Joblessnes, the ultimate frontier. It's got me sitting in office on a saturday evening, listening to madonna against the machine and typing this. I'm compelled not to do anything even remotely productive/useful. It's like, on weekends everything takes a break. Including sanity. Its a nice feeling though.

I wish temporary insanity wasn't so temporary. Sometimes i get the feeling what if i can just lose my senses for a while and get it back whenever i wanted it. Too many things happening around me which i dont really want to see or hear, experience at a holistic level.

"Patience is the companion of wisdom" - St. Augustine.

I can feel myself losing my patience at times. When i see stuff that is so blatantly juvenile, i cant seem to take it anymore. All this steroetyped bull shit is getting to me nowadays. It didnt bother me as much earlier, but of late i'm not able to let it go. I'm so sick of the word "cool". Anything that is perceived as cool tends to piss me off.

English. Its just another language. Just 'cos you can speak it better than someone else, does that make you cool. That is so freakin sad. Pretty much any average american can speak relatively better english than an average indian. Does that make the american's "cooler" than us. That is not to say no other country speaks english. Arbitly picked up U.S as an example. But it is the most common of "standards" that we tend to treat as a benchmark.

This guy I know, rather unfortunately, actually said "Ability to speak english determines one's character". That statement was made in public, in front of a reasonably large audience of well educated individuals. Not one of them flinched when he said that. Thats what disgusted me more than the statement itself. If that fool had said, it determines personality there is some element of truth in it and i'd have backed off. But character !!!!. I lost all respect for him after that. I could never bring myself to respect him as a normal human being.

What is "cool" if not a terribly misplaced sense of sophistication ?? Who decides ?? The latest lingo on the latest smash hit TV serial / movie is thought of as cool ?? Have all people decided to take leave of their senses ?? As the saying goes, if common sense is so common, why is it so hard to find ??

I know its easy to misunderstand words if one does not understand the context in which they are used.

Whats arrogance if not the vulgar display of confidence ???
Whats eloquence if not the superfluous use of words ???
Whats class if not a civilised form of vulgar ???
Whats contemporary if not the latest definition of fashion ???

Socially accepted norms and mass hysteria. Are they really that different ?? Norms tend to change. Norms are not rules, hence the flexibility when it comes to breaking them. Lets generalise a bit. Have you noticed how brand conscious the younger generation of guys have become ???. They need to right clothing, the right footwear, the right accessories. Suddenly stuff like Nike, Lee, and Nokia have taken on a whole new meaning. The underlying context in which these terms are used has undergone a complete paradigm shift.

Any change requires some kind of effort to be put into it. Too many kids are concentrating their energies on relatively pointless things. Read an interview sometime back where this 14 yr old guy says he wont be seen with his friends if he is not wearing some kind of branded clothing. I fail to understand this. I remember how i was when i was 14. Meeting a friend basically meant, an excuse to wear some faded t-shirt and some worn pair of jeans.

Am i still living in the past ?? Is the rate at which change happens, faster than the rate at which i change ??