Why do people like to post their faces on the Internet? It's understandable if you were a supermodel or Fabio with short hair, but there are some who post grainy webcam shots all over the place. I'm a regular consumer of all kinds of internet "indie" pr0n as much as the next guy, but I've never really grokked the whole webcam thing. Some webcammers say it's a form of self-expression, but there are certain faces that should never be pixelized for viewing.

The above rant was merely a poor segue for these two links... Hmm, that reminds me, I should get a picture of my own that doesn't look like Dahmer on full medication...

I'm afraid this might happen to me someday. Once you get really involved in blogging/livejournaling, you tend to play to the bleachers and start venting on random work/school related stuff.
Which is why I'm going to stay the hell outta posting my daily frustrations on any blog.

Via Mefi: Bush used Indian call-centers for fundraising. Boy, that must've really pissed off those who were already fed up with their dell tech support.

Consider a run-of-the-mill Indian bride. She marries a relative stranger, and goes to live with him in his house. She has two sets of parents now, one from the pirandha veedu, and one from the pugundha veedu. After 30 years of connubial blissdrudgery, does she not have a say in the workings of her pugundha veedu? All this outcry over being ruled by a foreigner is a typical jingoistic knee-jerk reaction. If India is "shining" now, it is because some CEO in an MNC decided he could profit more by paying 5 Indian code monkeys for the price of one American.

If inexperience and incompetence are benchmarks for rejecting political candidates, Bush II and The Governator wouldn't ever have been elected. Sonia has spent most of her adult life in India. She has the ability to surround herself with competent statesmen even if she doesn't possess the ability to be competent herself. There is no reason for her not to be the next P.M. All the naysayers who raise the objection of her being foreign, would probably have raised the objection of her being a woman 50 years ago. The "people" have voted for her and I think India has made a true step forward in thinking as a global democratic entity rather than a narrow provincial nation-state.

Bravo you poor huddled masses!

Both Bush and Kerry were right next to my office premises today. Today, America celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Brown Vs. Board decision. It was right here in Topeka, KS, that the decision to desegregate schools was taken. Parallels can be drawn to the decision taken 50 years ago and the current mandate of Indians. It's time to start looking at ourselves as a human race rather than being of black, latino, or an Italian ethnicity.

/liberal hippie tree-hugger mode off

A good measure of how out of touch I am with Indian affairs is when the poll results came out today. I use The Hindu as my primary Indian news source and most exit polls indicated an uneasy lead for BJP. Congress winning more seats than BJP came as a big surprise to me. The prevalent reason for the ouster seems to be that the poverty-stricken majority of India didn't swallow BJP's line of economic well-being. Is Congress going to affect a major policy shift? I don't think so. The poor have once again deluded themselves into believing that things would change. As someone from a comfortable upper-middle class background, I see no reason to welcome the Congress. The only moral reason I would have to oppose the BJP would be it's Hindutva platform. Anyway, I don't think this change will affect people of the blogging community in anyway. After all, we are were all part of the relatively comfortable UMC persuasion...

Let them eat cake!

Google has a blog. It's been a long time coming, considering Google owns Blogger. But here's what MeFi has to say about it:
Today's entry on the Google blog was altered in a subtle way. The earlier entry boasted of their Bangalore data center, but the afternoon's version now features the Zurich center more prominently and relegates Bangalore to a footnote. Could it be that the company is a little less boastful in their handling of the outsourcing debate than they thought they could be?

Raapi has been posting updates of a "true" "love" story. With main characters generically named Laxmi and Srini, and a contemporary backdrop of a Coffee Day(check out the weird couple on the right), it could be a coming-of-age story of EveryMan, including you.

BTW, What's up with Nilakantan's blog? I have to confess that I miss the rantings of a pretty weird individual...

I guess the decision to get a tattoo was on an impulse. Choosing the tattoo - I wanted something to do with the dichotomy of life - its ups and downs, the pain and the pleasure, the sadness and the happiness. I thought it would be cool to get a yin-yang on my small-pox vaccination scar, but the tattoo guy vetoed it. I also had the Ouroboros in mind, so I decided to go with that. I trawled the Net for suitable ouroboros pictures and came with 4 possible ones. One was a simple no-frills image. The second was an aztec symbol for the O, and looked really cool. The third was something I picked off a Chakra-NewAge site that looked vaguely oriental/indian. The fourth was a totally chinese dragon-looking thing. I picked the Indian looking thing because it seemed to be intricate and within my budget($150).

I finished work and went home and grabbed a bite. I arrived at the parlor 10 minutes late. My friendly neighborhood tattoo artist was a big biker guy called "Big Al" with a bald head, a goatee and fierce tattoos all over his arm. I couldn't have been tattooed by a more cliched figure!

Al had replaced the intricate details of the snake's body in the blueprint with scales since they were too intricate to be tattooed. I was a bit apprehensive about scales looking good. He told me replacing the scales with a celtic-looking design would take too much time, so I just decided to go with the scales. He also told me it would only cost $100, which was fine and dandy by me.

After signing the required form, I went downstairs with Al. Not surprisingly, Big Al was a big Iron Maiden fan. His room was filled with bloody skulls (not real ones, of course) and iron maiden action figures. After cleaning up my arm and shaving any excess hair, he started in earnest.

I braced myself for the pain. I had read different accounts of tattoos and none of them indicated it would be too painful... and it wasn't(unless you're a big pussy). The initial sting is similar to a syringe being injected or a red ant's bite. The first few markings of the tattoo gun are uncomfortable, then your endorphines kick in and it just feels like someone's scratching you very hard.

Al started marking the outline with a smaller needle and completed it in 20-25 minutes. Then he replaced it with a broader needle (you could tell by the whine of the gun) and went to work on the shading part. The snake head looked great after shading. He did good work on the scales too, giving each of them a slight shade so that it looks 3D. He was finished in another 20 minutes. He didn't talk much, neither did I. I guess that was his preferred method of working , and it was my preferred method of being worked on too.

After finishing, he wrapped my arm up in clean bandage and gave me after-tattoo care tips. Looks like I have to wash the tattoo area gently for at least 2 weeks. The skin usually does some peeling off in a week and he told me to be ready for that and not scratch the area. I thanked Al for the great work, bought some ointment and left the premises.

There it is - I now have a permanent mark on my left shoulder. Do I feel liberated or different in any way? Not really. I had made the decision and had decided to go through with it. Has my attitude changed in any way? I certainly don't feel any more hardcore than I used to. The only justifications I have now are the same reasons I decided on the ouroboros in the first place.

***Update***: A lot of searches hit this page looking for ouroboros symbols. Here's what I've managed to salvage from the dead links.

Aztec Ouroboros