Goobi's Soggy Shit

I’m an email addict, who jumps up in joy no matter how insignificant that email is. As long as there’s a red blip on the Mail icon on my Mac or iPhone, or sometimes even the web on a PC, I get super excited to read what’s in there. I never leave an email unread, never. The problem of course, is in replying. There have been times when I’ve ignored multiple emails from the same party, and they think I’m cross with them. Here’s my explanation: I don’t have one.

When it comes to communication in general, I’m kind of a skunk. I hate to pick up phone calls, many a times ignoring them (and then guarding the landline lest someone else should pick up). It’s not like I don’t have the answers, or am afraid of what awaits me at other end¹. Nothing like that. I’m the master of my own life and I care a fuck for what anyone thinks². I’ve observed my behaviour—almost an out of body experience—and I’ve noticed that it’s a sort of unwillingness to succumb to someone else’s will of making me do something that I didn’t want to in the first place. It’s either that, or I’m a pussy.

I understand that the day I signed up for an email address, or got a phone number, I signed the unwritten agreement to respond to any incoming communication. The rule states that if I’m cool with the person, I have the time, and the answers, even if it’s an “I don’t know”, I need to send back that communication. This rule of course carries over from our offline conversations, the one we have in our day to day lives. Unfortunately, electronic communication has its faults in the indirect way it presents itself. If someone asks me a question point blank standing right in front of me, I can reply. If someone asks me a question on the phone (after me having picked it up mistakenly), I can reply. If someone gets me on IM, I can reply. But email, an incoming call, incoming chat, or what have you, are all indirect forms of communication, where if I don’t respond to the communication, it’s not yet acknowledged, and I’m off the hook. That’s my lazy explanation to it at least.

So the next time you send me an email (which by the way is still the best way to get in touch with me), and I don’t reply, please don’t take it out on your dog. I don’t usually like dogs, but whacking them for when it’s not their fault is not something I you should be doing. *kicks dog for no reason*. Instead, know that I’ve read your email, silently acknowledged it, and am on my way to acting upon it (if I have chosen to do so). There are of course exceptions to this, and that’s usually when I just don’t like you.

1. If you can believe that load of shit.
2. Still believing, aren’t you?

Warning: Do NOT read this if you have so far thought of me as a compassionate, loving, and gentle human being. To those who know me as a sick fuck, read on…

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Esther von Marie. Esther loved to play in the woods, amidst the birds and flowers. Esther didn’t have any friends, so the forest became her friend. Every morning her mother would give her a pail to fetch water from the stream. She would skip and hop over the rocks, and pick fresh fruits and berries, as she pranced through the forest.

Then one day, Burra, the big bad wolf entered the forest. Burra was hungry, and horny. He hadn’t eaten in days, and hadn’t fucked since his girlfriend left him for the wandering bear. Apparently his cock was bigger than Burra’s, and Burra knew that for a fact. Just as he entered the forest of Ezilgah, Burra notices this little girl hopping through the bushes. Burra couldn’t believe his eyes! She was his perfect victim! He jumped her, raped her without the least bit of trouble. Esther was crying like a little girl—well she was a little girl to start with—since she didn’t understand what was happening. Burra paid no attention, satisfied himself, and then killed and ate her up down to the last bone.

Then, as he rested in the shade, he notices Esther’s mother Elsie approaching; she was searching for her daughter who hadn’t returned. Burra’s jumped in joy, “fuck yeah!”. He mounted the mother, and raped her too. Unlike the little girl though, the mother enjoyed every bit of burra’s comparatively big organ. By the time Burra was done with her she quite forgot about her daughter. Truth be told, Esther was quite a pain to raise, so in a way Elsie was relieved. She invited Burra into her house, and they lived happily ever after.

The End.

I wrote this while resting in the shade of a tree on the way home from my trip into the Nilgiris. I think I’m pretty good at writing children’s stories—as is evident from this masterpiece—and will strive to write more and hopefully turn it into a full blown children’s book. “The little girl who got raped, and other great stories by Goobi”.

This post may contain factual errors. Nuff said.

Pappi assigned me on a photographic task, of snapping pictures of the Candolim beach being eroded by the River Princess. The River Who? In June 2000, an ore carrying barge drifted out of its dock, an lodged itself in the shallow waters of the Candolim-Calangute bay. What followed was 9 years of bureaucracy, red tape, and court cases, none of which yielded any results in getting the fucking boat out of the waters. If you’re ever looking for a good example of the failure of democracy, this is it.

So, 9 years later, how bad can it be? It’s just one boat, stuck in sand around 100 meters into the sea. Let me paint you a picture of the stretch of beach that has made Goa one of the hottest tourist spots. The white sands stetched across 10 kilometres from end to end, wide enough to run a four lane highway through it. While the sea kept the edges wet and hard, the body of the beach was filled with dry sand, free of any debris or dirt, with nary a plastic bag in sight.

Of course, tourism took its toll on the beach as it got crowded, busy, and littered with plastic. But the beach itself was always laden with sand, that even withstood the construction industry’s constant plunder. So you can imagine my surprise when I lay sight on it with my Nikon in hand; to find the entire fucking beach had disappeared! Right from aguada fort to beyond candolim, the entire beach had withered away into a two metre wide wet muddy banks, one which you can’t take a pleasant walk on, let alone relax. I don’t have the before pics, but you can certainly see what’s happening as the aftermath.

You can see the boat in the distance

Government tries to stop the sea with sand bags. Fucking jokers.

See that rocky stretch in between? I’ve never seen those rocks before.

A stretch of beach that’s not affected by the boat (the other side), although you can see what tourism has done to ruin it as well.

The River Princess is just a symbol of our Government’s incompetence.

It’s the season of whine, and I’ve got a particularly delicious one up my sleeve. I’ve been a Mac user for the last five years, loving ever minute of ‘the switch’. Every time I use a Windows PC I’m reminded of the horror that the majority has to go through every day. Yes, I’m an active Windows 7 user as well.

But there are still things that these computer fuckers have not yet gotten right. Given that computers have evolved from manually assembled switchboards and monochrome monitors, computer makers have forgotten to take the leap forward in rethinking what’s possible with modern day technologies. I’m here to bring that up so that Apple, Microsoft, Google, and that sorry kid in the corner, Linux can take notice.

Not really relevant to the writeup, but I’ll be pimping these images here from time to time

- When it shows me my desktop, it should be ready to use. Loading it part by part, and then the apps, is just old school. Do all that nonsense behind a spinny cursor, and then show me the desktop complete with fade in. The iPhone does this right.

- I want to delete a file, let me delete it. Of course, make sure I know what I’m doing and authorize the deletion of an important file, but by god let me delete it. Windows has progressively deteriorated with each release. But you can’t blame them really; everyone’s trying to fuck with Windows.

- Replace the Save button with Unsave. Every file should be saved no matter what. More importantly, everything should be shoved into an open database, and ‘files’ should only be limited to sending documents via email. There could be intelligent UIs that give weightage to files, such that you can mark files for auto-deletion, and such. Okay that’s a terrible solution, but you know what I mean.

- Keep your alerts to yourself. I’ve written about this in the past, I just hate alerts and dialog boxes. The very fact that there are alerts in the first place is wrong enough. That I have to drop everything to attend to them is just plain fucking stupid.

- Figure out how to talk to other computers. How hard can it be? Macs are experts at networking, not requiring the least bit of configuration to see each other. But we live in a Windows world for now, and networking to those PCs is quite important. Bonjour for Windows Networking please!

- Stability of core functionality more important than features. I hate buggy software. Just make sure the app performs its function, as best as possible. There’s no point in adding features people can’t use. Once the existing featureset is bug free, add features in beta, make sure they perform totally awesomely, then make them ‘public’. The very fact that the x.x.1 update comes along just days after a major release shows that someone was hungry for cash. And by “beta” I don’t mean Google’s beta. I mean not freely available beta.

- Play music without jerking around. No process should take priority over playing notes out of a music player. I mean come on, if a 1 inch iPod Shuffle can do it, so can a gigahertz powerhouse.

The Mac is halfway there to this ‘perfect computer’ goal of mine. Windows on the other hand has a lot to catch up on. Linux? Forget about it! You will have better luck getting in the air with a home-made hot air balloon made out of garbage scraps.

Well ever since I’ve got this dSLR, everyone has been asking me how my new favourite hobby has been going. It’s just as well, what else would we talk about besides the new things we pick up? The problem is, I don’t quite have a ready answer. A blog post usually helps.

First things first, it’s been great. I’m absolutely loving my new cam, the Nikon D3000, as it’s easy to use, looks good, fucking comfortable, and is able to produce some good results. For those who are asking for my non-professional opinion, it’s a good camera and I think you should go for it. Oh did I mention I’m getting a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens instead of this rather average 18-55 zoom lens?

But all that’s the least important aspect of this thing called ‘photography’. Unlike using a point-and-shoot to click family photos and cats doing cute faces, there’s a whole new world opened up in front of that lens, and I feel compelled to capture it. It’s not all easy though, as getting into this mode is I’m sure worse than going through a sex change. To be able to visualise what the final image should look like on Flickr, and then grabbing the shot so is quite a difficult process as I’ve found out. Then there’s the aspect of everything being a cliché. How many shots of a bridge can be justified in this world? These are of course self-created impressions, as I’m sure there are thousands of potential bridge photos waiting to wow the world. I’m still learning see?

This past week I’ve been just about carrying the camera everywhere I go. I’ve got a large backpack and the camera along with the tripod fit in just nicely. So I’m riding along, when I notice this bus stop along a lonely field. I stop. Will this make a good picture? Will I be wasting my time trying to capture it? What about the light? Unlike regular ‘for memories sake’ photography, there’s no real reason to go capture an image. It’s optional, and that’s scary. I’ve also had great difficulty in getting a scene I see into the lens. I know some really scenic places, they look like something out of Lord of the Rings. But turn them into a jpeg and it looks like a regular old backyard. To be able to add depth, perception of size—I know it’s possible, and I’ll get there some day. I’ve found that sticking to a scene, and trying to make it work, ultimately lets you understand the scene better. I couldn’t have done it without the unlimited digital shots and the large LCD screen which is perfect for reviewing and deleting crap.

The Small Cat has been a total fucking useless asset in my training. He’s got the same face, has the same poses, and doesn’t do any cute tricks. There’s only so much orange a lens can open up to, so the cat is abandoned for now. I’m sure there’s some squeeze left in that sloppy beast, but for now I’ll leave him aside.

One thing I haven’t been doing much, is pictures of people. I’m terrified of people. For one, you can shoot as many shots of a tin can, in as many angles and poses as you’d like, and at the end of it, the tin can doesn’t ask you to show him the pics. The problem is also of expectations. The moment someone see’s you with a dSLR, they assume you’re completely professional, and will produce stunning images that their point-and-shoot wouldn’t even be able to dream of. At least I think they do. I can’t produce those yet. In fact mine are worse than from a regular cam since I’m only shooting manual (well, aperture priority). I plan on doing more people photography though, soon (did I mention the new lens?).

The third interesting change that a dSLR brings about, is everyone gives you more respect. I went about Mapusa to shoot some images of the Narkasura. Every time I asked if I could shoot a couple of images, they were most accommodating, and best of all—”Which paper are you a photographer for?”. I didn’t deny myself any of the attention and told them I was a freelancer. It’s the half-truth; flickr is my publication. In those cases of course, where I’m all professional, there’s no scare of someone asking to see the results of the images. “I can’t do that” is the perfect answer, where they’re even more impressed! I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get cops to do fake chase just for a pic in the papers.

On the software side, Aperture has been great. It’s totally the tool to use if you’re not shooting family and friends. It’s fast (when it’s the foreground app), and has a beautiful workflow for organising and publishing images. It’s way better than iPhoto, and I even prefer it to Lightroom. Although that’s more of a personal preference and might be hindered by the fact that Aperture is made by Apple, and Lightroom by Adobe. I wouldn’t know really.

To sum up, it’s been going great, I’m learning a lot, and I’ll soon upload some good shots on flickr. In fact, if you check there now I’ve gotten some pretty cool shots of gadgets.