Excerpt from a Jagit Singh Ghazal

"Dhafna Kar do hume ke saas mile, navaz kuch der se thami si hai" ---> loosely translated in computer science terms means "Terminate my process of life so that I can breath because my life seems to have reached a halting state" ---> translated normally would result in "bury my body so that I am able to take a breathe, life in general is fleeting these days". Now that I have butchered the beautiful poetry totally and irrevocably I will get to the contradiction in the first sentence "Bury me so that I can live". It is quite captivating. We sleep walk most of our life. How many occassions have really fully lived life? Well thats my existential thought of the day.

Dan Brown as a writer

An article about scholars attacking the Da Vinci Code got me thinking about Dan Brown. At best, Dan Brown is a very average mystrey thriller writer even with the huge success of the The Da Vinci code. There are articles and blog posts all over that find errors in Brown's research so google around and you will find enough posts. I am no expert on his books; however, I have read them all on airplanes and airports during the long trip to India. I just think Dan Brown is a very average writer. THe first 150 pages of Angels and Demons reads like a good book but detoriates very fast into a third-grade mystery thriller. Everything (the mole, the near death experiences, the bad guy) is very predictable. If you have read even two books by Dan Brown its is very easy to pick the pattern. Parts of the book are generally promising with taut writing and griping sequences. But he can neither sustain the momentum or keep up the quality of writing.

Now the bulk of the critisicm comes mostly for what Dan Brown claims are "facts" in the book. The article linked above mentions "If you were writing it as a nonfiction book," Gibson asked, "how would it have been different?"
"I don't think it would have," replied Brown. . I was completely shocked by this statement. The statement opened only two possibilites; one, he is starting to believe his own ficitious stories or two, he wants other people to believe them.

Due to the quality of the writing, the book in my opinion is average. A good way to pass your time on an airport or airplane. I do think that the movie will be much better. From the clips I have seen Tom Hanks and Ron Howard will add a lot more credibility to Robert Langdon's character than Dan Brown could get do. Why? Because Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are the masters of their craft unlike Dan Brown.

Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner

For viewers of the Colbert Report, this will come as a special treat. Now I will give due where it is due. Stephen Colbert's humor is vitrolic. It takes a lot of gumption to invite him to speak at the White house correspondents Dinner. Now the question remained could he deliver the same sharp punches with the President sitting a few feet away? The answer is "oh yes!" he did. It was a no holds barred talk. He made fun of everything from the energy crisis, low approval ratings, crisis mismanagement, the war in Iraq, and President. The video can be viewed: Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents dinner . Most of the jokes are pretty direct and mean too. Just keep that in mind, if you have never seen The Colbert Report. To the President's credit he was very sporting to the whole thing.