Author Archives: A N N A

No Bollywood for You!

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I have watched phil-ums that made me want to gouge out my eyes with hot forks of displeasure, but I’ve never felt homicidal because of celluloid. According to my beloved Beeb, I OBVIOUSLY have nothing in common with Somali militia men:

Calm has returned to the Somali capital Mogadishu after 11 people were killed and 20 wounded in weekend fighting.
The clashes pitted militia belonging to the Islamic courts against owners of cinemas showing dubbed Bollywood films.

Obviously this horrible violence has nothing to do with the quality of a flick, but an extreme culture war over the qualities of the films and the activities related to them:

The Islamic courts have been attempting to control the activities of the cinemas – accusing them of fuelling crime, drug abuse and immorality.

Somalia has essentially been lawless for 14 years. What’s a little more immorality on top of THAT?

Last month, the court’s militia stormed a studio where Bollywood films were being translated and destroyed equipment.

I’m not quite sure what the honorable chairman from the state of fundamentalism means by the following quote:

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the chairman of the Islamic courts, says they open from early in the morning showing “scandalous movies to children even not allowed by producers in their home country”.

First and last of all, what scandal? The flouncing around gardens, peeking out from trees, getting close enough to sniff your dance partner but not kissing them even though the cut to a flower blooming might suggest exactly such fornication? Sheikh, please. Continue reading →

55Friday: The “War” edition

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We all know what today is and rather than prattle on about how I’m flummoxed that yet another week has raced past me and here we are, ready to write nanofiction, I’d rather focus on the significance of this day. In addition to 55Friday, today is Veterans day.

I learn something new every day. Here’s my chewable vitamin for today:

Q. What is the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day?
A. Many people confuse Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring military personnel who died in the service of their country, particularly those who died in battle or as a result of wounds sustained in battle. While those who died are also remembered on Veterans Day, Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor ALL those who served honorably in the military – in wartime or peacetime. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served – not only those who died – have sacrificed and done their duty. A complete history of Veterans Day, and why it is observed on November 11, can be found on our Veterans Day History Web page.

Though I tend to cringe whenever I’m exposed to the oeuvre of this holiday’s pneumatic spokesperson (who decides such things?) I am loyal to our military for a million reasons, most of which are inspired by my sole sibling who has spent almost a decade in active duty in the Air Force. Thank you, Veena, for all of your leadership and sacrifice. Thank you for giving yourself to a country that has given us so much. Most of all, thank you for putting a face on an organization which our family never really understood, appreciated or paid attention to until your courageous decision to serve. P.S. Please tell all of your friends, especially those who have been or are in Iraq and Afghanistan that I sweat them, too. Continue reading →

Watch Out Now, Hrithik

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We go from the strangely disturbing to the just plain strange today on the Mutiny. Right on time for dinner!

An Indian boy considers his rare birth defect to be an advantage. Devender Harne, 10, was born with 25 fingers and toes — six fingers on each hand, six toes on one foot and seven on the other.

Video of the child here. Of course he’s going to take the brown view of things: at school.jpg

Though it would be considered an abnormality to some, Devender says it allows him to work faster than the average child.

Despite his super powers, Devender is a pretty ordinary kid:

The extra digits on his hands and feet don’t hinder his daily life. Like any normal 10-year-old, he goes to school, plays sports and spends time with his friends.

As tipster BJ said– another one twenty-five for the world of Guiness. Brilliant!

The Guinness Book of World Records has contacted the boy’s family and is investigating whether he has the most useful fingers and toes in the world.

Continue reading →

55Friday: A N N A ‘ S “Mind Bomb” edition*

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I was somewhat surprised that more of our amazing brown creative writers weren’t doing NaNoWriMo with me; no worries, I read your comments and I understand. Writing a novel in one month, no matter which month you choose is a heady, harrowing thing– cheers to everyone who decided that in full compliance with IST, next month would be their time to shine and opine. May you all have more luck than I did during (after?) NaNoWriMo 2003, when I reached a devastating, untimely end to my participation during “official” November and immediately, earnestly resolved that I would pick up my mighty pen to write a good fight in December. One tiny problem. December is a wee bit hectic for Christians and Jews-by-association. No matter. I’m sure that our sepia/IST delegation of 2005 won’t have those issues though. 😉

Meanwhile, I imagine a few hundred of you took one look at my NaNoWriMo post and muttered, “Hell, no!”. Pas de probleme, mes petits choux– I welcome you back to our favorite space to write WAY shorter examples of prose on a weekly basis. While I didn’t have to dodge worried cafe-proprietors and police to post THIS week’s installment of 55-Fiction Friday, I did not do as well evading certain effects of one powerfully narcotic dose of Phenergan with Codeine. There. That’s my excuse for posting this almost 10 hours after I usually do. 😉

Perhaps I am overwhelmed with stress from moving out of my childhood home or maybe I’m exhausted from rushing all over Northern California to see some of you…either way, I am in one exceptionally sadistic mood. I can discern no other explanation for what I am about to issue, in way of challenge. As always, you are more than welcome to ignore my insignificant suggestions with regards to theme or content, and post or link to your fabulous 55 in our comments section even if you don’t follow a trend…but for a brave soul who is emboldened by a dare…I’m your huckleberry.

Have you noticed anything about this post? Something is not here, a word is amiss…I won’t have used it until I kill your curiousity by throwing down my writing gauntlet. I wonder…can you write a “55” without using that most ubiquitous of words? Can you, nay, will you be willing to introduce your nouns article-free?

55 words, none of which is “the“?

Blasphemy, they say. I say, go. Continue reading →

50,000 Fiction…Novembers

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Thanks to my neo-luddite lifestyle, I’m a day late (with this post), and 1667 words short (with my, ahem, novel). 😉 That’s how many words I need to average, per day, if I want to hit the magic number of 50,000 by November 30th. This lunacy I blog of can only mean one thing; either my father’s cousin was right about unmarried girls going mad by the age of 30 OR I’m doing NaNoWriMo for the third time. As much as some of you would opine that it’s the former, I assure you, it’s the other one.

Some history about this exhilarating, arduous, exasperating example of folly which requires copious amounts of hope, tenacity and your drug of choice for alertness, via the official site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Everyone who has thought about being a novelist? Really? So that’s like…87% of the people reading this. Dear 87%, there’s no need to fret about your great South Asian American novel, NaNoWriMo is about raw content, not polished prose. The idea of writing without inhibitions is the cliche from which all writing workshop exercises emanate:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Here’s why I’m telling you about this HERE, on the Mutiny:

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and — when the thing is done — the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

Continue reading →

I Heart Our Readers: SF Meetup Wrap-up

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The verdict was unanimous;’twas the best meetup EVER. Photographic evidence of that here.

October 30th, 2005, San Francisco: four current SM bloggers and six Bay Area mutineers met at North Beach’s yummy, caffeinated, iconic, no-worries-no-matter-HOW-long-we-stayed Caffe Greco and didn’t leave for six hours. Well, it was SEVEN for a certain guest blogger who forgot that daylight savings time commenced at 2, on Sunday. 😉 Hey–that’s what she gets for being so unbrown, i.e. on time. Had she been the standard I.S.T.-mandated hour late, she still would’ve been on time, except this time, with the rest of us. 😉

I attempted to live-blog the merriment, like I did the last time it was held in San Francisco; sadly, an unexpected lack of wireless prevented that. Forgive me for making you wait 48 hours? 🙂

Unpolished transcript, after the jump… Continue reading →

42 hours until the SF Meetup!

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Just a lightning-quick reminder (what IS it with me getting kicked out of the few, feeble places with net access out here???) about Sunday’s MEETUP.

Be there or be gossiped about. Viciously. 😉

VHAT: Meetup!
VHEN: October 30, 2pm
VHERE: Caffe Greco, 423 Columbus Ave

I promise to hold court until at least 6pm, so IST-adherents should be accomodated, just fine. So far, rumor has it that current Guest Bloggers extraordinaire Saheli and Ads will be there, signing autographs if you are exceptionally lucky.

I will probably be live-blogging it, like last time, since unlike HERE, North Beach has wayyy more wifi for the travel-weary and net-addicted. Whether or not the revolution is blogged, it WILL be photographed. So prepare to paneer it up, big time. As for who is on the Wee Eye Pee: come one, come all, blogger, comment-crafter, lurker and anti-Mutineer alike. We don’t bite.

Usually.

But it IS the day before Halloween, so if you get lucky… 😉 Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Why Does it Always Rain on Me?” edition

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Oh my. Usually, at this moment, I’m sitting in bed dumbfounded because it’s 3am on what I still consider Thursday (midnight never felt like a commencement, to me). Where were we? Oh yes. I was imagining where I normally type this post from– my bed, in front of Degrassi vintage, with the sound off. I’d be staring off in to space, concomitantly shocked and agog because yes, it’s ALREADY time to write and read nanofiction where does the time go blah blah blah.

But TODAY. Today, I am not doing that. Today, I am in California, in my Mother’s new home, where there is no nimble cable modem. There is no DSL. There isn’t even a local phone line hooked up yet, for me to try…(gag) DIAL-UP. So what could I do? I grimly did what I had to: I went, in search of the interweb.

Kinko’s? Closed. What kind of a Kinko’s CLOSES? Seriously! This blows, because I was quite fond of using “Kinko’s” as a synonym for “24 hours”. Beyond that tiny language tragedy, everywhere else? Um, this is the suburbs, so there IS no everywhere else to try. So get this– I’m borrowing wireless from my fave indie coffee place, because lucky for me (AND YOU) they didn’t switch it off like they usually do when they CLOSE.

I’m in a rainy parking lot, typing like a freak, the iBook’s brightness turning my face a not very divine shade of blue. Why? Because I love you and I love this weekly thing we do. When I commit, I commit. After we had moved the last few boxes to the new house, my mother was aghast when I told her during a dinner we were both to tired to eat, that I’d need to have a nocturnal adventure, in search of the net.

“But internet is coming tomorrow. Noon, I made an appointment with the phone company. Can’t it wait? Your friends will understand?”

“My FRIENDS (read: co-bloggers) will. My readers will be disappointed. Besides, I started this, so I have no excuse. Phone lines or not, the mutiny must go on.”

She nodded somberly at me and told me to try not to get lost. If you were previously unaware, I have the coolest Mother EVER. That doesn’t mean she isn’t strict– if I had said that I felt like going out for a martini, HA. If I had said that I felt like a movie, no dice. But stating that I needed…to…blog? Moms has her priorities straight, yo. 😉 Continue reading →

You Can Help Quake Victims by Eating Well

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Did you miss Blog Quake Day? Don’t feel bad– the fiercely righteous Samia Khan has come to your rescue, with an EASY way to give. She lovingly spammed 😉 my GMail with the following invite, which I was initially thrilled, then jealous to get:

Please join us for an evening of Dining and Giving
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 at dinner time
Heritage India
1337 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009
202-331-1414

You see, I am taking the red-eye on Tuesday, which means I will arrive in D.C. about 12 hours after this starts. I know I’m a rusted cynic, but I think dinner will be over by then. So yes, I’m envious of all of you who have the opportunity to eat at the BEST Indian restaurant in the city, for a cause that is dear to my heart.

MimiÂ’s American Bistro and Heritage India have graciously agreed to donate 15 % of your tab towards the South Asia Earthquake Relief Effort. The money will go to the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA). While APPNA has already contributed to ground efforts, the need for financial contribution continues to grow as winter approaches and logistics become more difficult. Thousands of Pakistanis are still without shelter and the threat of disease is on the rise. Show your generosity and compassion for the survivors of this devastating natural disaster by dining at one of these charitable Dupont Circle restaurants.
When you dine, please mention the cause when you make the reservation or at the very beginning of your meal.

Sheesh, I’ll eat at Heritage India with no reason or excuse, but to think that my blissing out over their legendary, just-like-Bukhara-at-the-Maurya-in-Delhi’s Ma ki Dal might benefit a human who suffered a quake in the very area most of the menu was inspired by? It’s like my passionate heart and delighted stomach would be picking out Linens ‘N Things. 😉

Seriously, if you are in town, go. Eat yummy food. It counts as giving (what an easy way to do so!). And then thank the Mutiny for being your social planner. 😀

p.s. I know I only posted info about Heritage India, even though Mimi’s American Bistro at 21st and P st is generous enough to also participate, but Heritage India just felt more apposite. Of course, I’m not biased. 😀 Continue reading →

Happy Birrrthday Dear Patriot Act…

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Oh joy, oh giddy delight. I love anniversaries, don’t you? Wikipedia’s always interesting and informative main page reminds us that it’s already been four years since we helped America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism:

Passed by the U.S. Congress after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, the (Patriot) Act enhances the authority of U.S. law enforcement for the stated purpose of fighting terrorist acts in the United States and around the world. This enhanced legal authority is also used to detect and prosecute other alleged potential crimes. Among other laws, the USA PATRIOT Act amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Among the laws the PATRIOT Act amended are immigration laws, banking and money laundering laws, and foreign intelligence laws…
Critics claim that some portions of the Act are unnecessary and allow U.S. law enforcement to infringe upon free-speech, freedom of the press, human rights, and right to privacy. Much controversy has arisen over section 215, which allows judges to grant government investigators ex parte orders to look into personal phone and internet records on the basis of being “relevant for an on going investigation concerning international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities”, rather than probable cause as outlined in the fourth amendment.

Continue reading →