Resistance is Futile

Someone should notify Pamela Geller, the Sharia Law has now made its way into the fashion world.

The new fall lines of Gucci and BCBG are full of uber halallified dresses like the following:

Who knew the designers would be this accepting, eh?

Peppy Poppy New Music

Something about Spring makes me want to listen to peppy poppy songs.

Sara Bareilles - King Of Anything: I loved her previous album, and I am really enjoying her new songs. This song sort of reminds of me Katy Perry's Firework, as it's all about taking control and what not. Girls can be so cheesy.

Coldplay - Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall: Girls can be cheesy, but nobody can write more melodramatic lyrics than Christ Martin. Seriously, who says things like, "I rather be a comma, than a fullstop." As much as I don't appreciate the sappiness Coldplay comes up with, I still love their music, and shamefully I am liking this song.

OneRepublic - Good Life: This song caught my attention because it starts off with a mention of London and Piccadilly. And, we all know how much I love London. *SIGH*.

Sara Bareilles - Uncharted: It's not as Girl-Power-Anthemish as the first Bareilles song on this list. It's a good song, with good beat and good lyrics.

Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.

The following excerpt is taken from Jonathan Franzen's op-ed piece for the NY Times, in which he discusses the difference between liking and loving. One is more narcissistic and impersonal, whereas the other is more vulnerable and sincere.

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.

This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

In addition to what Franzen mentioned in the article, I believe that our smartphones are altering our thought process. Our brains are constantly bombarded with so much information that now our conversations are determined by our cellphone's news feeds. Our phones are depriving us from observing the world around us. They are also depriving us from formulating our own original well-thought and processed opinion about what is going on. If we find a news article that we like, instead of using words to describe what we like about it, all we have to do is hit the oh-so-convenient "like" button, and "share" it with the rest of the world.

Are our smartphones making us dumb?

My Loves

In my South Asian culture children live at home until they are married. So after marriage when I moved to California my love for my family evolved into a deep feeling of appreciation. In the past one year I have become more appreciative of what my family means to me.

My mom made me the woman I am. If it were not for her I would not have the happy marriage I have. She taught me the value of a good marriage. She showed me how to balance the dichotomies that lie within me. If it were not for her I would still be struggling with the East vs. West conflict. I would still be struggling to keep a balance between my beautiful relationship with my husband and my own academic goals. She really created an environment for me and my sister where she showed us that we can achieve anything we want. But a successful life does not mean you have to compromise your family life. Because true sustainable happiness comes from your family life.

My father travelled a lot because of work. He was never an active parent, where he was involved in our day to day life. But, whenever he came back to visit us he brought us books. He took us to museums and encouraged us to think and reflect about the great people who have lived before us. These "nerdy" exercises which we were made to do, did not seem very significant when I was growing up. But, now that I am in the graduate program I have a new found appreciation for the academic foundation my father laid for me when I was just an ignorant kid.

My brother lived away from home because of school and then later for work. I am ever so grateful for all the childhood memories we made together. He has a son now. My nephew, who my sister and I helped in naming, coincidentally has the same name as the first Muslim superhero, Batman's new sidekick the Nightrunner. How cool is that! My nephew can dress up as "himself" on Halloween.

My sister is my life and soul. She is the most intelligent person I know. She is my intellectual compass. She is my other half. I had the hardest time getting used to my new life in California because my sister was not here with me. I do not ever have to explain myself to her. She gets me just the way I am. She is truly a beautiful gift that God blessed me with.

My husband is the most understanding man I know. We have been married for over a year now, and he  has made me happy above and beyond my expectations. He has already fulfilled all of my dreams. He is extremely sensitive to my needs. All I have to do is ask for something and he will make it happen. I am so blessed to have a husband who understands me, loves me, appreciates me, and provides me security and confidence. I am so lucky and blessed to be with him each and every day for the rest of our lives.

I would also like to mention my best friend. Even with all the distance we still make time to talk to each other once a week. My undergrad years would have been a total waste if it weren't for her. She is an epitome of eternal understanding.

These are the people who define me. I hope I am able to show them how much I love and appreciate them.

SURVIVE A NEW YEAR

Found here.

Movie Marathon: Buried

Hollywood films come in plethora of genres, romantic comedy, teenage romantic comedy, comedy, romance, drama, thriller, horror, action and so on. But when it comes to movies, I only have two distinctions, cerebral vs. brainless-fun movies. I watch the latter type of movies like "Easy A", when I just want a good entertainer that does not require too much thinking or deep mental provocation. The former type, on the other hand, includes movies that have a visceral effect on me. In the recent past, movies like "127 Hours", and "Toy Story 3" really moved me both intellectually and emotionally.

"Buried" classified as a thriller is neither a cerebral nor a brainless-fun movie. It is a movie that never really makes a case for itself. The story-line holds a lot of promise, but the movie sadly never takes off. "Buried" is about an American truck driver who is buried alive inside a coffin in Iraq, with nothing but a blackberry. He is held for ransom by Iraqi insurgents, who ask him to make a plea video and call his supervisors back in Washington for five million dollars. He uses the phone to call his family, FBI, and the private trucking company he works for. But, he is either put on hold or gets the answering machine.

The movie is somewhat about the politics and immorality of the Iraq War. It is somewhat about the value of human life. It is somewhat about the bureaucracy of American corporations and how they do not give a rat's ass about the lives being lost in Iraq. "Buried" touches upon a lot of themes but does not fully grab onto one theme to make a connection with the audience. Ryan Reynolds plays the lead role. I don't know if it was his poor acting or the shallow script but I did not care about his fate in the movie. I did not care whether he would be able to arrange for five million dollars from the grave, or whether he would get to talk to his family. Even though, as an audience I was not able to bond with the character, I was also not utterly bored. I watched the movie waiting for something to happen.

This movie is based on a good idea, but fails in delivery because of the poor script. The most interesting point the movie makes is that even though the protagonist is able to get a good network connection from six feet under, he still struggles to get help.

p.s. I want to know who the network provider was!

Movie Marathon: Easy A

"Easy A" is a romantic comedy starring Emma Stone, which is loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. The novel is about an adulterous woman, Hester Prynne, whose actions are publicly condemned by her Puritan society, and the same man who is an equal partner in her sin. The movie is a smart comedy about a generation that is greatly linked through texting and other social networking websites.

I recently read an article in the NY Times regarding the demise of emailing. Our generation prefers to communicate through texting or instant messaging. I remember when I was a teenager my friends and I preferred to communicate through MSN messaging, or emails. Then Facebook came along, and we started writing on each other's walls. We commented on oodles of pictures that our friends posted. However, things changed a couple of years ago, when people realized that information on social networking sites such as Facebook is not very private, and in fact very public. The shift happened, instead of sharing our pictures with everyone on our friends list we became more discreet. And, instead of writing on each other's walls, we started private messaging each other.

The way we communicate has changed a lot in the last 15 years. My husband and I prefer to either text or "talk" to each other on gtalk. We both have android phones which make keeping in touch and sharing quick updates on gtalk much easier. My major concern about texting is that kids are not using proper grammar and/or spellings. In the world of spell check, abbreviated syntax and 140 characters long sentences, the art of beautiful composition is at abysmal loss.

What "Easy A" shows that no matter what the preferred medium of communication is, gossip travels fast. And it is no picnic to be a teenager! The other interesting theme the movie touches upon is that high school kids do not read the books they are taught in English class. They either rent the film versions of the books, or rely upon SparkNotes. The books on the high school reading list seem dated to the students, but as the movie shows, they are far more relevant than they appear to be. In the past, myriad of classics have been turned into teenage romantic comedies. The list entails, Emma ("Clueless"), Romeo and Juliet ("Romeo + Juliet"), Taming of the Shrew ("10 Things I Hate About You"), Othello ("O"), Twelfth Night ("She's the Man"), and so on.

Emma Stone is wonderful in the movie. If you are looking for a fun and yet not a dumb movie, do check this one out. I will be posting more reviews throughout this week, as I have some time off until the next semester starts. My husband and I have a rather ambitious list of movies we want to finish watching during the holidays.

Disclaimer: For the sake of my husband's street-cred I should mention that I watched this movie without him.

Lessons Learned after 1 year of Marriage

1. Nagging has its merits.
2. A little bit of patience goes a long way.
3. Onions make you cry, so after peeling them put them in the freezer for a minute or two.
4. Marriage makes you smarter. I am taking courses at Berkeley for Heaven's sake :).
5. Never read a depressing, albeit engrossing, book like Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom'. It is a social commentary of our modern day dysfunctional nuclear family. The book would make you utterly depressed about the current dismal state of marriage in our society.
6. TV shows play a crucial role in the success of a marriage. Have specific shows that the both of you should watch exclusively with each other.
7. Traveling with the spouse is fun.
8. Don't act on emotions right away. Give them some time to settle and coherently discuss any conflicts you may have.
9. Never go to bed angry.
10. Never have the same argument twice. Move on. The important thing is you both love each other and nothing can separate you.
11. Snoring should be taken as a sign of love and trust.
12. The key to a man's heart is through his stomach.
13. Ironing burns calories.
14. Even small romantic gestures go a long way.
15. Grow together. Learn from each other.

Heads or Tails

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Thousands died on 9/11, and thousands of innocent people are dying in Afghanistan, and Iraq. America waged two wars in Asia after 9/11. And, like any other war, American soldiers are losing their lives, and taking lives of many innocent people who have nothing to do with the doctrine of Bin Laden or any other fundamentalist group out there.

For American Muslims, August was probably the worst month. Muslims were called a lot of names in the media, all because they wanted to build a community centre near Ground Zero. The issue of Islamic extremism was plastered over and discussed on every single news channel. But, what the media refused to acknowledge, explicitly, was that the elements of extremism also exist in their American society. Fanatics like Pastor Terry Jones, Pamela Geller and the Fox News clan, in my humble opinion, belong under the extremism umbrella. They are doing an awesome job in dividing the American society and deteriorating peace. If you objectively look at the narrative of Al-Qaeda (Bin Laden clan) and right-wing ignorant Americans (The Fox News clan) they are the same. Their narrative is antagonizing, offensive, manipulative, and simply hatefully ignorant.

I am typing this as I am watching 60 Minutes' cover story, A Relentless Enemy, about the war in Afghanistan. Lara Logan reports, American lives are in danger in Afghanistan. They are being attacked by unknown Afghans and Pakistanis, when all the Americans want in return is peace.

This is expected when the war Americans are fighting is so abstract. The "War on Terror" is a very abstract phrase. What is terror? Who are terrorists? These two terminologies have never been clearly defined. And, yet so many of our soldiers (both American and Canadian) have lost their lives in the past 9 years. My heart goes out to them as much as my heart goes out to the innocent civilians who lose their lives everyday. Sometimes because of the drone attacks. What I find so inhumane about the drone attacks is that in the eyes of Americans these civilians are so worthless that they can just die by a machine with the push of a button. The lives of these civilians are so worthless that they don't even deserve to die by someone who would be able to experience the direct repercussions of his or her actions. The lives of these civilians are so worthless that they don't even deserve to get killed by a human, but by a machine; just like how animals are slaughtered by a machine in an assembly line.

There are peace loving Americans. And, there are peace loving Muslims. The moderates, which I believe is the majority, want the same thing - peace. But sadly their message gets lost and never crosses over to the other side.

The problem we are faced with is that we never see both sides of story. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have two different narrations, "theirs" and "ours". Now that the war in Iraq is supposedly "over" we may term it a victory, but the country is still unstable. We may call the Karzai government in Afghanistan a democracy, in other words a success, but his government is extremely corrupt. Just like there are always two sides of the same story, there are extremists on both ends of the "West vs. Islam" spectrum. Until we don't recognize the similarities between the two extremist camps we would be stuck in the same abyss, which is the war on terror.

Toy Story 3

Moving on and/or growing up requires one to come in terms with their new role in life. And, this is the theme of Toy Story 3, a very emotional animated film by Pixar, which perfectly tells the story of what love and moving on is. Love is fluid and in many ways impermanent and immortal at the same time. It is an abstract feeling which is not fixed in time or place. The distance doesn't change our love it just reshapes, and redefines it.

Our adolescence is dominated with the feeling that we are the absolute centre of the universe. We feel we are misunderstood by everyone because we are "oh so very unique". We want everything; and everything is possible. We live by the doctrine "All or nothing" as Shakespeare showed in "Romeo and Juliet". If the 15 year old Juliet couldn't live with her teenage Romeo she didn't want to live at all. But, as we grow up we become more aware of our own limitations. This self-awareness may lead to disappointment and dismay as Richard Yates depicted in "Revolutionary Road".

But growing up is also an evolution of our relationships. I feel I have learnt a lot in these past 9 months of marriage. Living away from home (Toronto), and the distance of almost an entire continent forced me to reevaluate my life, and my relationship with my family and friends. Recently I was back in Toronto for one whole month. I had anticipated that my time there would be the same as what my life was like before I got married and moved to California. But my month long stay made me realize that my life is in California now. Until my husband and I move back to Canada for good, I would always be a visitor...guest...there.

As humans we are very adaptable. Life is constantly changing around us, and like the toys in the movie, we are forced to adapt to these changes. Holding onto the past would only lead to unhappiness.

But then again it's good to hold onto some traditions. For instance, I waited a whole month to watch Toy Story, so I could honour the tradition of watching Pixar productions with my sister. And, it was worth the wait.