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. 馃槈

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. 馃槈

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 →

Fatty fatwa

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From the showing-up-on-the-radar dep’t: The Colbert Report, a Daily Show spinoff, satirizes religious outrage:

My fatwa was issued by certain religious leaders because… I happened to say that Halloween was a better holiday than Romadon…

After I slammed Gandhi for his eating disorder, the Hindus came after me with an eight-armed Sheeva squeeze…

I got the Dolly Lama to take a punch at me just because I said Boodism is a religion for chubby chasers…

Nazi pope Benedict the 16th wanted to excommunicate me just because I called him a Nazi pope.

(The names are spelled the way he pronounced ’em .)

That’s not a Shiva image I recognize, though maybe it’s a style I’m unfamiliar with. The reference strikes me as a bit Temple of Doom-ish — Americans make a beeline for death cults. But hey, a funny mention is better than no mention. Watch the video.

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The smudge on Judge Alito’s spotless record

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Both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times recently featured in-depth profiles on Samuel A. Alito Jr. who has been nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States (see previous post). Both articles show the judge in a fair and mostly positive light, digging all the way back to his childhood to foreshadow the brilliant judge he would one day become:

Alito, who was valedictorian, excelled to such a degree that teachers at Steinert were forced to adjust their grading curves to exclude his marks. “Sam almost always scored 100, so the teachers responded by giving him an A and then determining the curve for everyone else,” McDonald said.

For college, he chose the lone Ivy League school in New Jersey. At Princeton, Alito majored in an elite public affairs program in the Woodrow Wilson School. He shunned the university’s selective private clubs and instead belonged to Stevenson Hall, a social and eating club that was more egalitarian because it was open to all students. He participated in the debate club. [Link]

Dave Sidhu of DNSI noticed something in both articles that he researched some more and then brought to our attention. It seems that Alito’s career had one small scandal that was connected to his days as a tough Justice Department attorney in the state of New Jersey. From the LA Times:

The Alito era did suffer a measure of scandal and embarrassment. One of the prosecutors in the office was charged with faking death threats against herself in the course of a case against two Sikhs accused of being terrorists.

What’s this all about? The New York Times fills in more detail:

In one of his office’s more difficult moments, Judy G. Russell, a special prosecutor who was a former assistant United States attorney, was found to have sent death threats to herself and the magistrate hearing an extradition case.

The threats came in the matter of two Sikhs facing extradition to India on terrorism charges. Mr. Kuby, a member of the defense team, faulted Mr. Alito for not having the prosecutor arrested and for failing to uncover the false threats more quickly.

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A New Wave of Fear

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The New York Times reports on escalating political violence in eastern Sri Lanka.  Much of Sri Lanka’s eastern province is controlled by the LTTE, which has been battling against a breakaway faction of the Tamil Tigers called the TMVP (Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal) for the last year and half.  The group is led by a former LTTE commander called Karuna, and is alleged by some to be operating with the blessing of the Sri Lankan army.  In the past year, abductions and assassinations have increased in the region:  190 documented killings occurred this year between February and November, compared to 60 last year:

There is no sanctuary even at a relief camp here for families displaced by the tsunami. Since February three women at the camp have been widowed.

Dayaniti Nirmaladevi’s husband was gunned down as he fetched noodles one night. Radhi Rani’s husband was shot after a fishing trip. Koneswari Kiripeswaran lost her parents and her only child, age 4, to the tsunami, only to have her husband shot dead at a bus stop on his way back to work in Qatar.

All three women said their men had been active in political organizations opposed to the notorious ethnic separatist group – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – but had given up politics. It is impossible to verify their claims.

LTTE supporters have been attacked, as well:

Here in Batticaloa the violence is not limited to enemies of the Tigers. One night in late September, Khandasami Alagamma’s husband was eating dinner in the front yard of a pro-Tiger charity where he worked as a night watchman when five grenades were lobbed at the building. He was killed instantly.

A visit to Batticaloa turned up a chilling inventory of violence.

On Oct. 1 a mason hired to repair a Hindu temple was shot to death as he slept on its terrace; the police say they do not know why. The day before, the vendor of a pro-Tiger newspaper was shot dead on a busy street. On the Wednesday before came the grenade attack on the pro-Tiger charity, and on the Saturday before that, a tailor was killed inside his shop just after sundown. He is believed to have been an informer, but for which side is unclear.

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Ivy jive

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Good taste becomes him

Yale has an entire course this semester dedicated to South Asian lit. And we didn’t even have to donate a million bucks for a South Asia chair destined for a non-South Asian Not even As-Am torchbearer Berkeley had one of these back in the day:

FALL 2005: ENGL 347a, CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIAN FICTION
William Deresiewicz…

Contemporary fiction by writers of South Asian birth or descent… Authors include V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Bapsi Sidwa, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Average reading load: 250 pages/week. [Link]

Sure, it’s 250 pages/week — if you leave out A Suitable Boy Why is the prof fascinated with these themes?

William Deresiewicz is the author of Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets… [Link]

The redcoats are coming

Ah yes, soap operas with Victorian mor脙漏s, a perfect match. It’s that blasted Pride and Prejudice again. After jonesing for Bridget (twice) and Bride of Gurinderstein, the new Keira Knightley version seems superfluous. The horse has not only been beaten, it’s died and been reincarnated as a hack. Ennis has been pitching me the book, but I’m in sucrose overdose.

脗路 脗路 脗路 脗路 脗路

Deresiewicz talks smack about Jhumpa Lahiri’s work:

Interpreter of Maladies… exhibit[s] a high degree of competence, but it’s the kind of competence that makes you want to call for the abolition of writing programsIt’s the kind of competence that makes you want to abolish writing programs… The pieces in Interpreter of Maladies are crafted–no, machine-tooled–to within a millimeter of their tiny, calculating lives; their writing-handbook devices–the inciting event, the governing symbol, the wry turn, the final epiphany–arrive one after another, exactly on time, with the subtlety of a pit bull and the spontaneity of a digital clock. Lahiri has since published The Namesake, a dull, studied, pallid novel that says remarkably little about the immigrant experience while elaborately fetishizing the consumption patterns of the liberal upper-middle class. [Link]

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My opponent is undecipherable and probably an “embed”

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60-year-old Indian-born citizen Tom Abraham, recently decided to run for City Council Seat 4 in Orange City, Florida. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports:

Hello. I’m ignorant. I want to be your city councilman.

Change and new ideas versus continuity and experience highlight the race for Orange City Council Seat 4, where newcomer Tom Abraham aims to oust two-time incumbent Don Sherrill.

“It is time for the residents of Orange City to go for a change,” Abraham said. “Don Sherrill has been a silent party participant, unless he is provoked by something like the salary increase. I don’t see him actively involved. If he is not involved, why give him four more years?”

Abraham, 60, was born in India and became a United States citizen in 1989. A nuclear medicine technologist, he has lived in Orange City for almost three years.

He got involved in city politics this year after the Orange City Mobile Home Park in which he lives was cited for various code violations.

The old saying, “all politics are local” rings true once again. When a person feels that their very home is threatened, why not run? Abraham’s opponent is incumbent Don Sherrill. Says Don:

“I think I have done the job expected of me as a city councilman,” he said. “The proof is that my peers selected me vice mayor with added responsibility. They have the faith in me to get the job done.”

I wouldn’t be so sure about that Don. Especially after they hear the following. From the Orlando Sentinel (thanks for the tip Arkaay):

A two-term City Council member has made disparaging remarks about the ethnicity of his Indian-born opponent in next week’s election.

During a candidate’s forum and again in an interview with an Orlando Sentinel staff writer, Seat 4 incumbent Don Sherrill criticized challenger Tom Abraham.

Sherrill derided Abraham’s accent at a political forum hosted and videotaped by the John Knox Village retirement community Oct. 12.

“I don’t know what to rebut because I don’t understand what he was saying, and I don’t mean that facetiously, I really don’t understand him,” Sherrill, who wears a hearing aid, told the group of about 40 people.

It gets worse. A lot worse.

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50,000 Fiction…Novembers

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2005_participant.gif

Thanks to my neo-luddite lifestyle, I’m a day late (with this post), and 1667 words short (with my, ahem, novel). 馃槈 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.

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Stamp of disapproval

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In the U.S. we have been talking for a while now about a Diwali stamp. In the U.K. however, it is a Christmas stamp that has gotten the attention of the Hindu community. The Telegraph reports:

Hindus are demanding that Royal Mail withdraws one of this year’s Christmas stamps, claiming the mother and child image it represents is insulting to their religion.

The 68p Christmas stamp, which would be used to send mail to India, features a man and woman with Hindu markings worshipping the infant Christ.

The image is one of a series of six mother and child stamps that go on sale today.

Ramesh Kallidai, secretary general of the Hindu Forum of Britain, said the image was insensitive, because it showed people who were clearly Hindu worshipping Christ.

“It is the equivalent of having a vicar in a dog collar bowing down to Lord Ram on a Diwali stamp,” he said. “These things need to be done with sensitivity.”

The main feature in this stamp that is causing anger is the fact that the man in the painting has a “tilak” on his forehead, which identifies him as a Vaishnava Hindu, and the woman has a “kumkum” mark on her forehead, identifying her as a married Hindu woman.

“It is striking to see that Royal Mail thinks it prudent to issue Christmas stamps that can cause resentment in the worldwide Hindu community but remains silent on the issuing of stamps for Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by the third largest faith community in the UK and by a billion Hindus worldwide.”

I usually roll my eyes at things like this but I can’t help but admit that the above point is a valid one. The argument in defense of the stamp is that it is art from the 17th century. Why revise/reject it just to be politically correct?

The picture was chosen for Royal Mail by this year’s stamp designer, Irene Von Treskow, an Anglican priest in an English-speaking church in Berlin.

She said she was fascinated by the image because it was so interesting to see a Mughal painting with a Christian subject.

She does not believe the picture is offensive. “How can it be?” she asked. “It is 17th-century art.”

Pickled Politics has more.

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The blacker the berry

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Turnabout’s fair play: Now the Indian cosmetics industry is targeting mattar-sexuals with a skin lightener for men.

The advert for the male cream shows a dark-skinned college boy relegated to the back seat and ignored by the girls until he uses the product. Soon enough, his complexion lightens and girls flock to him like moths to a flame…

Until now, skin-lightening creams have been aimed almost exclusively at women. This is the first launched nationally for men… Called Fair and Handsome, the advertisement for the product gives the message: be fair or remain in dark oblivion…

“A look at the matrimonial section… there’s not one guy who admits to being dark and attractive, they just say we are wheatish and fair. So there is just not one dark-skinned person in this country, they are all rolling wheat fields of masculinity.” [Link]

Naomi Wolf penned an interesting polemic on this subject in The Beauty Myth. She says many cosmetics companies fund women’s mags which are largely designed to make girls feel insecure about their looks. The industry appropriates the sheen of science (white lab coats in department stores, medicalized vocabulary like ‘invisible damage to your skin’) when many of them are really peddling snake oil. The more successful they are at creating a culture of hypochondria and medicalized insecurity, the more product they move.

Many industries besides cosmetics use fear in advertising. However, it’s far more damaging when it hits women’s self-confidence instead of something more neutral like their feelings about, say, consumer appliances.

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Religious weaponry (updated)

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Saffronists are distributing trishuls (tridents), a Shiva symbol, in Rajasthan:

The government in the western Indian state of Rajasthan says it will closely monitor the distribution of a traditional religious symbol by Hindu hardliners… According to the VHP, over 75,000 tridents have been distributed by the Hindu hardliners in the last year causing concern to the state government. [Link]

The purpose seems both electoral and nefarious:

In neighbouring Gujarat, more than 1,000 people died last year in violence between Hindus and Muslims… Hindu activists say they have distributed more than 70,000 tridents (trishuls) in Rajasthan in recent months. One Hindu activist, Mahavir Prasad, said all able-bodied Hindus would be given self-defence training as the state government could not guarantee their safety. [Link]

Right, Hindus, who outnumber Muslims twelve-to-one in Rajasthan, need to stock m脙陋l脙漏e weaponry at home. Purely for self-defense, you see.

But if we’re getting into avatar weaponry, give me a first-person shooter with a full armory. I want Parashurama‘s wikkid axe, Hanuman‘s berserker mace and Vishnu‘s self-levitating chakra. Give me multiple arms, a snake capable of churning the oceans and Garuda as a mount, and I’ll be pretty much invincible. As long as you don’t catch me in the twilight hour

Updated: I wonder whether the trishuls being handed out are purely symbolic, like most Sikh kirpans, or actually functional weapons. And if functional, can you imagine if churches handed out free handguns to, say, Episcopalians? Arms race! Normally the only religion I wouldn’t worry about is Buddhism, but then some crazy mofos uncorked a hand grenade at a Sri Lankan concert last year.

Oy vey. If having batleths is Klingon, only Klingons will have batleths.

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