Tamil Boy [ Crank Dat Soulja Boy Remix ]

So Soulja Boy has taken YouTube and teenagers by storm. His single has spurred bored people everywhere to set it to video clips from Barney to this little sequence from a Tamil movie. I think its uncanny how the lyrics and the dance moves actually harmonize with each other. Enjoy!

The Times...they are a'changin'

America has its first, Indian-American governor, Bobby Jindal from Louisiana of all places.

Although I disagree with his politics, I do have a strange sense of pride in his victory. Its not the first time a brown person has been elected to public office, but its surely the most powerful office (thus far) a brown person has been elected to. Its nice to see a face, a color, you can identify with sitting in a position like the one he holds now. If anything, its an encouraging testament to minorities who think that though America is a part of us, we are not a part of it.

I've always thought about what it would be like to run for public office, probably since I was twelve. Of course, running isn't an impossibility anymore, its winning that remains a fantasy. Even though I've abandoned my interest in entering politics for alternate reasons, I think his winning in what one could consider the "deep south" is an amazing signal to people everywhere to not use your background or ethnicity as a crutch in pursuing your goals. If LA can be swayed, there's hope for America. There's hope for us, too.

Astrologically Inclined

So some of you may be aware of my recent fascination with all things "zodiacal." I think I've gone through phone conversations with at least four people describing what their astrological sign tells them about their life, personality and compatibility with others. That last part is especially of interest to me, because I feel like everyone around me is either in a relationship, married or pregnant. The trendiness of it irks me, but I won't lie - it would be nice to find a soul-mate! So here I am going the Ms. Cleo route for curiosity...

Apparently, according to "many" astrological sources that I've unearthed (via Google so there's your accuracy meter) I am compatible mostly with the Aries/Sagittarius bunch. Wikipedia further broke it down in this [mostly] confusing layout:

Leo's Compatibility- Aries, Sagittarius

Possible Compatibility- Libra, Gemini, Leo

Incompatibility- Capricorn, Virgo, Cancer, Pisces

Squared Compatibility- Taurus, Scorpio

Opposite Compatibility- Aquarius

What the heck is a "squared" compatibility? Anyhoo, I keep thinking about people I know born in each of these signs and how well I get along with them. It seems that compatibility was determined by similarity in personality. I thought opposites were supposed to attract!

It would be silly to change one's attitude towards other based on the knowledge of what their zodiac sign forecasts for them. But knowing my psychoanalytical self, I'll probably do just that. After all, a Leo loves speculative adventures.

Stream of Consciousness

So I finally finished reading that book you see on my Shelfari, "Only Love is Real." (Thanks Su for the read! We'll swap when we see each other). It was pretty good, but kind of predictable in a novelesque sort of way, despite it being non-fiction. The book was basically an exploration in seeking our "past lives" in order to heal present wounds. For example, the patients in this book that the psychiatrist chronicles come into his office with particularly traumatic experiences and he helps them visualize who they were before they were their present self. I don't know if I totally believe in reincarnation, but I've thought about it many times, especially in light of learning about Hinduism and watching all those episodes of Mahabharat and Ramayan on tape. I wonder where my soul was before I was born; I wonder if my present self is either a punishment or a reward (depending on how I feel) for who I was before.

The book helped make a long bus ride back home go much faster. This bus was particularly intolerable, however. There were so many fruit flies in there! It was really repulsive, most everyone on the bus had to endure 2 hours of swatting these little pests. All I kept thinking was "Health Hazard!" Fortunately, the last half hour was more bearable because the bus got so cold that the flies probably dispersed to some icky crevice to nest until it got warmer. Ugh.

Weekends go by so fast. This Saturday we went to my cousin Jagan's house for his 12th birthday. I can't believe he's twelve! I remember getting so excited when he was born because he was our first male first cousin. Anyhoo, the party was ok although very crowded and not as fun simply because everyone couldn't really talk to each other properly. We did get to play on Jag's Nintendo Wii and all I have to say is I WANT ONE. NOW. Interactive play is my kind of video-gaming.

I miss being a kid, mostly because you would have hours to do absolutely nothing and just bond with your siblings. I miss my sisters. I haven't seen Nche in over two months. Is adulthood really this empty? I often think about a book Ms. Schwartz, one of my high-school teachers, used to pimp in a class which name is lost to me. The book was called "Who Moved my Cheese?" and I thought she was so annoying for constantly drilling the concept of how growing up means adjusting to new ties, new people, new places, new thoughts. As quickly as I dismissed it then, the lessons from that book haunt me now. I guess I am that little mouse who is reluctant to progress, an old soul in a confusing new world.

God's Unchained Melody

This week was rather stressful. I was doing things I promised myself I wouldn't do, and not doing things I vowed to do. On top of it all, school has once again reared its ugly head in this horribly warm October. I couldn't even enjoy the pumpkin spice frappucino I bought for a Friday treat.

It seems that bigger frustrations channel themselves into multiple little ones to the point where ordinary or mundane tasks become impossible to complete.

Bear with me on this trite example.

For the past two weeks, I have desperately tried to untangle two of my long necklaces so as to wear them with my daily ensembles. Mind you, I've dealt with twisted/tangled chains as many of us have, but these were unusually complicated. Time after time, I failed. I'm sure all of us have experienced this; we put in furious energy to get something done, and it always backfires. So I set the chains aside, until this afternoon where I saw the two of them, dangling in confusing knots over Rafiki (my stuffed Chimp), daring me to give another go at them.

During the time my eyes kept darting towards the chains, I was watching "28 Days", a Sandra Bullock (Cindeikou would be proud) movie I avoided for years simply because it came out when SB was "super-in" and I was loathe to seeing a movie just because some fad celebrity was in it. Needless to say, it was pretty good and she was pretty good in it. She played this alcoholic who has to complete a 28-day rehabilitation program in order to avoid jail-time for driving drunk into someone's home. Anyway, for some seemingly unconnected reason I was motivated to battle my necklaces after seeing SB kick the alcohol/drug habit.

I went at the silver one first, because that one appeared to be the easiest since it had only one knot in the middle. Of course I was wrong. Once I started tackling the little knots, more and more formed until I just started angrily fumbling with it. It was like all the feelings I had harbored over my bad week culminated in me relentlessly and impatiently bullying this silly chain. I sensed that feeling, and immediately just took a deep breath and asked God to LET THIS CHAIN UNRAVEL. And it did. The second one came apart easier than the first, despite it being the more intricate one.

Even in this small, insignificant moment, God can speak to you in amazing VOLUMES. I thought about school, life, the people in the movie with all those addictions and demons, my own and others'. Its incredible how the subtlest things in life, the stuff that goes unnoticed, can cause so much chaos. That one little knot seemed so easy to solve, and yet all it did was lead into other knots that had to be resolved. Sorting out the "knots" we confront in the present or bury from the past to reach our core may mean cutting off bad company, shedding insecurities and just plain starting over. I know this is probably not a novel or revelationary thought, but it is one that comforts me. Its just a reminder that each new day really is another chance at doing one's best to make things right.

Oye, I've written quite a bit, no? Oh le blog, you're such a [welcomed] distraction. =)

Hearsay

Such a pain in the arse.