If anyone is interested in buying something from my CafePress store, there is a coupon that gives you $5 off of every order of $20 or more with coupon code - DUKESGRAPES.
Trust me, there is a reason people say two’s company and three’s crowd. When it is just the two of you, if there is a fight or any disagreement, you are forced to makeup soon since you get bored without the other person’s company. When there are other people in the equation, it gets easy to ignore your spouse/significant other for lengthy peroids of time since you have other people to talk to and interact with. The more this happens, the more distance builds up between the two of you till you don’t recognize each other anymore and are simply used to existing without each other and in the company of others. It gets easier and easier as time passes till you end up not needing each other anymore - a recipe for disaster. Catch the pattern and nip it in the bud. Do yourself a favor!
(This was something I just needed to get off my chest after a few incidents I have seen recently - the above advice is meant to be general and not in relation to any of the people I know).
31st March: Mirchi
April:
7th April: Patrix
14th April: Yazad
21st April: MadMan
28th April: Ravages
May:
5th May: Avinash
12th May: Shanti
19th May: Amit
26th May: Shivam
June:
2nd June: Saket
Mirchi, can you put up the nomination call on your blog so we won’t have to delay this week’s mela anymore than it already is? :)
Update: Here is an Indian economic blogmela of sorts. Very interesting - maybe we should try a merger next time.
The normally laid-back Ravages works himself up pretty good in this post - Selective Amnesia: I’m not the sermonisng type - about TOI successfully shutting down Pradyuman Maheshwari’s Mediaah blog. Ashish weighs in on the matter in this post - Big Media crushes a blogger. I am appalled at what TOI is being allowed to get away with here. TOI accuses Mediaah of “defaming” them - what? Are they so thin-skinned that any criticism is considered defamation now? If they are really that interested in their image, maybe they should put out better fare for their readers’ consumption instead of being such wimps about it and trying to shut down debate instead of asking for constructive criticism.
When these journalists criticize the Government, politicians, movie stars, pretty much everybody on the planet, they claim to do so in the name of journalistic freedom and freedom of expression - why cannot an ordinary person do that same as far as his limited resources will allow him, with a blog? I have had it with this idiocy. Here is the deal, y’all! Let us all bloggers in the US and outside the US take on TOI. Let us write about them everyday. Let’s see what they can or will do. Who’s with me on this?
update: Sriram has made a good start on his blog…
The Terri Schiavo battle is still going on - I have been reading the news and opinion on the battle all over. I have a problem with the phrasing of the issue by most people - many have called it the case of “right-to-die”. I disagree with that. If Terri had left clear instructions, if not written atleast verbal ones to more than one person, I would consider this a case of right-to-die. Terri is not expressing her wishes here - the only person who claims to represent tham had remembered them miraculously after winning a million-dollar settlement on his wife’s behalf in court. He has specifically said in court when he won the money that he would spend the rest of his life taking care of his wife - all of a sudden he remembers she really didn’t want to live like that and would rather die?
I think this is clearly a case of she-said/he-said rather than exercising Terri’s right-to-die. We don’t know if Terri wanted to die. I know maybe I wouldn’t want to. That doesn’t mean she didn’t want to. this is what I find pretty appalling on the side of the right-to-die people. I read a column claiming that the pro-life people are trying to impose their values on everybody else by trying to keep Terri alive. I think it is also the case of the right-to-diers assuming that since they wouldn’t want to be alive like that, Terri wouldn’t want to be alive either. See? the imposing values thing works both ways.
Coming back to more mundane things, I don’t have any web access at work, so blogging is restricted to weekends and nights (I know, it sucks). The baby is doing real good as are the dogs :)
Good stuff happening in Lebanon - crazy, all that crap about Michael Jackson (I wonder about the mental health of any parents who would allow their kids anywhere near that freak - their kids need to be repossessed by CPS or something). I think that the new bankruptcy bill will screw consumers’ happiness and the Republicans suck for pushing it.
Oh, I hate it that iTunes will not support anything other than iPods - I had free coupons from a couple of friends that I used to download songs from iTunes - I had to burn them to CD and then rip them to put them in my Creative Zen. I really don’t get the obsession of various people with such proprietary software. I wanted a player that wouldn’t restrict me and thank God, I got one. Hate Apple!
Apparently, I cannot tell what dates certain day of the week is, so I misunderestimated some dates in the previous post’s comments - please verify the Mela dates below. All slots were given out in the order of asking, so Avinash and Mirchi got pushed out to May - I hope there are no scheduling conflicts.
March:
10th March: Nilesh
17th March: Kiruba
24th March: Mirchi
31st March: Patrix
April:
7th April: Yazad
14th April: MadMan
21st April: Ravages
28th April: Oracle(url?)
May:
5th May: Avinash
12th May: Shanti
Phew! That was a big list and I didn’t even have to twist Ravi’s arms as usual ;)
Check out the PHD blog mela hosted this week by Chandroo - PHD Blog Mela.
Nilesh is going to be the host of the next Mela, so go by and drop your nominations. Psst, we need hosts for the weeks after Nilesh. I want to draft Kiruba for the week after. So, volunteer if you are interested.
I am leaving the Paypal link in my sidebar permanently now. I really wish and hope my commenters will not abandon me and will just start commenting on this post instead of the older one. If you think you are going to intimidate me into removing it, you are absolutely mistaken. Bring it on, people!
I consider myself honorary Texan since I have pretty much spent most of my US life here and my son will be a born Texan. Happy Independece Day, Texas!
Avinash has an excellent idea to make the most of our educational institutions and social organizations. It is pretty simple, really - he wants them to collaborate on coming up with solutions to problems like the kind most NGOs deal with. Educational institutions can definitely be financially and ideologically perfect for NGOs to get help for their projects while giving the students and faculty some much needed real-world scenarios to find solutions to and test their technologies on. It is a win-win.
He would like to find out if there is some such collaboration in place in India - Yazad?
Alright, I have never asked for any donations or anything ever on my blog. I just never felt like it. Right now though, I really want to buy a subscription to clipart.com so I can add more designs to my online shop. It costs $169.95 for one year and there is no way I can afford that. So, I am asking for you guys to chip in a bit. Don’t break your bank for it - do it only if you feel like it - it isn’t like I will starve without it. Thanks, guys!
p.s. any money I receive in excess of the subscription amount will be donated to the Spirit of America Foundation or to Chief Wiggles.
update: Alright, already! When I titled this post “begging”, I was only being self-deprecatory. I am not asking anyone to support me or my family. I have hit enough blogger tipjars in appreciation that I only ask the same in return. If you don’t get that, fuck off and don’t come back. All other preachy comments asking me to stop blogging and work instead will be ruthlessly made fun of.
I found this on the CafePress messageboard I frequent, now that I am a shopkeeper there. Personally, even if I find the designs on thongs a little offensive, the more I think of it the more I convince myself it was an overreaction.
NCM - E-Store Stops Selling Underwear with Religious Symbols
It took almost three weeks to do it, but the American Hindus Against Defamation finally prevailed and forced CafePress.com’s vendors to stop selling thongs and boxer shorts that carried images of Hindu deities and symbols. …
Last month, a barrage of angry mail from members of the Sikh and Islamic communities forced vendors on CafePress.com’s site to remove underwear that carried the image of the Khanda and the crescent. At press time, the online marketplace still carried underwear with images of Jesus on them.
The kicker for me, is the last two paragraphs above. Sikhs complained, Muslims complained and Hindus complained, but thongs with Jesus’ image are still in the stores, since apparently those religious fundamentalists are the only ones who haven’t complained. I guess it is time we learned a few lessons in leaving things be and not trying to shut down eevrything we deem offensive. I am not saying that Christians don’t do it - I am just saying in this case, they are the only ones who seem to have kept quiet.
The bigger question to me is the fact that we find such stuff offensive. Even going by the religious symbolism, I find that any object has only as much holiness as you will attribute to it. If you worship a stone, it is God - to another, it is just a nicely carved rock. Just because someone disrespects a symbol, should we get all up in arms over it? Do we really own the images and the symbols? If someone else thinks they are just pretty designs, don’t they have the right to wear them however they want?