Gogol Bordello - Through The Roof 'n' Underground

Really nice song:

Is your wife Swedish? ...Yes? Ok. *

In inspiration from A Journey Around My Skull, and in celebration of the upcoming Tim Burton movie, here are some intricate and delightful drawings from a retold (simplified) version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

Down the rabbit hole.

 

The rabbit is hurrying away!

 

Advice from a caterpillar.

  

Weird, frog-like servants

Mad tea party

Players of hearts.

The Duchess and the Red Queen.

 

The sarcastic Gryphon.

 Alice in court.

The story is retold by some bloke called Richard Croft (couldn't find anything on him), and these wonderful illustrations are by Dean Gasper. I didn't find much on him either, except this small mention, which simply tells me that he is a famous celebrated illustrator. If so, then why, Oxford, could you not write more about him?   =__=

I found this copy of the book lying randomly around the house a very very long time ago, and as things go, I absorbed myself into it. It's one of those cheap Indian pulp-fiction type books, printed on wafer-thin paper and retold in the most simplistic of terms for primary school children to understand.

I am still not sure if I ever even managed to read the original text. I definitely remember loaning it out of my school library once (with that ecstatic feeling of finding an author you know, like finding an old long lost friend). But I am not sure if I ever finished the book; maybe I should go back to it and read it all over again.

The thing about Alice in Wonderland is that there is something very stifling about it. When I read it for the first time, the idea of a girl stuck in a surrealistic landscape of talking animals and twisted riddles was frightening and suffocating. Even if you think about it now, and imagine yourself in such a place, how terrible it would be to fall down a deep rabbit hole, forever, and then find yourself continuously shrinking and growing at the wrong time, and to be confronted by a queen who is obsessed with the phrase "Off with their heads!". Then there is the grinning Cheshire Cat - I don't care what people say about it helping Alice, there is something eerie and creepy about that grin.

The book reads like being trapped in a technicolour dream, which is simultaneously a fantasy and a nightmare. The final moment at which Alice awakes, and we find that this was all a dream, is not much reassuring, as it makes this idea of "wonderland" even closer to reality, as it is something which we can enter in our dreams. 

But despite all this, I adore this book, because it is this very quality to frighten you by taking you into a wonderland, and then to make you come out again, as if awakening from a dream, is what symbolises that childhood simplicity. With a few words on books, some nonsense poetry and some over-the-top wacky characters, an entire world can be created, which you can enter and leave at will.

I suppose this is the sort of reaction Lewis Carroll (i.e. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) intended for. Oh, and by-the-way, Dodgson was also a very talented mathematician. Which makes him even more awesome. After all, even Mathematicians need to inject some utter nonsense in their lives sometimes, or else they would go mad. Or perhaps, going mad is not such a bad thing.

* a random joke I heard once, 

where a British man got himself a Swedish wife. 

As this old brain goes, I can't remember the joke.

I can never call 'Mumbai' by this name. Instead, I use the name the bastards left over*

Finally, Spring Break!

Such a relieve from all the work, and all the FLOATING HEADS IN THE LIBRARY WHO DISTRACT YOU FROM WORKING (yes, you know who you are).

Anyways, this post is just a random accumulation of things I have not had time to post up in the last week; or small things which do not deserve an entire post by themselves. So here we go...

Random thoughts

If you are an expatriate to another country (i.e. you are only living and working there temporarily), then do you have the right to criticise that country and the locals, or the laws of that country?

This is a hot question where I live, because here expatriates outnumber the local population by a ratio of 3:1, and there is some controversy when it comes to the expatriates criticising some aspects of the country's laws (especially regarding freedom of speech and labour laws).

The expats insist that if they are to live here, then it is important that the ideals in which they are used to in their own countries be implied here as well, and that is for the good of the country and its progress.
The locals insist that the expats consider themselves to be better than them, and want to impose their ideals onto the locals, regardless of what is best for the country.

If you are in a similar situation, and are wondering what to do (should you, or should you not express your views), then here is a simple diagram (designed by moi) to help you figure out what to do:
 

Ok, its a pretty shit diagram, but can YOU come up with something better? No? Then don't criticise me.

Random Scribd Finds

I was just randomly browsing around Scribd last week (because I obviously have nothing better to do), and I found some really nice things.

Babes in Toyland

This is a beautiful set of children stories by Glen McDonald and Anna Alice Chapin, with magical illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts.


The Quiet Revolt

This is an absolutely hilarious list of all the things the writer hates. But I am sure that he/she will hate me for calling their views hilarious.


Banksy - Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

Banksy - Existencilism

Banksy - Wall and Piece

Ok, I know I should be feeling guilty, as these books are copyrighted. But still, Banky himself said that "copyright is for losers". Honest.

There is tons of other stuff you can find on Scribd too, like poetry collections of Robert Frost, poetry by awesome indie artists, magazine articles, indie newspapers, and so on.

Random Music Musings

I love this beautiful song by Peggy Lee, sung in her seductive sexy voice. Somehow, none of the new female singers have such a addictive sound to their songs.

Also love this video by Travis. I remember watching this a long time ago late at night while i was doing some random shitty artwork (as childhood goes...), and I fell in love with the scene where the woman throws the octopus across the table.



But don't you think this video would be better on THIS song:



I absolutely LOVE this song. Love it, love it, love it. Not a week can go by without me listening to this song at least once.

I definitely remember listening to this song a very long time ago, and the tune was stuck in my head. It was probably when I couldn't read or write in English, hence I didn't know the name of the artist or the song.

But then one day in school, our Media Studies teacher mentioned that this was his favourite song, and he played it for us. And it was like being filled with ecstasy at that synthesised sound. I quickly scribbled down the artist and the song, and have listened to it every week since.

I like the original video, but I always imagined this song as a giant food fight among aristocrats. Hmnn...

Alright, that's all for now. I have other bits and bobs to share as well, but this post is already too long. Take care, and enjoy your Spring Break, wherever you may be. Either in here, or in Italy, enjoy the sun. And remember, if you are an expat, keep your mouth shut.

P.S. 

also updated "Blog Quotes" (link). I thought no one gave a damn, but Scribd tells me someone's actually bothering to read it. The new quotes are at the end of the document. I edited out some old quotes, as they made me sound like a devil-worshiping weirdo. Which I am not, obviously.

* "Bombay"

Blah 6

Only 2 more days [+2 tests and 2 midterms] till Spring break!

Can't wait, can't wait.

Need to:

• get a haircut (I'm looking more and more like a depressed uncombed hippie everyday)

• buy new clothes

• buy new glasses (for the eyes, not the drinking ones)

• GET FIT (need to exercise, I'm gaining weight + eat healthy)

• Get back on track with my line drawings 

• Write reviews on my other blog (I haven't updated it for MONTHS)

• Be nice to my parents (I'm acting like a real idiot right now, with all my shitty "uh-huh" conversations and sarcastic comments)

• Be nice to my brother (no, seriously, I NEED TO START BEING NICE TO MY BROTHER)

• DRIVE MY FRICKING CAR [ok, my Dad's car]. I HATE HOW I GOT MY LICENSE ABOUT 200 MILLION YEARS AGO, BUT STILL HAVE NOT DRIVEN PROPERLY ANYWHERE

Sayaka Kajita Ganz Recycled Art

 Here is some astonishing artwork by Japanese born Sayaka Kajita Ganz. Ganz uses anything from discarded polystyrene cups to scrap metal in order to produce these elegant sculptors.

The amazing thing is that she goes around hunting for rubbish thrown out of windows, rather than simply recycle her own garbage:

I only select objects that have been used and discarded. The human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes.  My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist.

By building these sculptures I try to understand the human relationships that surround me. It is a way for me to contemplate and remind myself that even if there is conflict right now, there is a way for all the pieces to fit together. That even if some people don’t feel at home here and now, there is a place where they belong and that they will eventually find it.

I wish I had the strength to look through piles of garbage and find that type of absolute peace and beauty.

 

  

  

  

 

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Blah 5

Ever felt like someone else thinks your stupid?

I'm not used to being treated as stupid, but I feel incredibly pathetically stupid.

I can't do anything well. Its like my worth is weighed in a mass heap of rotting banana skins.

What good will this do to the world?

Oh well.

As Chris' character from Skins would say:

   "fuck it".

edit: just in case you were wondering, my current track is "Welcome to the Jungle".

edit 2: OH WHY, WHY WHY WHY DO PEOPLE SOCIALISE IN THE LIBRARY?

GO TO A NIGHTCLUB, GO TO KFC, GO TO YOUR GRANDMA'S HOUSE, GO TO LUCIFER'S MOUTH, GO ANYWHERE - BUT DON'T FRICKING SIT BEHIND ME AND JABBER AWAY ABOUT USELESS DUMB THINGS. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT.

edit 3: just to make you feel worse, here is a random black-and-white photo of an old man from an old news story. Because THIS is how I roll.

 

via Adam Curtis' Blog 

Blah 4

via Dreamer

HU2 Design

Found these really cool wall stickers from Hu2 Stickers :

 

Complicated physics + weather to make a bulb work

 Rain + fish bowl = LIGHT

Attention starved wall

 

 Great dreams of a lonely wall

  

Got it? Now remember!

  

Millions of hamsters everywhere are running our world (literally)

  

Rat in a lamp.

  

Eek!

 

Why hate rats, when they decorate our homes?

 I particularly love the Eco reminders, they remind me of Banksy rather than to switch off the lights.

I love you, because you are the only human being in this universe

Here are some random videos for your enjoyment. These are ones which I found very thought-provoking and well made. Ok, the phrase "thought-provoking" means that these are not enjoyable videos in the usual sense. But do watch them, I give them to you with love.

Most of them are introductions to documentaries by Adam Curtis, so if you don't know him already, it should be a nice introduction to his awesomeness and style.

Intro from The Trap - What Happened to our Dream of Freedom (2007, Adam Curtis)

Intro from It Felt Like a Kiss (2009, Adam Curtis)




Intro from The Power of Nightmares - The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004, Adam Curtis)




The short Oh Dearism, by Adam Curtis in Charlie Brooker's Newswipe (2009)




Alternative trailer to The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)




Scene from Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)

She came, but her words were only empty blurs

Yesterday the entire road in front of my dorms was filled with cars.

A bit like a psychopathic dystopian landscape from a terrible alternative future, in which all humans have  morphed into cars, and were eternally doomed to be stuck in endless traffic jams.

Oh no, wait, that's not an alternative future, it's the present.

*Oh and [bloody hell], they were all there to see the Philharmonic Orchestra. Seriously, Philharmonic Orchestra? THAT MANY people for Philharmonic Fooking Orchestra?

That fooked feeling

Oh this life of yours.

I see you,

with my twisted eyes,

weird bended hooded eyes.

I see you, 

lying there,

in your insolence

talking to strange men in coats,

heavy-set grey coats,

speaking out prose lined with blood and boredom.

Now come here you,

I see that you are feeling a little fooked,

a little slashed and mashed,

harmonically shagged,

like a manic joker, depressed hooker,

you roll about in your bed,

with your eyes like hideous stalks,

I see you,

disgustingly cooked to your soul,

brain gashed with spanning hackers,

you sitting there,

you melancholic hippie,

recursive robot,

you, with your buttons all clasped together,

your tongue tied with tormented phrases,

sickening words of tricks and jargon,

Come here, you!

Let me take you,

From these heavy billowing clockworks,

To smashing blue lights of dreams and joy,

Words strung together, 

With purest stains of Farsi and Urdu. 

French and Italian.

Come here you, 

Let me untie your tongue,

Spit out those terrible words of mourn and bereavement,

And fill them with phrases of astonishment,

Delight and colours,

Take in these sonnets which I hand to you,

Take them within your head,

Mix them with fantastic shades of purple and lime,

Enthusiastic jets of electric pink,

This bit of Shakespearean English,

That bit of Spanish poetry.

You little robot,

you little dried up machine,

stop waiting around,

for these fookers and mappers,

these slow bloody bastards,

they fill you with more cogs and motors,

then smash you apart and abandon you,

then take you up again,

as a new muse,

to filter in more pathetic snaring idiocies.

Their sickening heartless prose,

filled with nothing but crashing cymbals of despair,

cruel things they are,

all they do,

is take little things like you and me,

and turn us into walking glass tinctures,

filled with trite and worn out ragged blood.

But come here, and unite,

Fill yourself with these,

Pristine flashes of fractured light,

Throw out liquids in your eyes,

And see this beautiful universe,

Filled with red grass, floating trees and flying fish,

See this world,

Full of energetic particles and hidden matter,

Observe with your eyes,

What a delight it is to see green plastic,

Close to your eyes,

And see the white light flashing from it,

Sending magnetic waves of joy in all directions.

Come here, you,

You little disheartened android mechanism,

See this world from my twisted eyes.

Weird bended, hooded eyes.

Your man:

He's on a horse:

If you want a Wonderland, you need to bend your eyes

I am not sure if you have ever experienced this, but do you remember when you were young, and when your mind was free of the prosaic mazes of the adult world; and you would walk around your house for the hundredth time, yet each time was a new adventure, and each old step into a room became a new cavern of delight.

Its that time when chairs arranged carefully around you with a meekly blanket on top promised protection from the giant fish which threatened to devour you. Within this little corner house, you nested carefully, with a family of roughly molded plastic dolls lined up and tucked in, so that all their polyester hairs were perfectly lined near their minuscule hands.

When you bended your eyes, this way and that, the cheap checkered tiles on the floor turned into a vast ocean of blissful shades of blue.The dusty mirrored drawers lining the bottom of the closet turned into bright reflections from the sun.

It was at that time that you carefully pulled one chair away from you, and turned it into a doorway. This simple act let the harsh light of the bulb into that corner of yours, each ray blinding your little eyes. And the warmth of the blanket was slightly diminished as cold air form the heavy fan above billowed  inside.

Its was at that time that you opened those old dusty drawers and discovered old rags and pieces, which to that purple mind of yours, appeared like a golden chest of treasure. That old dress covered in cheap glittered sequins which you draped around you and pranced until your feet were covered with dust and your mind was dizzy from the spinning. That old magnifying glass, to which you pressed your eyes and observed the tremendous magic of seeing an ant the size of a finger. And the old dining table, which lay abandoned in one corner of the room. While your mother called for you in despair and pain, you lay under that table, singing pathetically to yourself, and listening to the sound of the pigeons cooing to each other on the window sill. Under that table, glass-topped and oak-filled, your entire world came to a close. This was all there was: this little heap of nothing - from now till the end of the universe, this little imagination was the only reality in your eyes.

So now that here you are, reading this, choose to close your eyes. And bend them inside your mind. Then tilt your head, until it faces the harsh light of a bulb overhead. All within, inside your eyes, is filled with red, orange and white. Take these colours, and slowly dissolve them inside your mind. From this, form pictures of your own little corner, your own universe within which you wish to traverse, and stay there till your mind is filled to the brim with delight.

If you want your own Wonderland, you must bend your eyes.

Ulltra Pest Control!

I desperately want my relationship status to be "ultra pest control" as well,
but Facebook won't allow me. 

A lot of people (I think) wonder why there is "Ultra pest control" written all over my Facebook info page.

Finally, I shall reveal the reason for this (to those who are bored enough to be bothered). 

Behold:

I found this from the Sunday Times (the Sunday version of The Times of India). 

I absolutely love this sort of blatant advertising. The different things advertisers do to grab your attention are amazing. So this advert, with its cheap red and yellow colours and a cockroach drawn on it like a prized trophy, immediately grabbed my attention.

Well they achieved what they wanted. Whenever I see a cockroach, I DO think of this advert. Hopefully, you will too.

N53PBPA695DC

Sony: make.believe

Isn't it beautiful?
Wish I could find a button like that.

Blah 3

Sorry for no updates, TONS OF WORK

Plus, STILL TRYING TO RECOVER FROM BRAIN FREEZE [see post below]

Some nice stuff coming up (observations, sarcastic comments, hippie comments, boredom comments, same as usual).

In the mean time:

FOR FUCK'S SAKE, STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE NEW FACEBOOK LAYOUT,

IT'S NOT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE.

You should all be working down a coal mine, rather than sitting around on your plush ergonomic chairs complaining about social networking sites.

Lucky bastards.

Fooke

Ever had the feeling that your brain is in shock?

I'm having that feeling right now. My brain is completely frozen.

Nothing is going in. Nothing is being processed.
Its completely, stubbornly, frozen.

internet-o-phile

Ok, so after denying its existence for so long, I have finally joined Twitter.
I actually did have an account before, but I never bothered to use it, until now.

I never actually liked Twitter much, mainly because every time I checked out a friend's profile, it just looked so bloody confusing. There are thousands of micro-shit-messages sprawling all over the main "wall", and many more thousands of Twitting-twats in the "followers" list. It just looks disorganised and weird to my slow grandma eyes.

But I thought to give it a try after a friend mentioned it to me.

I looked around a bit, but I simply can't figure out why so many people find it so addictive.

Anyways, if you are a Twitter-twatamaboob, you can find me here:
@flippydoodle

God, I feel like an internet-whore.
I hate me.

Because you should love your mama

Here is a classic "wtf" moment for you:

Because, obviously, if you love your mum, Havell's Cable Wires is the first thing that comes into mind.

Synesthesia

Sort of like a family from an alternative universe, yeh?

I am sorry, but...

...you just HAVE TO see this website:
Yvette's (make sure you turn up your computer's volume to max)

How is it possible for there to be so much confusion concentrated in one place in the universe?
This is bending the very laws of Physics. 

Oh, that background! And I thought that I was a MS-Paint-o-phile. 

  

I cannot pinpoint how, but this page simultaneously sums up "cultural decay", "horror" and "misery".

I highly recommend you click your way through every single page on that website. This is web design how it should be - pure raw HTML layered on top of pure raw HTML.

And if you figure this out, please tell me:
WHERE IS THE MUSIC COMING FROM?

By the way, this website is not a joke. It is an actual real website for the company Yvette's, based in Panama City, Florida (if you stare at the homepage for about 200 million years, you can see the address pasted somewhere in the middle).

I truly do love the internet, despite the brain hemorrhage that I now I have to deal with.