Goobi's Soggy Shit

I love travelling by train. I hate the bus (haven’t travelled in 10 years now), and don’t particularly enjoy the flight, though I don’t hate it. I love the train, probably because I don’t do much travelling. So when I travel, I want to feel like I’ve travelled. Sounds pretentiously cheap, but if you give me a no strings attached flight ticket versus a train ticket, I’ll take the train. Not just that. I’ll take the second class sleeper — my favourite.

There’s no logical explanation as to why this is. It’s not the cleanest of environments. There are huge delays. It’s noisy. It probably makes me feel like a foreigner ‘discovering India’ in a very poetic way. Though probably not.

Sometimes I don’t even know why I carry this camera with me. It’s free, I guess.

I have a moderately sized music collection that I’ve accumulated over the years. About 4 thousand songs, all neatly tagged, with album art, and mostly rated (I’m huge on ratings) in iTunes. I regularly prune the library of one starrers, and marvel at the playcounts of many of my favourite songs. Every now and then though, I get the feeling like I’m listening to the same shit over and over again. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just reboot my library”, is a thought that occured to me the other day. I know I’m physically capable of doing it — would take not more than 10 seconds — but is my mind ready?

“Yes of course I could do it. After all, I’m hardly attached to all of this. I could in fact wipe my entire hard drive and still not worry about a thing.”

But did I do it? No. It would be stupid to do so, right? Of course it would.

When you watch movies like the Terminator, where machines turn against Man, it’s always a measurable war between the two. In that world, the humans want the machines to die — to stop functioning, or gain control, rather. But what if that’s not the way we lose control over our existence?

I despise dogs. I hate them to the core. That’s not part of this argument, but I had to mention it. Dogs are dependent on humans for almost everything. Without humans, I doubt dogs would survive. Most of them have long since lost their natural instincts to hunt for food, and survival in nature is out of the question. Even street dogs are fed and sheltered by civilization. Dogs wouldn’t wish humans to go, because they’ve grown comfortable with our existence, and have evolved to be dependent on us. They’ve evolved to be dependent, because life with humans is easier than life in the wild. A dog is mostly always assured of food (unless I’m in charge), but the trade off is that without us, they don’t.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I reach out for is my iPad. I check my email while walking around, look at what Twitter is up to, check some sites, RSS maybe, fill up a glass of water and drink it while still peeking at my iPad screen with one eye. For god’s sake I can’t make number two without a healthy reading list in my instapaper queue. Through all facets of my life, technology and the internet play a huge role in maintaining my happiness, my high. Even during my long biking trip to South India, I had my iPhone with me, guiding me with its maps, keeping me entertained with music, and in touch with everyone. I think of train journeys in terms of what videos I’ll watch on my iPad. I think of runs on the beach as which playlist I’ll load on my shuffle. And I’m not even calling out the things that are not directly related to technology in hand. These are of course good things, and our quality of life has vastly improved because of such amenities.

The thought of living without any information technology seems like a possibility, sure. Even though most of my work depends on using technology, I know I could tune out entirely and find something else to do. Something that’s less involved with computers and the internet. I could do farming. I could hang out with people who have no interest in information technology, and talk about sports. But it would be uncomfortable, and I’ve grown comfortable with technology. I have real friends on Twitter. Leaving this would be the human equivalent of a dog hunting for food in the jungle, when there is a meaty bone being offered right where it sits.

The terminator of the real world isn’t going to kill you. It’s going to keep you alive, it’s going to keep you happy, but you won’t be able to live without it. Skynet is already here; it’s called the internet.

I have trouble sleeping. Well, not the act of sleeping but shutting off my activities and going to bed. I think I’ve mentioned this before, on this blog’s previous incarnation (even asked the cat for some advice). Every day I delay my sleeping time, leading to a loop that ends up a few weeks later me sleeping at 8 in the morning. And then I reverse my cycle over a painful period of 3-4 days.

But I think I’ve figured out sleep. After so much of first hand experience with the sleep monster, I think I know pretty well what causes problems, and a few solutions. There’s a saying I could have used here but I just can’t put my finger on it.

All of this is knowledge based on my own experiences, and wherever I say you, I mean me.

Insomnia comes over if you stay up more than an hour after you first feel sleepy. It’s your mind forcing itself into a second wake cycle, but your body still wants its sleep. Essentially your body is too tired to work any longer, and your mind is actively thinking up new shit.

My first bit of advice is to go the fuck to sleep when you feel sleepy. Nothing better than doing that. I sometimes practice regular sleep timings, and for a week or two I manage a strict 12 a.m sleeping schedule. Those days I wake up fresh.

If you’ve lost your way for a few days and want to get back on track, it’s a little difficult sleeping before your new usual time. Drink lots of alcohol, or smoke up. Bound to knock you out at any given time. Be sure not to knock out more than 4 hours before your usual sleep time, because this will trigger a nap, leaving you wide awake a few hours out. That state is so twisted even I’m yet to figure it out.

If you do enter into a state of insomnia, get up, eat a lot of food. Don’t eat carbohydrates or things that will turn into sugar. Meat, eggs, milk are the good stuff; basically heavy foods. Eating cookies is the worst thing you could do at this point, tempting as they might be. Don’t do this every day though, as it’s bound to muck up your digestive system.

Your thoughts also need to be conditioned. Think of vague things. Don’t think of the thing you’ve just been working on. Those are the things that will keep your mind engaged and ruin your sleep. Think of improbable things that you could only dream about (see what I did there?). It’s time to bring up those unholy fantasies (though careful not to take them too far or someone else will wake up).

Never listen to music or read something while on the bed. This is one sure fire way to stay awake. Unless you’re really sleepy, and you’re sleeping at your regular time, music and reading will trick your body into staying awake in that position (unless it’s some vague dreamy music—though I still tend to pay attention). Reading is especially bad—Instapaper being the main culprit here—because when you’re done reading, your mind can’t just switch off. I know this, and have since done my reading while sitting with the lights on, or even standing, and only going to bed when I really mean it.

Lighting. Apparently there’s some warm light cold light shit going on. I read this article by Jason Freedman, which talks about bad light. Apparently, evolution has tuned our body to waking up with bright cold light, and falling asleep to warm dull light. And we need to model our environment accordingly. The first thing I do when I wake up, is walk the fuck outside. I get my sunlight units no matter what time of the day it is. This first of all flushes all the sleep out of me, and second, resets my bio clock to mark this point as the day’s beginning. Now what do we do about night? I’ve switched my cold flourescent tube with one that glows warm. I also use f.lux, which automatically warms my Mac’s display temperature; although I had been using it more because it’s soothing to the eyes. I don’t know whether this works, because I’m too darned stupid to follow a schedule, but it does make a lot of sense.

But the most important thing, is you can’t keep your phone or notebook, or iPad next to you. The motherfucker will ring in a new email, your cunt of a brain will want to check Twitter, and its back to square one. Being woken up just as you’re drifting asleep is the worst thing that could happen, and you’ll inevitably land up with another hour of tossing and turning. The best thing you can do at this point is wake up, do some work, and then reset your mind into going back to bed.

Even with all this knowledge, my sleep problems still remain, as I write this at 7 in the morning. God help me. Oh wait, I forgot, he doesn’t exist. But that’s a topic for a different story.

Early this morning, Aayush decided to share his theory on creationism, family history, and how God has a part to play in the tying of a cat to a pillar. His hypothesis:

Praying to God to get your wishes fulfilled was invented because that’s the only way you could get the ordinary unwashed masses to meditate, an activity which has actual scientifically proven benefits today; old Hindu saints preached that the cow was a sacred animal and that keeping one in the house as a pet would get you to heaven (and killing it would reserve you a seat in hell) because they knew how essential milk was for our health and wanted to ensure that we would have a constant supply of it. […]

The forebears of human civilisation realised that they needed to incentivise doing the everyday good deeds as well and make people fear doing anything wrong and that’s why they invented God. For that reason, I believe in God, even though I don’t.

Since Aayush went ahead and shared an anecdote to illustrate his point, I’ve decided to go ahead with one, too. I have a lot of vivid dreams during my REMs. Sometimes it’s an action sequence, sometimes it’s horror, and sometimes I’m about to get lucky with Carmen Electra. I mention ‘about to’, because some assturd will wake me up just as the good stuff is about to begin. As soon consciousness takes over, the dream starts fading, and I don’t want that to happen. I quickly shut my eyes, and try to get back into that dream. I try to dream of Carmen again, about how my hands were about to discover the plastic in her chest, but she’s fading away. Everything is slowly turning to reality. The pillow now feels like a pillow, and the simulated perfume no longer exists. I will never have Carmen.

Now whether you like Carmen Electra or not, is a different matter. I have my days; but mostly, I do. That’s besides the point. The point—hypothesis, as Aayush says— is that once you know, you know. There’s no turning back. You can’t dumb yourself down, because let’s admit is, religion is all about dumbing you down. The problem with Aayush’s convoluted mess of a hypothesis, is he confuses God, with religion. God doesn’t exist. End of story. You know it, I know it he knows it. If that’s the case, you’re an atheist, and I’m an atheist; there’s no argument beyond that. Unless, of course, you do believe in God, in which case you should probably stop reading this blog, rethink your beliefs, or just sit quiet in the corner—grown ups are talking.

Religion is culture, with God thrown in just to fuck with people. Aayush is right on many counts, on how many of the religious practices came into being. Whether they are good practices or bad, that’s a whole new argument. But he confuses religion with God. There’s two things about religion that one can be absolutely sure of is thats (a) it’s man-made, and (b) is heavily evolved. Religion of the cave men is different from the religion of the Rishis a few thousand years ago, to the religion of modern day god worshippers. You can single out a few instances where practices in today’s religions have real world benefits, but collectively it’s a waste of time, and mostly detrimental.

A little about my religious beliefs. I’m a Christian. I was born into a Roman Catholic family, and I went was forced to go to church till the age of 18. I’m essentially a Christian Atheist. But I respect other people’s I celebrate Christmas, enjoy village feasts of Saints (the food part of it at least), Easter, San Joao, all that. I even celebrate Hindu festivals with my neighbours. I do not have any Muslim friends though, sadly. To me, religion is about celebrating culture, about taking days off from your regular work-life, about your relatives and friends coming together, communicating. These are important social interactions for healthy human living, and I enjoy them. I do not however waste my time at sunday church, nor do I sit around chanting the rosary, nor do I write letters to the Pope. I am, in my beliefs, and actions, an atheist.

But atheists are not just non-believers. They’re people who think for themselves. Once you remove God and religious doctrines, you have to make up your own. Every decision is your own, and you are aware of it. An atheist understands—or at least tries to understand—the thresholds of what’s good and fun, and what’s detrimental, causes harm, or is just plain fucking stupid. ‘Make up your mind’ doesn’t mean violent, uncultured, anarchic or stupid. Atheists don’t around slaughtering cows, eating unhealthy foods, or refuse to eat neem leaves, any more so than they would if they were followers of a religion. An atheist understands the reasons behind any religious practice, and practices them because of that understanding.

Thankfully, modern civilisation and things-to-do-other-than-god-stuff is bringing about a change in thinking, with a lot more atheists roaming free on this planet. This is a good thing, for the points illustrated above. Aayush isn’t exactly wrong, but he isn’t right either. First of all, I think he’s got his concepts about Agnosticism wrong. He’s clearly an atheist, so we’re off on a good start. His folly is he wants to blindly follow religion because he assumes it’s good for him; and that’s an irresponsible decision. He quotes neem and meditation, and while those are acceptable religious practices, we’ve seen a lot of them which are detrimental to humanity. Besides, religion is not even required to perform them. As we have seen, you can meditate without praying to a God, you can have neem leaves without a morning sacrifice, and humanely rear cows without considering them to be gods.

But let’s excuse Aayush this once. I have a feeling the Hawas got to him which resulted in his thought-compass going haywire. I mean, on this very same day the idiot actually wanted the iPhone to have an extra button, that would serve functions like creating new tweets. Oh Aayush, get well soon.

[To note: A German Nazi helped me collect my thoughts.]

Every few years, some company starts a [selfish] ad campaign to save the tiger, and everyone follows along. The latest is Aircel, who is busy counting down to the last tiger as if it were New Year’s night. There are some 1400 odd tigers alive they say, and the numbers are rapidly decreasing.

I obviously have a problem with this.

Let me start by saying I’m not against tigers. I think they should be protected, and allowed to regenerate their population. I’m not against killing anything—except bloodsucking mosquitos and maybe our three dogs—so tigers are safe. In fact, I’ve always wanted a Tiger as a pet cat; where even an extremely large house cat would do. But, I have a problem with this largely fake sympathy toward Tigers.

Tigers and other carnivores are ecologically redundant. Their purpose in nature was to make sure the herbivores don’t eat up all of the grass, thereby leaving the earth barren; ending life. Now, humans are very well capable of doing that job—trigger happy Salman is just waiting to shoot down some black buck—so where does the Tiger fit in? The Tiger is only for the saving. The vanishing of the glamorous cat puts us all in extreme guilt for our better lives, so we want to do something about it. Nature doesn’t give a shit about Tigers. Nature doesn’t need tigers. Existence is not depending on whether or not tigers roam this planet. What are we saving them for. Our children? Aside from knowing that there are tigers in the wild, when was the last time you ever saw one? I’m not counting zoos here. And if you did make a Safari trip, how do you feel about yourself, disturbing their lives with your fucking cameras and littering?

Say something against Tigers, and it won’t be a second before someone yells out, “what a fucking self-important self-riteous selfish ass-tard”. Which is what I am. All individuals are selfish. It starts at the individual level, them family, local society, country, and finally, the species. With animals on the other hand it’s much simpler. In many cases it’s a direct jump from individual to species. Sometimes not even species. My point is we’re all selfish, so it’s not wrong to think of our species first.

Let me get the trivial stuff out of the way. We have no reason to kill tigers. Poaching is just plain wrong, and people who own tiger skin should be hanged at the local beat show. But that’s not why Tigers are disappearing—rather, they’re not proliferating. It’s because of drying watering holes, lack of prey, receding forest cover, and things like that which lead to the Tiger crossing paths with a human. Should we do something about it? What can we do about it? Not much. No matter how many speeches and documentaries we watch, we continue to use motor vehicles, we continue to eat chicken and beef, we continue to live in concrete houses, and continue to breed. As long as there’s development, there will be a climb. The climb may show a steady decline in increase, but it’s increasing nonetheless. Selfish species for sure, but evolution taught us that. It’s nature’s mistake really. It made man so powerful and smart, that he has taken over the planet. I’d like to blame this God fellow, but I’ll leave him alone for a change. But then, the age old philosophical question is asked again, “what are we here for?”. We don’t know. Intelligence, collective consciousness, and documented history could be far greater evolutionary achievements on nature’s part, than something as minor as a four legged carnivore.

So what do we do then? Just stand by and watch? No way. Do something. My parents are one of India’s greatest environmentalists (please don’t tell them I said that), and have played a crucial role in saving Goa from destruction. Truth. My brother is one of the most knowledgeable natural scientists I know, and has been educating people about the harmlessness of snakes for several years now (don’t tell that asswipe I said this either). I have reared the most awesome cat in the world. He’s been bred to be soft, sissy, good looking, and a good internet marketeer apparently. Do something for sure, something selfless that will prolong the life of this planet as we know it.

The problem with this “Save the Tiger” bullshit, is that it makes you feel like you’re doing something by not doing anything. As long as you don’t kill any tigers, and maybe have your kid draw some shitty paintings of happy tigers, you’ve done your job. It’s as fake as using a fleshlight to jerk yourself off. The real problems are swept under the rug, because (a), they’re not glamorous enough to sell a story to the public, and (b), it requires major effort and lifestyle changes on part of the public. The Ganges has turned into one filthy flow of sewage, the mountains are being hacked by people who can afford to pay bribes; we’re not worried about frogs killed for their legs, or indigenous primitive trees being hacked to make way for teak and other desirable wood, or that forest mushrooms hardly grow these days. Our priority should be to create a sustainable environment for the natural ecosystem to thrive. We need cleaner sources of energy, better laws and administration at from our government, and we need to understand that the last link of the chain is not nearly as important as the first. Make that happen, and tigers will most certainly take care of themselves.

A rare red and white tiger, spotted in its natural habitat.