"Sala Ek General"

Since the bloodless coup d'etat in 1999, I've never really known what to think about Pervez Musharaff. Now, though, his last ditch grab for power has gone too far. The Haneef case showed us all what happens when there is too much power in the hands of one person. Then it was Kevin Andrews playing with our justice system. Now, I give you General Musharraf in all his glory:

Pakistan police arrested scores of school students, the youngest being a 12-year-old, who participated in a silent rally in Islamabad to protest against the emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf.

With silver and black tape stuck on their mouths and holding placards with slogans like "Justice for justices" and "Free the media", about 100 students braved police batons near the upmarket Jinnah Super market in Islamabad on Monday.

I stumbled on this great dissenting voice. The pictures are clear enough:

Seneca, perhaps a translation is in order? Our cluster map ain't exactly showing a rollicking readership in Pakistan. Maybe the General, inspired by his military ruler buddies in Myanmar, has decided to disconnect the Internet?

The Post without Direction (Alternate title - Where is the post?)

So, just a short gripe I've been holding for a week or so. The Sydney train fare has increased by approximately 5% and one may see not a word spoken in the news, and not an adjective printed in the press. The apathetic nature of Australian society persists. If this had happened in France, there would be a riot, walls torn down, banners harking back to the days of French Revolution, and perhaps the dropping of the name Charles De Gaulle. But in Australia, and 'she'll be alright'. I've held back thus far without expletives, so i'll end it there. Moving on now, and we're back.

Yesterday, a festive time was had by all present. Hattori Hanzo was off to the land of the saints for a month, and we found this to be a suitable enough reason to get together, and naturally invite a common friend of hours, Mr. Jug O. Beer (BSc, B.A, MBA, RSA, MB BS, FCUK). Perhaps the idea lay dormant in my subconscious, or perhaps i'm not quite ahead of the curve so much as bringing up the tail from a mental aptitude perspective, but a few points about social interaction in the 2000's came to light. In an odd subversion of the social networking phenomenon, which has obviously been widely criticised for the devaluing of 'real' human relationships among our generation, I was surprised that the trashbagging of social networking sites served as an excellent entry point for real life conversation (I was guilty of this particular brand of introductory conversation on at least 3 occasions - with 3 different people).

There's an initial irony of being disillusioned by social networking websites (SNW's) and then using it as not only an entry point but a large framework of discussion with strangers. Then theres a rollover effect where following a successful introductory conversation at the expense of SNW's, where you meet someone new, one may continue to traverse these SNW's to find flaws to again bring up in actual life conversation. Everybody wins - Zuckerman, MySpace, Murdoch, you, me and the stranger who shared my disgust of false 'friendships', who I will will get a friendship request for on facebook, and probably worse, whom I will accept. Truly, the new age of social interaction is the exchange between the physical and cyber worlds.

On a different note, I'm glad that there are 1 or 2 more people besides us contributors who are reading this blog. Although they are friends of ours, I am still glad to have a readership outside the authorship, and for further notice all ships are invited. Some members of the readership thought we were turning into a male version of the show 'Sex and the City'.

I can't say i've ever sat through a complete episode of it, but thanks to some thoroughly brilliant marketing (and marketability) even those of us not privy to lives of 4 professional female New Yorkers, are aware of the style of each character. I've certainly babbled alot just there to get to my point that I got labelled as the Samantha (who is more of a pro than a professional - wink wink) of the Six Million Rupee Men. I thank those for their opinion, however somehow I feel my reputation precedes me. It does however bring up an interesting topic for which I would like to open up a discussion forum. Perhaps, like snakes on a plane, only better, we can take contributors, put up a script (or a pilot) and do something with it - and if nothing happens, we can leave this post as a nice reminder of ideas squashed at first hurdle. So heres some questions for those who can be bothered to place their input (and for which I will be forever thankful towards) - What would a male sex and the city be like, has it been done in another form (Entourage perhaps?), character names, location? All welcome. Just don't make a group about it on facebook, we shall instead potentially brood over this with an old friend, Prof. Jug O. Beer.

Oh no! Not again...

If there ever was a case of a picture saying a thousand words:

The secret to removing The Great Man has been revealed: let him get to 95. I think - don't quote me on this - he's been dismissed almost half a dozen times in the nervous nineties over the last year. Mohan, you fancy a statsguru of his ODI scores since the bilateral series with South Africa in the UK before the Test tour of England? The one they won 2-1? Perhaps you could it append it to this post.

Postscript - 23 November 2007
Some flowing prose from a favourite cricket writer, Rohit Brijnath in The Hindu:

Tendulkar’s body may have healed and allowed him a fuller expression of strokes, but it is his confidence in himself, confidence that was shaken and rattled surely but never extinguished, that carried him on. He still gets beaten some days, but he is also more fluent, too, astonishing no less in his ability to rack up scores of 99, 93, 8, 17, 99, 8, 55, 71, 94, 30, 0, 16, 43, 79, 47, 72, 21, 4, 99, 29, 97 in his last 21 one-day innings.

What does Tendulkar play for? Team, himself, pride, records? Maybe he plays because part of him is just a boy who finds himself when bat meets ball. Maybe he plays because of a boy agog in the stands. Maybe he has summoned this last reservoir of energy to show a kid, now old enough to understand, why, for 18 years, the world has made such a fuss about his father.

No action left in your keyboard?

Mr Charity happens to be in the market for a new keyboard. Discussion of his search bought on memories of this moment from The Blues Brothers movie of 1980 - wikipedia synopsis:

"a tale of redemption for the paroled convict Jake Blues and his brother Elwood as they decide to take on a "mission from God" and reform their blues band in order to raise funds to save the Roman Catholic orphanage where they grew up."

I have included this quote because of the wikipedia links, an opportunity to explore The Art of Wikigroaning, no doubt. Back to the matter at hand. Elwood and Jake catch up with an old friend at Ray's Music Exchange:

Michael Jackson - Prince - Justin Timberlake (?)

It's like that question they often place in the literacy component of aptitude tests: Which is the odd one out? Increasingly, the opinion is being built that Justin (JT) is very much in line for induction into the pantheon of solo male popstars, MJ and the artist formely known as (but now known as such) amongst the groups finest. Some of the evidence is quite strong: teen star of N*Sync turned glamour boy thanks largely to the brilliant production of the Neptunes on his debut album, then popstar with (minimal) musical cred thanks to the arguably even more brilliant production of the current studio king Timbaland. So the faithful ask..why doesn't he deserve his place among the greats?

I have had the great fortune of seeing MJ in concert (1997 SCG 70,000 sold out crowd) and Prince (2002 Sydney Entertainment Centre), and last week I went to JT to see if he was the one to make the holy trinity. He was not.

The boys talent, nobody is doubting. The dancing - spectacular. The voice (i'll get to that later). The musician (well..sort of, but not really), but the general showmanship was better than any other solo artist touring today. This however, I would argue, is thanks largely to the strength of the pop/dance tracks produced by Timbaland. As a spectacle, with the lighting and sound effects, the show was a success.

Although in many ways pop music is self indulgent by nature, JT's constant posing throughout his gig doesn't allow for any real connection to be made with the audience - it's all about him. This might not seem to faze the 13 yr old girl, a concert first timer, and her friends sitting in the row below as they are enthralled to simply see his face projected onto large screens (omg he's real!). He is obsessed with showing us, his lowly audience, that he can do everything. So he dance, sings in his painfully thin falsetto voice, and takes any opportunity to strum out chords on guitars, synths, piano - then the 13 yr old girl said 'I didnt know he could play so many instruments'. The magic trick worked, and for most people playing chords = virtuosity = musician. Evidently, and I will spell this out - he is not the Princely musician he wishes to become - Eric Clapton said Prince was the best guitarist he'd ever seen.

The greatness of MJ and Prince (just examples - there are others) lies in their ability to never let their artistic superiority get in the way of losing their connection with the audience. In their shows there is elements of the spectacular, lighting, sound, explosions, the posing (and what is a pop-star without the 'hey look at me' element) but there was also honesty and humanity. Watching Prince sing purple rain, or MJ sing 'shes out of my life', and no matter how large the audience, pindrop silence ensues, and for the girls out come the tissues (and some of the guys - ok yes maybe it was me). Timberlakes 'Prince imitation' falsetto really is false - rather than communicating the song it feels like he's singing just so he can show us his wafter thin high notes.

Even with a band as great as i've ever seen, I can only really recall one 2 minute window where I saw such honesty from JT. Part of it isnt completely his fault. Although his pop/dance tracks are among the best pop songs of the last 10 years, a glaring weakness in his repertoire is his ballads. MJ had great ballads, Prince had the sort of ballads that hit you straight in the gut (think 'Adore'). JT's ballads are not only poor songs, but in the wake of his paper thin voice he is drowned out by his band, so theres almost no articulation..what is he singing about? Probably some kind of love, so the girls scream anyway 'he's amazing!'. If only you knew, what a superstar was. Timberlake is a somebody, a megastar in the youtube 'everybody can be a star' era, but dont put his name amongst the others. MJ - Prince - ? we're still waiting, and i'm hopeful, but perhaps it'll have to wait till the next generation.

So after leaving the concert, I felt entertained, but not amazed and not with the feeling that you were the presence of greatness. It wasnt all his fault, it was Just-him.