When I went to Hay on Wye, Part-2

Time makes every memory more romantic, more pleasurable or more horrible than we felt actually at the moment. So it is with my trip to Wales. In my mind as I write this, the hills of Wales are more greener, the breeze from acres and acres of flowers is more scented, and the 45 minute ride from Hereford to Hay on Wye, one of the best rides of my life. As I recall that day, I don't seem to remember the meter in the taxi running faster than a rumour on the Internet. I don't seem to remember my anxiety as the taxi bill went from 10's into 20's into 30's, eventually settling in the 40's. I only seem to remember the lush greenery, the beautiful houses among the hills, and the most beautiful streams. I only seem to remember the Chinese family in the back of the taxi, whose English was the most basic, manners were impeccable and the love of books enough to bring them from China to a small village in Wales.
The moment the taxi stopped in the village, I could not feel being aprehended. I have never been in a village in England before, let alone Wales. As the Chinese family thanked me and went their way, I went searching for true salvation. And I got it. I found the book lovers paradise. Books. Books, everywhere. Row upon rows of books. Books in hallways, on steps, on the floor, in basements, in attics. Paperbacks, hardbacks, antiques, rarest of the rare. Literature, fiction, philosophy, medicine, gardening, crime, business, you ask for it, and they got it. Shop upon shop, lane by lane. Shops dedicated to books on murder, shops dedicated to books on music, the ones dedicated to books on cinema. Books for old, young, for born, unborn. Thousands of orange penguins on a big shelf.
A Vatican, a Mecca for people who want to read. For people who worship books. For those after knowledge. For those who can sit under a tree and while away the rest of their lives, just reading books. If books were gods, the shops were monuments or temples to them, with the sellers as high priests.
To be continued.........

One Giant Leap for mankind-A Backward leap that is

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past one month, you would have heard by now that today is the the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing by a human. NASA is celebrating it on a huge scale, and the media is trying to make all of us a part of it, which is actually great since it tells the newer generations a lot about how difficult it is actually to get into space and onto moon, how many sacrifices that man had to make to take that small step. And it also tells us that going into space is not actually as easy as what we see in say Star Trek, and we are a very very long way from making space travel that easier and accessible to everyone.
There are many reasons, why I call this has been a backward leap---

• That sense of accomplishment on that day, when Armstrong set foot on moon has been a very bad obstacle for future space exploration. American leaders did not have the vision to see it as an achievement for mankind, but rather as an upper hand in the duel with the Soviets. So after they proved to be superior by landing a man on moon, instead of taking the next logical step, which would be taking man to Mars, or any other planet, they cut back the funds to NASA, and let it be satisfied with peanut funded programs like International Space station. After all, moon is just a satellite of the planet called earth, and for mankind to survive for eternity, we have to find new planets, not moons that we can colonise. Atleast, until we find life on some extra-galatical planets, which are more advanced than us, and whose inhabitants will eventually make us their slaves. This year, instead of celebrating the 40th year and being happy with that, we(Atleast the Americans) have to start thinking about landing on Mars, and going further. Though given, the recession, and other problems, it could be very difficult to start such ambitious projects this or the next year.

• But what irks me really, among all this is what they did during the Apollo 8-which is the first mission that went out of earth orbit and orbited the moon, giving us this first picture of 'Earthrise'. I will quote from NASA's site about what they did "For the next 20 hours, the astronauts circled the Moon, which appeared out their windows as a gray, battered wasteland. They took photographs, scouted future landing sites, and on Christmas Eve read from the Book of Genesis to TV viewers back on Earth"---It was a bit of a shock even after 40 years, instead of realizing that we live on a small planet on this cosmic void, and we are alone, and there is no one to look after us but ourselves, all they could think of was to read from the Book of Genesis. Very recently Indians did something similar, when they launched their own Moon mission. They took the probe, they were about to launch around the country to all major temples, and mosques and churches, to get blessings for the probe. That Gods did not look after the probe and the probe got lost is another matter. I mean, the naivety or gullibility of man astonishes me and saddens me immensely.

Moon

Tomorrow, that is the 20th, is the 40th anniversary of
the first moon landing, when man first set his foot on moon.
On this occasion it is obviously not by coincidence that I am writing
about a movie called Moon. I have seen it yesterday and am bowled over
by it. The movie is set in the future when mankind has solved it's
energy crisis by mining HE2, that is Helium 2, from the surface of
moon. At the beginning, it looks like the company responsible for the
mining is penny pinching by having a single astronaut there, who is on
a 3 year contract. When the astronaut is recording messages to be sent
to his wife and daughther back home, instead of having a live
conversation, the reason given is that it is because of a solar storm,
it sounds reasonable enough. The astronaut starts imagining a woman in
the base, and just when it starts looking like a psychological
thriller, a terrible accident happens and secrets start tumbling out ,
quite literally. From here, a the audience is bevildered until the
truth sinks in, and u walk out feeling that you have just seen a great
sci- fi movie. I am spell bound, and I still don't know what to say. I
love sci-fi, usually becuase of the great effects, but this film is an
exception. It has no effects to talk about, but a great story. And my
advice is don't miss it.

7/7

Four years ago today, religion showed it's ugly face yet again. People from London to Baghdad are still feeling the tremors of that terrible day. Politicians like George Bush and Tony Blair have used that day to further their interests. What is more saddening and what has helped the extreme White supremacist right enormously is the fact that the people who blew up the trains were born in this country. They and their parents enjoyed the welcome and the good life this country has provided them, and yet they found it O.K to kill other people in the name of some distant causes, and in the name of brotherhood.
On this eve, a video called 'Ripple effect' is making the rounds on the Internet. What it basically says is this- 7/7 was mass murder arranged by the British government along with the Mosad to further the destruction of Muslim faith. A BBC documentary reveals that one in three British Muslims beleive the video and beleive that the British government killed it's own people. It further reveals the maker of the video to be an Irish man called John Hill who believes that- 'he is Jesus Christ'. copies of this video are being distributed in mosques and all those Muslims in the mosques are beleiving the wild base-less allegations made by an old lunatic who beleives he is the Messaih.
While the BBC documentary goes on to disprove every allegation in that video, I totally agree with the video because-
1. I beleive that everybody in the world should follow the rules set by a guy called Muhammad in a desert thousands of years ago.
2. I beleive that Taliban is a modern force and is the way forward for everyone in the future.
3. I beleive that Sharia law should be implemented in every country in which the punishments include flaggings for small offences, cutting off hands and other unmentionable parts for bigger offences. Best of all non-beleivers should be tied up to lamp posts and should be stoned to death. Take that Dawkins.
4. I beleive that women are below cattle in the social order and should be covered in Hijabs, so that my 'muslim brothers' can't look at them with their hungry eyes.
5. I beleive that after making the whole world Islamic we should try and make the whole galaxy Islamic.
6. I beleive in blowing up myself so that I can go to paradise and spend time with the seven virgins- though I have doubts about how they will still be virgins after so many of my 'brothers' blew themselves up before me.

God/ No God

Right, Charlie Brooker is my all time favourite columnist, because he is majorly mental- like me and loads of others in this mental world. I just like the sound of 'Mental', so I will keep saying mental as many times as I want. If you don't like it, well f*** o****. I won't actually swear on this blog anymore, as my mom is reading this blog- to see how mental I can get before she has to admit me in a mental hospital. My dad is also reading this, but it is alright as he has his own blog on which he calls many companies and other bloggers mental, and stops short of calling them c*****. Mental c****, that is.
Anyway, this week, when he had to write an article, to fill a page in Monday Guardian, Charlie Brooker has this brilliant piece about there being a God. If you have read this far,you are probably as mental as I am, so go ahead and enjoy it.

"God/no God? No God. We're all freelancers. Some of us may choose to sit in imaginary offices from time to time, pretending to receive memos from our made-up boss, or enjoying watercooler conversations about the loving/vengeful/forgiving nature of our fictional chief with our colleagues, but no matter how many hours we clock up, it doesn't alter the fact that no one's actually running things on the top floor. This is good news. We own the company!"
If you want to read the whole article click here