Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

Apologies for being AWOL for a very long time. I won’t bore you with the reasons why, but the prime suspect is the usual one

A relative is visiting from India, and he’s promised to get me whatever books I want. So I’m looking for books published in the last couple of years in India (and hard to get hold of via the likes of Amazon) that you’d care to recommend. Fiction/non-fiction/anything at all.

I spent a few minutes earlier today frantically scouring back issues of the Hindu’s Literary Review. And then I realized I should be tapping the best source there is - DSS

Thanks a ton, in advance !

Round one: You truly must’ve been vacationing on Mars the last few months to not notice it, but Crys’ ongoing spoof-series is a *huge* hit.

But what’s almost as interesting and entertaining is the soap-opera in progress on the sidelines. [all credits to peppy for the heads-up]

Round two: Let’s just say another blogger decided to get on a saffron-ka-ghoda and let loose with some choice vitriol . [Trivia: if you have the time & patience to read all the comments, you’ll find that someone found it fit to pick up on DSS-buckwaas as well . The irony being that this blogger uses the handle “hawkeye” - anyone who’s watched even a single episode of M.A.S.H knows that the character Hawkeye’s prime virtue is all-around-irreverence, stuffed to his gills.
Quite a contrast to our good friend here…………….

Just a quick note - if any of you recommend this site to a friend, please use the “Invite” feature. [“my account” –> “invite a friend”]. And/or send me a msg as a heads-up.

There are some user account requests that come in with (an almost disconcertingly !) scarce amount of personal information. Though coin-tosses are always fun, an intro from one of you will make the account-approval process that much easier for me

Thanks & happy holidays.

Old jungle saying - “a retread is the refuge of a scoundrel, and a lazy one at that”. I plead guilty to both charges

Just thought I’d repost this old story of mine for the new & not-so-new folks who haven’t read this one before.

This whole Sony “rootkit” fiasco has gone from plain ole “deny until you’re blue in the face” to what amounts to be the mother of all corporate PR-f#$*-ups (at least for this calendar year). First, Sony tried the customers-are-dumb approach. Then, a solution that was almost as bad as the original problem.

Now, the whole story is following a predictable pattern. Lots of unforgiving media attention, and according to the put-more-lights-on-the-job principle, a bright enough flashlight is going to find even the roaches hiding behind the cupboard - the latest being the jaw-dropping-irony - it turns out that Sony, in its valiant effort to protect content, has actually filched from open-source without due acknowledgement, thereby violating copyright. . Talk about just desserts !

Watched a Malayalam movie recently called “Runway”. The movie itself was forgettable. But the music was a nice surprise . For better or worse, I think the attempts by the music industry in its northern neighbor to “contemporize” has rubbed off in Kerala’s music as well - songs like “Lajjavathiye” & then the music in this movie. I haven’t been following Mallu movies for a while now, so I don’t know if this is a trend. But I’ve always associated Mallu movie tunes to the likes of the awesome classical-based music in movies like “Bharatham” & “His Highness Abdullah”. So the new music comes as a surprise to me.

Just a quick request.

Most of you probably have individual blogsites that you maintain. If your personal profile here at DSS doesn’t already include a link to the individual blogsite(s), would you please take a moment to update it ?

Thanks much !

Some pretty darn funky music - what else ??

Needless to say, enjoy … hey Cap’n/Kculon and other B’lore-based jam-heads - you’ve seen these guys live ??

Just some thoughts. And an attempt to clear the air.

Among the grunge of Market Street in San Francisco, one of the yuckiest streets you’re likely to run across in the downtown area of a major US city, there’s an interesting gathering of enthusiasts.

I’ve long wanted to write about this, but this article from today’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle does a good job of describing this.

Enjoy

Any Madras-DSSer going to this one … Madras Theater Festival ??

Please post reviews if you do.

I’m looking for a reliable source in the US (preferably online) for books published in India. For example, some of the new Penguin India titles that are not available via Amazon.

Any & all reccos would be greatly appreciated

MSNBC announces tie-up with The Onion. Yeah, right

Trick title (see the P.S. for additions to your fund of pointless trivia), but let’s just call this Timbuktu-redux for now, shall we ?

Issa Bagayogo aka Techno-Issa

This guy defies labels. Techno-Issa’s got a foot in two worlds, so to speak - the Wassoulou music from his ancient land, and the more contemporary dancehall music. He’s got an unbelievably cool, gravelly, blues voice, and a great backing band. Guitar, the 6-string version of the kamele n’goni, percussion, flute, and the electronic mumbo-jumbo (loops, synth, etc) handled by a Frenchman called Yves Wernert who’s apparently established his recording studio in Mali. The CD I have is his latest “Tassoumakan” (Six Degrees Records) released sometime last year. Found Issa in a compilation “Putumayo presents Mali” (Putumayo World Records) - which, incidentally, is a great introduction to the fabulous sounds coming out from that country, and that led me to this album. This country seems to be churning out great musicians like the Caribbean pace-bowler-production-assembly-line once did.

Heads-up. I just made “Filtered HTML” the default input-style. I think that’s the style most folks need out here.

If anyone has a problem posting comments, please let us know.

To whoever downloaded a fresh set of themes - thank you, thank you.

I liked slash_black

iBL - thanks a zillion, buddy. the site looks very cool

looks like drupal was a good choice.

- ssm