I saw robot in them for their swiftness and extreme alert. Then I saw there were two middle-aged men, who were hurt, lying unconscious, letting the people do what was needed. OK now, what’s the big deal, you might ask — mishaps are the part of a road, like the rain is to monsoon.

Two hundred meters away from the accident spot is an elite hospital. The place for saving and giving lives it is supposed to be, however, I have overlooked the small-scale terms and conditions at the bottom of the 1000-watt, 10x10 feet signboard at its entrance. The poor should go to the government hospital, if they ever care for some treatment, otherwise not. I found that the injured men had been taken away to a public hospital, fifteen kilometers away from the spot.

The siren of the van made me realise the life’s little ironies. In accidents, the worst thing is that you can be the loser even if you have not started the game, let alone having any plan to play. It takes only a couple of minute to lose one’s life, while a century is not enough to build it in perfect form and structure. The difference, as I started out, between the two types of humanity is also apparent but I don’t if it is related with accident or not..

Post # 27 # On Black Laws and Dark Views

Irom Sharmila has been on a
protest fast since Nov 2000

For long we have been complaining that we are not getting enough attention from mainland India. This is not about Narcissus and things like that, but a wretched tale of a neglected part of India. Neglected is quite a light word if people know the reality in Manipur with regards to the largest democratic country by virtue of its ignorance about condoms and contraceptive pills. A controversial front newspaper story in the Telegraph, a leading daily in the eastern part of the country however, has had a lot of stories to tell us.

The news which was published a couple of days ago is nothing unusual, but about the love affair between the star campaigner, Irom Sharmila and his boyfriend. Let’s put the records straight first: Sharmila has been on a fast since Nov 2000 (that’s more than ten years ago!) against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act; all along the national media has been willingly or unwillingly ignorant about her; for ten years nothing substantial was printed or published but this ‘insubstantial’ side-story on an important front page; now a powerful group of civil organisations in Manipur has banned the newspaper and several others are pouring in their condemnation.

This whole issue of newspaper-published-shits-and-gets-banned looks like a passing event, though without no reason. So many people are getting killed and injured because of this controversial martial law. In the process, we have also become too intolerant to accommodate others’ views. But why is it that the mainland people, the mainstream newspapers always suck a big time?

In a broader aspect, India sees in us as a buffer zone. It does not matter how people are eating bullets and drinking bloods as long as its vested interests are safeguarded. Otherwise, there could have been a lasting peace in our region, where anyone will be bowled over by its natural beauty. These things apart, the march will continue. India must know we are not voiceless. India must know if the shits continue all the time, there will come a time it has to eat the shits more than it can chew one day.

Post # 26 # Night Warriors Never Whine

Outsourcing is a one of the mantra driving the Indian economy. Business.mapsofindia.com mentions, “India, since the past few years, has experienced a paradigm shift due to its competitive stand in the business world. Being a huge market itself, as well as the home to cheap and skilled labors in abundance, India became the favorite hunting ground for the companies to explore the market and grow their business.”

Well the above paragraph is too hard for this blog, but I can’t help taking help of a reference. In the last decade, we were as kids only happy stomping our foot to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and their ilk for two reason: firstly, we were too young to care for the mundane things like jobs or economy of a country, and secondly, as far as we know life was all about thinking and acting local though our lives were tinctured with rock n’ roll. Then Bob Dylan re-sing, The Times They Are a-Changin’. Now the tincture is gone as I’m tracing a way back to my roots, reading poetry, researching the stuffs from all over and imbibing the ethos of our time. I have also changed my slogan to thinking global and acting local.

Now back to the issue that matters. Outsourcing has made us richer, has turned me from a small-town nonentity to an Error Checker, ready to check any error committed by anyone across the world. But we need a boring, uncommon calibration that we can find nowhere else: Time Adjustment. For example, the guys on the other side will always be sleeping while we are working, and we will be sleeping when they are working — a real case study for the needs of proper and meaningful communication an without which business will be doomed. As a means of synchronization, we do a monthly rotation of day and night shifts.

PC World predicts India's revenue from outsourcing could be $225 billion in 2020. I need no billion or million but a real nice sleep. What the heck? Why are the old men and women so fond of jogging in the morning? Good night. 

Post # 25 # On Life and Work

Some recent posts on work and job, here and there, lighted a bulb on my mind. For every week, 40–48 hours of my most ‘productive’ time is spent in the workplace. My employer and manager’s views are quite obvious than the dawn of sunlight at the end of the night: to ever increase my productivity and gel along with other people who we clubbed together as colleagues, like chipping in together in our project work like some animals bound by territorial pissing. Working 40–48 hours is quite a long time, isn’t it?

Is livelihood what defines our life? I don’t think so. Financial things and philosophy are strange bed-partners. There are several reasons for this statement. Livelihood is not life. For that matter, no fragmented parts of human existence can define what a life is. No politics. No education. No science. No religion. Not even our beliefs. None of them can explain why we are living. We need to understand the ‘whole’ to know the essence and its parts. So, to put it bluntly, life is not work. To hell to those people who pray work is worship. Forty to forty-eight hours are more than enough, but not enough to give us an essence of life. And what are we without a life?

So reassuring it was when I read Oscar Wilde, when he wrote, “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” Why cannot we live without work? Work, I mean, going to office every day — worrying about the salary, running for paying the bills, brooding for the sake of future. I want to go back to the state of nature. But since it is not possible, I would keep searching for the alternatives to find more meaning in our existence. Please don’t tell me it would be hard after ‘killing’ more time at the workplace than where it really matters. Surely, this world is so full of contradiction. Perhaps, the sustenance of life, in or out of 40 hours, is our work even if life is not merely sustenance. 

Post # 24 # Wake me up when September ends

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work."
William Faulkner 

Consolation?

What is one of the worst dreams on a Sunday night / Monday morning? !Ping. Being at work! I usually love Charles Lamb's essays, but I love him more when he said that he was always late for work, but that he would make up for it by leaving early. I would not elaborate but somehow I was gladdened, this morning, by the fact that I did get a few hours to read papers and do things like that before getting ready for work. But boy, it was terrible even before I got up, I had already been to my oh-fiss.

Well, I'm not indifferent to my work. I like it, in fact. Perhaps because doing nothing is the hardest work, never knowing when I'm finished. The convention that we have to give our asses eight hours a day, six days a week, however, makes me quite apathetic towards this whole business of work and workplace. Karl Marx and those guys did a commendable job in reducing the working hours, even if America hates his followers like I hate Monday mornings. But what I really want is to further decrease the working hour to, say, four hours; that way, I will start loving my work, I will give my 200% from the usual 100% (I can show you the spreadsheet, though I take a dozen fag breaks a day), I will never complain about my managers in my 'entire' life, and the list will go on.   

On a much lighter note, the weather is getting pleasant with each passing day, as autumn draw the curtain over the intolerable summer heat. The humidity is still here like a shameless cat, but when September ends, the air is going to be a lot nicer and conducive. And maybe, it will also make me less lethargic getting up in the morning, makes me ready getting a bath, and makes retiring on work days so comfortable with occasional drinks and movies. I hope so.

   

Post # 23 # Festivals of Futility

Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Ambrose Bierce

Festive moods are synonymous to bright yellow, orange and green, and a lot of other happy things. Now it has found an unlikely company. Plain bore. It is right, these days, festivals bring along with them a plain bored feeling. Time it is never the same it used to be.

New year. Holi. Diwali. Local festivals. There are so many of them. And the worst thing about these holidays is that we always have a dry day. There are also heavenly blessings like official working days that squeze salt into wounds. So now I prefer any uninspiring holiday, without being a dry day to those blasting and wasting holidays, which are dry days and we have to go office.

Even if I take some bottles in advance or my employer takes some pity and gives me an 'off', the festivals are like any other Sunday. Though I like it when it is preceded or followed by a weekend -- that gives me some kind of a long weekend, some laid-back things... otherwise, the plain old bored feeling is on the horizon.

Boryeong Blast: This kind of festival must be fun

    

Post # 22 # A True-and-False Record

All my life I have been an ordinary, average-ish student. Until I found this task in one of my jobs at office. And I scored 99.99%! What a feat!

There were around 800 true-and-false questions. The only time I scored above 80% was perhaps in my pre-high school days. Oh, well. This 99.99% means no salary increment or an appreciate letter from my boss. The sole satisfaction is that I have completed the job quite well on time. I’ll be getting a new task soon.

But do you know how I did it, scoring on a genius-type level? Let me explain. In this job I'm doing, the subject experts set the questions in simple MS Word. And the computer experts set them on a sophisticated computer program. Then me, as mentioned in my earlier post, I worked as an Error Checker; and I have to check if the correct answers are set properly, clicking on each question. I would have scored a perfect 100 if not for these computer experts who had not been giving in their 100% attention and making the silly mistakes.

I find it quite ironical that I scored highly just in this kind of things. The world is so relative. Leave the world. When you come in early in the office, the boss is not there; and when you are late, you know it: he is there not only early, but waiting for you to hand over some work. Leave office. I want to be 99.99% successful in life.

Post # 21 # Online Running Commentary (ORC)

A few seconds ago, the cigarette was lit

And I read the tweet while I excrete
She tweets she is eating the meat
I dump - with grins, the shits I defeat

I get away from the heat
Outside the air is now upbeat
And I roll up my feet

Then she had drumstick, she repeats
And I took my whisky neat
And I stomp the online beat.

Post # 20 # Death, the Great Leveller

'Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.'

Written on a monument erected to Mark Twain & Ossip Gabrilowitsch

All of us have a final destination. Heaven or hell, they are not but the funeral pyre at the riverbank, the last nail on the coffin are the final things we will ever have in life. And thinking about death. It makes us reticent. It makes our heart lamentable. It is spiritual. It is life.

Funny it is, but knowing about death can be a solace. I got some thoughts after reading Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' On Death and Dying. Dr Kübler-Ross writes about the terminally ill people and the Five Stages of Grief that they go through. Here I rephrase each step from the perspective of you and I:

Eternal Light

Five Stages of Grief

Stage 1 Denial. Do you believe all of us will die one day? Not me! I'm perfectly fine. I take a balanced diet and have everything in moderation.

Stage 2 Anger. But we cannot deny the fact. The sun sets in the west. But why me? Why not those bloody terrorists?

Stage 3 Bargaining. I will donate my eyes. I will donate my kidneys. I will donate my arse if it will be useful for the Holywood stars' plastic surgery.

Stage 4 Depression. __________________

Stage 5 Acceptance. We die of living, not of disease. It will be the most easiest thing. No more Monday blues. No more pain. No more suffering. Eternity.