Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — AstraZeneca Plc agreed to buy Novexel, a drugmaker spun off from France’s Sanofi-Aventis SA, for as practically as $425 zillion to gather experimental antibiotics to tempered infections that bear shown underground to existing medicines.
Shareholders of Novexel bequeath get $350 meg initially and as practically as $75 zillion in extra payments tied to dose exploitation goals, the Paris-deep fellowship aforementioned today in a affirmation. The skill is expected to be accomplished during the commencement stern of 2010.
The dealings gives London-basso AstraZeneca respective combining, including two, NXL104 and NXL103, that are in the second of three stages of clinical well-tried needed for regulative blessing. Afforest Laboratories Inc. Owns the U.S. Rights to NXL104.
“I am sure-footed that the getting assets will find continued investiture from both AstraZeneca and Woods and uncoerced suffer the opening to gambling an crucial remedy function to fighting insubordinate organisms in the infirmary,” Iain Buchanan, Novexel’s gaffer executive, aforementioned in the argument.
AstraZeneca is search for new products because drugs that generated 62 pct of gross long-lived year nerve contest from depress-priced copies by 2014, according to Bloomberg information. The company is among the “worst positioned” drugmakers to overpower the so-called apparent cliff in the adjacent cinque geezerhood, when 9 of the world’s 10 biggest medicines mislay mart exclusivity, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson wrote in a Dec. 8 billet.
Goldman, Abingworth
Investors in Novexel include Sofinnova Partners, Atlas Guess, Novo A/S, Abingworth, Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, Goldman Sachs Sorted Inc., NeoMed and Daiwa SMBC Majuscule Co. Goldman well-advised Novexel on the sale.
AstraZeneca coupled Paris-based Sanofi and Novartis AG in investing in drugs to fight infectious diseases.
Sanofi, which spun off Novexel in 2004, agreed this month to break an infective-disease antibody highly-developed by Alopexx of the U.S. And on Dec. 16 bought rights to close held Syntiron’s vaccinum for the MRSA superbug.
Novartis, of Basel, Switzerland, store-bought ball-shaped rights in October to an experimental antibiotic from privately held Paratek Pharmaceuticals, adding a pill that may hardened life- menacing infections causation by bacterium repellent to available medicines.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
AstraZeneca Purchasing Novexel for as Often as 425 Billion
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
It's Time to Talk
“Hey Dad, whatcha doing?”
Look at him, sitting on the couch, watching football. It’s like he’s not different at all – but I know better.
“Not much, watching football.”
Oh Dad, what’s happened to you?
“That’s cool. Oh, Arizona-Arizona State, huh? Good game?”
Maybe I should talk to him later? He’s busy. I should talk to him later.
“Uh huh.”
No! Talk to him now! You need to help him!
“So how’s work going and all that?”
Come on, quit beating around the bush and do this!
“Fine.”
Ok. Here we go. Just like the commercials say to do.
“Dad. Does anyone you know at work take drugs?”
He’s giving me a look – just ignore it. You need to help him.
“Um. A lot of guys take drugs for cholesterol, some for their hearts, a lot of various ones for pain … Probably some others.”
My God. He’s surrounded by these bad influences. I’m afraid to ask.
“… Do … you … take any drugs, Dad?”
Why hadn’t I seen that commercial before! I would’ve talked to my Dad when he was still in his forties if I’d known it’d help keep him off drugs!
“Well, yeah. I take stuff for pain in my back and shoulders, not every day though. And also for cholesterol.”
Why! Whyyyyyy!
“Does that … help you? Does it make you feel better … Dad?”
Wait – he said he doesn’t take pain killers every day, I may not be too late!
“Oh yeah, I definitely need them.”
Keep strong, keep strong.
“Why, Dad, why?”
I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.
“Why do I take the drugs? Well, lots of reasons, but I started because the doctor said I should.”
Oh, God! The doctor’s a pusher! I should’ve known! Who else is involved with this terrible scheme!
“Well Dad, -”
“Actually my bosses all take the exact same drugs as I do. Kinda funny.”
So this is a popularity thing? That’s why, Dad? To be liked!
“Ok, Dad.”
What am I supposed to do?
I can’t believe this. I can’t win against these odds. The commercials, the bandwagon-ism of it all, the perceived need!
I’m too stressed – I’m going to go get high.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Are America's Mercenary Armies Really Drug Cartels?
(CINCINNATI, Ohio) – News out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India reports massive corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that could only be financed with drug money. In Afghanistan, the president’s brother is known to be one of the biggest drug runners in the world.
In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari is found with 60 million in a Swiss Bank and his Interior Minister is suspected of ties to American groups involved in paramilitary operations, totally illegal that could involve nothing but drugs, there is no other possibility.
Testimony in the US that our government has used “rendition” flights to transport massive amounts of narcotics to Western Europe and the United States has been taken in sworn deposition.
American mercenaries in Pakistan are hundreds of miles away from areas believed to be hiding terrorists, involved in “operations” that can’t have anything whatsoever to do with any Central Intelligence Agency contract. These mercenaries aren’t in Quetta, Waziristan or Federally Administered Tribal Areas supporting our troops, they are in Karachi and Islamabad playing with police and government officials and living the life of the fatted calf.
The accusations made are that Americans in partnership with corrupt officials, perhaps in all 3 countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, are involved in assassinations, “unknown” criminal activities and are functioning like criminal gangs.
There is no oil. There is nothing to draw people into the area other than one product, one that nobody is talking about. Drugs.
The US got involved in massive drug operations, importation, processing and distribution during the Reagan Administration, supposedly to finance covert CIA operations involving death squads tasked with murdering Sandinista “infrastructure” in Nicaragua.
The deal involved Israel, Iran and the Colombian cartel. Saddam Hussein was even involved. In the end, President Reagan was put on the stand only to remember little or nothing of his tenure in office. Lt. Col. Oliver Laurence North was convicted as was Secretary of Defense Caspar Willard “Cap” Weinberger and many others. Pardons and “other methods” were used to keep the guilty out of jail.
Now we find what was supposed to be a CIA operation with one company only, Xe, operations that were meant to hunt a couple of terrorist/Taliban leaders in and around Quetta, a city of 1 million in remote Baluchistan has turned into a honeycomb of operations involving millions of dollars and personnel of all kinds, perhaps even ranking diplomats and high government officials, the highest.
The cover of hunting terrorists in remote areas with hundreds of armed men in cities on the other side of the country, cities filled with 5 star hotels, country clubs, polo, cricket and fine restaurants is not really cover, even by CIA standards.
The reports, bribes, actions that look and smell like drug gangs at work, tell a story that nobody wants to talk about.
With 50 billion dollars of opium from Afghanistan alone and crops in Pakistan and India also, managing the world’s heroin supply is, by my estimation, how all of this “muscle” is staying busy. When you see a black van full of armed men, is there a sign somewhere saying:
“We are counter terrorists working for the Central Intelligence Agency and we are only in town here, hundreds of miles from the nearest terrorist because we need a hot shower and to get a noise in the transmission checked out.”
Everyone can choose to believe what they want. It’s time we stopped lying. Its about drugs, always has been, always will, drugs and money. It buys men, it buys guns and it can buy governments and has, as anyone with eyes can see.
================================================
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a regular contributor to Veterans Today. He specializes in political and social issues. You can see a large collection of Gordon’s published articles at this link: VeteransToday.com.
He is an outspoken advocate for veterans and his powerful words have brought about change. Gordon is a lifelong PTSD sufferer from his war experiences and he is empathetic to the plight of today’s veterans also suffering from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to feature Gordon’s timely and critical reports on Salem-News.com, a news organization staffed by a number of veterans, particularly former U.S. Marines.
You can send Gordon Duff an email at this address: Gpduf@aol.com
Amy Winehouse, A Lost Case?
Amy’s close friends and reps continue to deny that Amy is doing drugs/abusing alcohol but it’s kind of hard to believe with all that’s been going on with her lately. Amy is said to have been suffering from a chest infection and collapsed in her home over the holiday weekend. A doctor did go to her home to treat her and said she’s suffering from ‘nervous exhaustion’. A very close source to Amy is saying,
“She’s been told to keep a low profile and fully recuperate. She has been feeling very ill of late and had a funny turn at home. She is quite unwell and exhausted after recent events but is soldiering on.”
The source goes on to say,
“She’s doing her best to concentrate on her music and not become embroiled in drugs again. Her new songs are amazing but will be on the back burner until she feels better.”
I really hope for her own life that she does recover from all of this and gets back into the music scene. It’s sad to see someone who has been ‘blessed’ with the ability to entertain to end up being the comedy relief in every conversation. Get well Amy and QUIT THOSE DAMN DRUGS!
Sunday, December 27, 2009
ocelot - our time [final] (2009)
no. fucking. way. this song is like 3 years old and after all this time, is finally seeing the light of day in completed fashion. i mean, one of our first posts was about this dude, so i feel like i owe it to him. this song is still as dope (pun intended) as it was years ago.
anyway, franki chan threw it up, so grab it from him.
download [direct link]:
ocelot – our time [final mix]
-grizzly
Saturday, December 26, 2009
drunken ramblings...
so being that it is insanely late and i am drunk, i feel the need to post something i can properly regret tomorrow. or whenever i next happen to be sober. ba.
someone needs to write a noooooooooo!! vic chestnutt thread. i can’t believe it!!! i always thought in my warped and rediculous fantasies that i would see him play live someday, and somehow through the magic of a real and personal god, record with him. yeah right, i know, but he was such a big deal to me at a critical time. fucking life.
also, i saw mousetrap play live!!!!! 
OMG is the correct response. i’ve been waiting 15 years for it, and it was soooo worth it. strange, all the faces from by-gone punkrock days of yore. god, pat is so hott and sounding fucking fabulous. but it did make me feel old and needing to kick some serious musical ass! i don’t want to sit here and remember shit that was never that great. i want to play fuggin music goddamit!!!! jeebus, omaha did used to have the scene. fuckin posers have ruined it, but i really must go to more shows. i wish any of you would’ve been here to bask in true punkglory. end broadcast. sleep commences. i’ve contributed my waste of verbage. sigh, goodnight pukeplanet diaries.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
32 year olds Don't Just Drop Dead...Sorry Brittany Murphy
Here’s the catch up for those of you who don’t pay attention; actress Brittany Murphy passed away on Sunday, December 20, 2009. She supposedly died of full cardiac arrest. Doctors say she died of natural causes. Or did she? So many rumors are flying around its time to put them all on the table.
Rumor 1: Husband doesn’t want an autopsy
The husband of actress Brittany Murphy, British screenwriter Simon Monjack doesn’t want an autopsy performed on his deceased wife. Does anyone else find this weird? He didn’t give a reason but there are speculations that he doesn’t want the autopsy performed because of his jewish faith. It is jewish custom to bury the dead within 24 hours, but damn! What person doesn’t want to know how their loved one died?! Sounds suspicious…..
Rumor 2: Brittany’s diabetes contributed to her death
This was a bit of a shock to me. Call me a victim of public school education, but I did not know people in good health could get type 2 diabetes; which is the type Brittany had. Cut that, I wasn’t aware skinny people could get type 2 diabetes. But it turns out it’s not so much about the weight as it is the sugar. Diabetes is brought on by your body not storing sugar properly. Diabetes people have bodies that don’t get rid of some of the sugar they intake..it just stores it all. Which is why they sometimes have seizures or strokes. Doctors say that Brittany’s diabetes could’ve been a factor in her death, but is probably not the main reason.
Rumor 3: Brittany died of a heart murmur
This rumor is kind of half-true. She did have a heart murmur, and we won’t know until the autopsy comes back if this is true. But since she did die of cardiac arrest, I’m guessing that it played a big part.
Rumor 4: Doctors overdrugged the actress
No one can confirm or deny this one until the autopsy comes back. But one thing we know for sure is that there was an excessive amount of drugs found in her house. But let’s be honest, what person doesn’t have an excessive amount of drugs in their house? I don’t know that many people that throw drugs away when they don’t need them anymore; they just save them until they or someone they know will need them again. But these drugs that were found in Brittany’s house weren’t all hers. Her mother and father contributed to the stash. Neither of them will say what the prescribed drugs were for.
Rumor 5: Father won’t come to funeral
This is sad but true. Brittany’s father, Angelo Bertolotti, hasn’t seen his daughter since 2006. He says that her death and the news of her diabetes and heart problems came as a shock because he wasn’t aware that his daughter had these problems. Angelo says that he doesn’t want his lasting memory of his daughter to be her dead body, but from what I’m aware Brittany is being buried in a jewish ritual according to her husband’s wishes. In jewish ritual the body isn’t shown because they want to remember them as they were when they were alive….strange…
Brittany Murphy will be buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park on today, Christmas Eve. She will have a closed funeral and only people who have been invited will be let in. This whole story breaks my heart but for some reason I feel like we haven’t even gotten to the surface of what’s really going on.
December 24 - Christmas Eve
Well, it indeed has been a long time since last I posted here. This is not because nothing was happening, but more I was trying to work out what to say. So here is a go,
ResultsThe results from the last time I was up at the clinic (well the time before last week) are as follows:
CD4 = 140.
Viral Load = 220.
Meds
Following much thought, and in conjunction with the consultant at the hospital – I have decided to come off the meds for the moment. I have not been regular in taking them and in the words of my consultant “it is better to be not taking them than taking them irregularly”. The reason for this statement is that if you take them irregularly the virus can become resistant to the drugs and this could then limit choices of drugs in the future.
So, I am now back on the Septrin and another antibiotic for the foreseeable future.
VampiresAs I am no longer taking meds, there is no hope for me to get out of the vampires wanting bloods at the hospital – okay so it is actually useful for the medics to know what is going on with my counts – but it still feels like all they want is my blood. Good job someone does as the Blood Transfusion Service certainly wouldn’t – even though they are still writing to me to ask me to donate!
Christmas 2009It is the day before Christmas and I spent last night with my best friend and her four year old. It was great! This evening, I am going out for a meal together with some old school friends to continue our tradition that we started several years ago.
I hope and pray that everyone reading this blog will have a peaceful and blessed time this Christmastide.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Efectele consumului de marijuana
Marijuana este un amestec verde – cenuşiu preparat din frunzele, tulpina şi seminţele uscate şi mărunţite ale plantei numite Cannabis sativa (cânepă). Haşiş este obţinut din aceeaşi plantă şi există sub formă de răşină (care variază la culoare de la galben la maro-închis şi negru) sau de ulei vâscos.
Consum
Cel mai adesea marijuana este fumată din ţigări răsucite manual. Poate fi însă fumată şi din pipe obişnuite sau pipe speciale, numite pipe-cu-apă (water pipes). Unii utilizatori o fumează din ţigări obişnuite, înlocuind tutunul din ele cu marijuana şi amestecând-o şi cu alte substanţe stupefiante (ex.: crack). Marijuana poate fi consumată şi sub formă de infuzie (ceai) sau amestecată în mâncăruri sau prăjituri (engl. cookies). În unele ţări este permisă utilizarea marijuanei în scopuri medicale, mai ales în tratamentul cancerului, al SIDA şi al glaucomului. Este cunoscut faptul ca multe dintre persoanele bolnave de SIDA îşi pierd pofta de mâncare, ori este foarte important pentru ele să îşi păstreze o greutate corporală adecvată. În aceste condiţii, consumul de marijuana poate fi benefic, întrucât îi ajută să îşi păstreze sau să îşi crească apetitul. Pe bolnavii de cancer, marijuana îi ajută să scape de stările puternice de greaţă provocate adesea de chimioterapie.
Efecte fiziologice şi psihologice pe termen scurt
Efectele imediate ale produselor pe bază de cannabis nu sunt atât de puternice, însă ele pot fi influenţate de mulţi factori: cantitatea utilizată, vârsta utilizatorului, modul de administrare, starea psihologică a utilizatorului, scopul utilizării, locul (ambientul) în care sunt utilizate etc.
Efectele pe termen scurt - pentru care mulţi utilizatori consideră consumul de marijuana ca fiind o experienţă plăcută – sunt: relaxare; reducerea stresului; intensificarea senzaţiilor de gust, miros, văz şi auz; creşterea creativităţii; diminuarea durerilor (ex.: migrene, crampe); reducerea senzaţiei de greaţă; creşterea poftei de mâncare; euforie; lipsă de inhibiţii şi locvacitate; senzaţia că timpul s-a “dilatat” (că trece greu).
Dintre efectele considerate neplăcute, cele mai frecvente sunt: greaţa (mai ales dacă marijuana este luată în combinaţie cu alcool sau alte droguri cu efect stimulant); gură uscată; iritarea ochilor (roşeaţă); migrenă; lipsă de coordonare în mişcări şi lipsa echilibrului; tuse slabă şi frecventă.
Efecte fiziologice şi psihologice pe termen lung.
Consumul îndelungat de marijuana are adesea efecte psihologice şi fiziologice adverse, uneori extrem de neplăcute. Dintre efectele fiziologice cel mai des întâlnite trebuie menţionate: salivaţie abundentă, insomnie, conjunctivită, nas înfundat, bronşită, imunitate scăzută a organismului în faţa infecţiilor. Cele mai des întâlnite efecte psihologice pe termen lung sunt: modificări frecvente de dispoziţie, lipsă de motivaţie şi de interes pentru orice fel de activitate, toleranţă redusă la insuccese, performanţe reduse la şcoală sau la locul de muncă, mişcări lente, reducerea capacităţii de memorare şi de concentrare a atenţiei.
În cazul intoxicaţiei cu cannabis, utilizatorii pot suferi de: mania persecuţiei şi paranoia; incoerenţă în vorbire; confuzie; anxietate; depresie; reacţii de panică; halucinaţii vizuale; delir; afecţiuni ale aparatului reproducător (ex.: la bărbaţi scade capacitatea de a avea erecţie sau orgasm).
sursa : http://www.5pm.ro/
Becoming a Heart Warrior, Part II
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. - 1st Corinthians 13:11
When you were a child, your parents took care of you. This probably included organizing your medications, making sure that you took them at the proper times, and picking up refills from the drugstore. But now that you are older, that responsibility should shift to you – and if you have any desire to be independent, you should welcome it!
But there is a flip side to the coin: These medications are confusing, difficult to obtain, and extremely important. They keep you going, and thought of taking control of your medication needs can be daunting. But don’t worry – its a little bit easier than it looks, if you have a system.
One thing you might find useful is this document: Drug Chart (.PDF file) Click the link, and a .PDF file will appear that you can use to organize your medications depending on the time of day that you need to take them.
Before you fill this chart out, make several blank copies or save it to your computer. Your doctor will change your medication, and you’ll need a fresh chart to write the new schedule on. At the top, near where it says “Medication List for” write your name – and write the date, too. If you go several months without having a medication change (lucky you!) you should still update the chart occasionally and change the date, so that everyone can tell that you keep your chart current.
Sit down and organize your meds, grouping them by when you take them. If this is your first time or the instructions on the bottles are confusing, get your parents to help. We’re not going to jump into this with no guidance at all; after all, you are learning how to take control of your health. It’s a process, and it is perfectly fine to get help until you feel comfortable.
Once you have the meds organized, have someone familiar with your routine double-check your efforts, and then fill the chart out. Now, I can take all of your pill bottles and mix them up, but as long as you have that chart, you should be able to quickly figure what you are supposed to take – and when!
A lot of CHDers organize a weeks worth of pills at a time, usually on the weekend. If this is the way your family does it, take over – but not all at once. One weekend a month, you take charge of organizing your pills for the week. As you gain confidence, work up to organizing all of your medications yourself.
Next, you need to learn how to take over getting your refills. You’ll need an index card (You can even cut it in half) and a calender. Not the family calender hanging next to the telephone, but a blank calender with enough space to write in the date blocks.
The easy part is examine every drug bottle and note how many refills that prescription has left. Write it down on your index card and keep the card in a safe place. This is easy, you’ll have a list that reads like this:
Nausea-B-Gone 8
NiceBeat 4
Blood Pressure 5
Every time you get a refill, take your list and reduce that prescription’s number by one. When you hit 0, you need a new prescription. Depending on the medication, you may be able to call the doctor’s office and ask for a new prescription. Or he/she may want you to come in for an appointment first. So as soon as you write 0, call the doctor’s office! That gives you plenty of time to see the doctor if that is what he/she wants.
Now you need your calender. Take your pill bottle and determine how many days worth of medication you have. If you have 90 pills and you take it twice a day, you have 45 days worth of medication. Count forward 45 days from today… now back up ten days. That’s the day you want to start thinking about getting your next refill of that medication from the drugstore – it gives you a ten-day “window” in case there is a problem getting the next refill.
Most drugstores don’t have an automatic refill policy, you will have to tell them that you need a refill. That can usually be done over the phone, by calling the pharmacy refill line and following the recorded directions. You usually type the prescription number (it’s on the bottle, following the letters RX) into the phone’s keypad and never speak to a person. Simple and easy!
I’ve made this explanation as simple as possible, almost to the point that readers might roll their eyes and wonder if I believe they know anything. I’m not writing for you today – I’m writing for those who realize that they will eventually have to take control of their own healthcare and may never have done any of this before. It is a lot of responsibility – don’t be afraid to ask for help and guidance as you learn. Because one day, this job will be yours, no matter if you are ready or not.
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son! – If, Rudyard Kipling (1910)
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Breaking News Brittany Murphy dead at age 32
Nov 10 1977- Dec 20 2009 RIP Scorpio
A life of hard partying and hard drugs with her husband may have led to this.Brittany Murphy best known for her role as Eminem’s Girlfriend in 8 mile and for her unique brand of comedy roles such as Clueless was pronounced dead at Cedars Sinai Hospital upon arrival. Her husband Simon Monjack called paramedics and reportedly told them his wife had went into cardiac arrest. In the past Monjack had been involved in several domestic altercations with Murphy, He is also said to have been the one that got his wife hooked on hard drugs such as Heroin,Ectasy and Meth. We here at Heavenhollywood.com send our deepest sympathy out to theMurphy family and friends and we will keep you updated on any latest developments because something stinks here.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Frank Pignatelli Sentenced to Prison
Phil Trexler, the Beacon’s best overworked reporter, busts some solid graphs in a big piece on Frank Pignatelli today.
At the raid, authorities recovered from Pignatelli’s house more than $680,000 that was wrapped and concealed. From that day on, the man drug dealers depended on in court for their defense was now working undercover for the government.
Pignatelli was a defense attorney for drug runners but began working for the feds once they caught him on a wire instructing the bad guys about how to hide their loot. This story has it all, including a rare plea by a sitting Sheriff to go easy on a crook.
Kudos to Trexler.
Lil Wayne detained in Texas for marijuana
Rapper Lil Wayne was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Texas on Friday after authorities found marijuana on two of his tour buses.
The marijuana on the buses was detected by a drug dog, said Agent Joe Trevino. The rapper, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., was among a dozen being detained from his group. They were later released.
Trevino said the buses were en route to Laredo, Texas, from a concert stop in Hidalgo.
The case has been referred to the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office.
Calls to Carter’s representatives were not immediately returned Friday.
The Louisiana native was the 2008 best-selling artist, with 2.8 million records sold, and is signed to Cash Money Records.
The rapper is scheduled to begin a prison sentence in February stemming from gun charges in New York.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
And another one bites the dust...
According to APF:
Arturo Beltran Leyva, head of one of Mexico’s top drug cartels, was killed along with four other cartel members in a battle with Mexican soldiers, the naval ministry said.
The so-called “godfather” of the “Beltran Leyva brothers” cartel was killed “during an intense battle between presumed members of his organization and military personnel from the Marine infantry in Cuernavaca, close to Mexico City, the ministry said in a statement.
The Beltran Leyva gang is presumed to be a dissident faction of the Sinaloa Cartel… while another dead mob boss isn’t a bad thing, this could also mean that Chapo Guzman is regaining control of the badly splintered narcotics export trade in western Mexico which would lead — at least — to less intergang violence. On the other hand, it may mean a power struggle for control of the Beltran Leyva gang, which would up the body count. In theory, splintered gangster bands are a good thing, meaning they’ll be busy bumping each other off, but it could get messy again.
Intelligence Improperly Collected on U.S. Citizens
WASHINGTON — In February, a Department of Homeland Security intelligence official wrote a “threat assessment” for the police in Wisconsin about a demonstration involving local pro- and anti-abortion rights groups.
That report soon drew internal criticism because the groups “posed no threat to homeland security,” according to a department memorandum released on Wednesday in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The agency destroyed all its copies of the report and gave the author remedial training.
That was just one of several cases in the last several years in which the department’s intelligence office improperly collected information about American citizens or lawful United States residents, the documents show.
In March 2008, the office produced a “terrorism watch list” report about a Muslim conference in Georgia at which several Americans were scheduled to speak, even though it “did not have any evidence the conference or the speakers promoted radical extremism or terrorist activity,” and such speech is constitutionally protected, an internal report said.
And in October 2007, the office sent a report, “Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks,” to hundreds of federal officials. Department guidelines had called for the files to be destroyed because the assessment of the group had lasted more than 180 days without uncovering evidence of potential terrorism.
In all three cases, after other Homeland Security Department officials raised concerns, copies of the reports were destroyed. The agency also held a workshop on intelligence-gathering “while ensuring the protection of civil rights and civil liberties” after the Nation of Islam incident.
The documents were released by the Department of Justice in connection with a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. It had sought reports to the Intelligence Oversight Board, a watchdog panel appointed by the president, by various agencies documenting violations of law, executive orders or presidential directives.
Marcia Hofmann, a staff lawyer with the foundation, praised agency officials for destroying the reports but said the public needed to know about such incidents.
“I think it’s a positive sign that these agencies responded to this and took steps to correct the situation,” Ms. Hofmann said, adding, “We would never have known that this happened had we not seen these internal reports.”
Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said, “We take very seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people while” protecting the country.
Other documents released Wednesday were heavily censored because they involved classified information.
A February 2008 report from the National Security Agency, for example, has four pages almost entirely redacted, under the heading of intelligence activities “that violate law, regulation, or policy substantiated during the quarter, as well as actions taken as a result of the violations.”
In a 2007 report, top security agency officials said “intelligence oversight training is not managed effectively” at the National Security Agency and called procedures regarding training “confusing.”
A spokeswoman for the N.S.A., Judith A. Emmel, said that since 2007 the agency had “improved its oversight training program and continues to refine it.”
“Ensuring our work force is thoroughly and properly trained is something we take very seriously,” Ms. Emmel said.
Another memorandum disclosed that a Defense Intelligence Agency employee said that in May 2002, in response to a Congressional inquiry, the Joint Forces Intelligence Command provided false information about its activities related to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks. The document offered few details.
The Justice Department also released other documents Wednesday from other Freedom of Information Act lawsuits related to national security policies during the Bush administration.
Among them was a letter written in 2002 by George J. Tenet, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, suggesting that a C.I.A. ban on using journalists as spies was not airtight.
After Islamic militants killed Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter whom they had falsely accused of working for the C.I.A., leaders of the American Society of Newspaper Editors asked Mr. Tenet to “declare unequivocally” that the agency’s spies never posed as journalists.
Mr. Tenet replied that for 25 years, the agency’s policy had been “that we do not use American journalists as agents or American news organizations for cover.” But he refused to make what he described as “a blanket statement that we would never use journalistic cover.”
Instead, he wrote, “the circumstances under which I would even consider any exception to this policy would have to be truly extraordinary.”
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Former City player Paul Taylor set to sign for Anderlecht!
Former Chester City and Vauxhall Motors striker Paul Taylor will make an astonishing move to Belgian giants Anderlecht in January.
Taylor, 22, born in Liverpool and a former Manchester City trainee honed his skills at Vauxhall, scoring 17 goals in their 2007-08 campaign in the Blue Square North. His good goal scoring record attracted many admirers and eventually Chester City, then in League Two, signed him initially on loan with a view to a permanent transfer worth a five figure sum.
Taylor’s career then hit the rocks when he failed a drugs test whilst at Chester. The striker’s sample had traces of cocaine in it. Chester released him and he was given a six month playing ban.
When his six month’s were up Taylor made a surprising career move. He signed for R.R.F.C. Montegnée – a former Bradford City feeder team – who play in Belgium’s 5th division. Their new English manager Paul Topping had heard about Taylor and decided to snap him up. He became the club’s top scorer and his class clearly shone through.
In late November the Belgian press began to report that several Belgian First Division clubs, including Standard Liège and Anderlecht had shown an interest in Taylor. Taylor spent a few days on trial at both clubs and now Anderlecht have confirmed that Taylor will be joining them on January 1st.
So it looks like Taylor – who has always had bags of ability – has finally put his demons behind him. And when he is playing for Anderlecht in the Europa League, those cold nights at Rivacre Park will seem a long time ago.
Jarv's Schlock Vault: Ticks
Ticks
They call me “Panic” ’cause I never do.
Jarv’s Rating: 3 Changs out of 4
Once again, to take a small break from the never-ending lists, I’ve decided to review a schlock film.
Ticks was part of the recent superb schlock bonanza that I’ve been on. Honestly, I haven’t seen a bad one in the last 6- they’ve all been varying degrees of awesome. This is a film I remember seeing in the mid 90’s- I certainly remember seeing that superb poster all over the place, but before I sat down to watch it, I was damned if I could recall a single piece of information from it, aside from the fact that it’s about giant insects eating people.
Oh, how wrong I was. Curse my useless Ecstasy ruined brain- how could I forget how simply awesome this film is? It has almost everything that I require from these films- violence, ridiculousness, shoddy acting, excellent dialogue, laughs aplenty and a good bit of tension as well. If they’d managed to find a way to work in some gratuitous nudity and a midget then this could possibly have been the greatest schlock film ever made.
That’s a bit hyperbolic, given that it is still a low-budget creature feature, but it is really, really top drawer.
The film opens with veteran character actor Clint Howard working away tending his cannabis plants and listening to the radio. What poor old Cliff doesn’t know is that just behind him there are several oozing pustulous eggs preparing to hatch. Inevitably, they do and infect him, which leads to much hilarious Stooges inspired clowning about before he eventually steps in a bear trap and fucks himself up good and proper.
We then cut to an inner city underpass where Seth Green is being sent to adventure camp with a group of troubled teens- it turns out that his dad left him in the wilderness and now he suffers panic attacks. In the parental tradition of “throw the cunt in the water and see if he learns to swim” his father has decided that the best way for him to conquer his fears is to send him off with a quack therapist and a group of fuck-ups to the arse end of nowhere. Said fuck-ups include: a spoilt brat and her steroid addled boyfriend, a rape victim, the douche doctor’s daughter and, hilariously, Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air dressed in MC Hammer’s hand me downs as the world’s least convincing Compton gangsta. He even loves his dog.
Camp turns out to be a complete shithole, the ticks break loose, and kill Carlton’s dog. Intrepid Dr. Douchebag and Seth decide that the thing to do with the dog is to take it for an autopsy- in reality, they needed to find someone to explain the cod science that underpins the monster ticks- which she does, brilliantly. Carlton chucks a wobbly and legs it into the countryside- while everyone else is completely unconcerned about the potential catastrophe heading their way.
It turns out that a pair of comedy criminals called “Sir” and “Jerry” (it must have taken all of 15 seconds to think those up) have been using some sort of super steroid on the marijuana to increase crop yield. Those dastardly swine. This has in turn infected the ticks who are now on the rampage.
Anyhow, to cut a long story short, everyone gets holed up in the house while the ticks run rampant, before they detonate the place get back to civilisation having killed all of the evil insects, or (in true B-movie style) have they……
The thing about this film, is that it’s highly competent. I don’t have a clue what the budget was, but I’ll take a large bet that it wasn’t high. Having said that, the direction is tight, the script is hilarious, the acting is as to be expected and the special effects (with one exception that I’ll come to in a minute) are better than average- with no CGI whatsoever. It lacks a bit of polish, but I find the roughness of it appealing. It’s enjoyable and unpretentious in the most amusing way.
However, what stops it being a 4 Chang movie (and I did consider it) is that it’s just so preposterous. I don’t normally mind this, suspending disbelief in these movies is to be expected. Except you aren’t suspending disbelief, rather this disbelief is London Underground suspended (permanently cancelled).
Let me put it this way: they establish that the ticks are basically unkillable. No problems with that. They then realise that they’ve painted their characters into a corner, and they now have literally no chance of survival: they’re fucked. Nevertheless, everyone knows that you kill ticks with fire. Again, I’m fine with this- this is a perfectly satisfactory horror movie weapon. However, where they screw the pooch is that you’ve only got to go near to the ticks with a flaming torch and they explode like water balloons on a fat kid’s head. Not only is this against the film’s own internal rules, but it looks fucking silly on camera.
Secondly, for some reason, Carlton decides to rob the steroid freak’s steroids. He’s wandering around in the wood in a bit of pain from a tick bite, so decides to take the steroids. What? Why?
I can live with this as well- I’d buy it a bit more if it was speed, but it isn’t exactly life threatening. Steroid addled Carlton runs into Jerry and Sir who shoot him and leave him for dead. He isn’t quite though- he manages to drag his shattered carcass back to the homestead. Where it’s revealed, (for some inexplicable reason) that the tick that’s inside him becomes juiced up on the steroids and grows internally before shedding him like a used Carlton condom and revealing giant SUPER TICK to the prisoners. I suspect that they did this so that there would be a sizable big bad monster at the end, but this is my real problem with the film- it dilutes the effectiveness.
I’m not nit-picking (no pun intended) with this, up to this point there had been hundreds of little ticks running riot around the camp, and god damn it if even looking at them didn’t make me itch. They scurried all over the place and picked their victims at will- they were, in short, a brilliant horror movie monster.
However, giant SUPER TICK isn’t. For a start, it looks shit, and if that wasn’t enough it’s a useless lumbering twat that can barely move. It stops being effective, and starts being, well, even more daft.
A real shame, because it was a superb little movie before this point. I suspect that they did it so they could up the gore by having the tick unpeel dead Carlton. A huge mistake.
Nevertheless- these are only really minor quibbles, and in this case forewarned is forearmed. As I’d forgotten about both problems with the film, they slightly took the shine off it for me. However, now that I know about them, I suspect that next time I watch it, I’ll giggle from start to finish.
There’s certainly plenty to giggle at here.
Overall, would I recommend it? Unquestionably yes. It’s a stonking little film, marred only slightly by overambition. Even if you’re not scared of insects (and I’m not), it manages to be sufficiently scary for long periods, and completely entertaining in others. It’s a film to watch with a loud and noisy group of mates, a shit load of beer and a sense of irony.
Superb.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Daily Habit: Culture
11:59 pm
I got Drunk at the Shelbyville Xmas Parade and You Fine me $500 - SHELBYVILLE, TENNESSEE - Merry Freaking Christmas America. It’s that time of the year when everybody gets into the Christmas spirit, but they end up having too much fun, and too much to drink. When you mix jolly old people and any type of intoxicant, things can get pretty crazy. Uncle Bob comes over for Christmas dinner and drinks so much that by the end of the night he’s up on the roof beating the hell out of the plastic Santa and all of his plastic reindeer. Cousin Cheech gets so high that he ends up waiting for Santa to come down the chimney and pop out of the fake fireplace with a bag of cheap toys. The neighbor broad across the street isn’t much better. She got loaded at lunch and crashed the town Christmas parade, but she aint’ getting any presents from the judge who arraigned her.
A Tennessee woman was charged with public drunkenness and riding a horse under the influence of alcohol. The woman, owner of a local stud farm, got drunk during a mating session and decided to take ride into town. By the time she arrived she was so drunk she ended up taking a wrong turn and found her way into in the Shelbyville Christmas parade. She blacked out long before the parade ride ended and was found slumped over on her horse outside a motel. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091209/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_drunken_parade_rider).
Police said several people called to bitch about an intoxicated rider in a red coat on a white horse shouting “Merry Flucking Christmas” during the parade Saturday night. The local yocals were at a loss because they were bombed too, so they weren’t sure what to do. They ended up calling the State Boys who responded to the call and said they chased the woman twice but couldn’t nab her, at least not until she was found at the motel where she was tazered twice for resisting arrest. Ho, ho, ho. America. Don’t drink and drive a horse.
AN ODYSSEY TO RECUPERATION
The neighborhood of Akash was a bit different from Madhavi’s, who lived in affluence, her plush villa set on the hillock overseeing the town. Neighbors pried into the personal life of the souls their next door. No information was hidden, or could be hidden. Particularly, if it pertained to anything like liaisons, illicit or otherwise. Also, the prosperity of one spelt angst to the mortal the next door in the neighborhood. The river careened across the length of the village, as if to render justice to all folks in all localities of the town. Almost every person in the town used it and abused it to the fullest extent. It was the top spot for many people to relieve themselves, for they found it impossible to do it within the four walls of a toilet, an unshakeable yet polluting obsession. The Maharashtrian governments had made a magnanimous gesture by constructing toilets in almost every house, for free or for minimal expense. Still, some spoiled the river, even if they had a water closet at home. Some did out of want of a toilet at home. There were a large number of people doing this, and at some points, the river reeked simply of human excrement. On a nearby playground, school kids played cricket. They made concession for these early morning river visitors by playing with the rubber ball. In case the stray ball hit these precariously perched spectators, who also extolled cricket while relieving themselves, it might not hurt as awfully as a leather ball would. Or in case a disgruntled chap refused to return the ball to their rightful owners, just because he was hit by it, then it might not accrue a big loss for the poor school guys. Also ubiquitous was a sight as a stinking carcass of a stray dog crushed under the wheels of a fifty-ton load of a reckless truck. If this was not enough, it was used as a bathing place of one’s cattle, and also a laundry by the washer men. And the same water the municipality supplied to the town folks, after chlorinating it. Never bother about the amount of microbes that might enter the common man’s body.
People of Sarangpur seemed to have developed some degree of tolerance to such levels of contamination in water. Those who didn’t showed up regularly at clinics. The poor headed to the public hospital, while the self-sustained ones afforded the private medicos’ fat fees. Almost equal was the plight of the government hospital. The doctor never showed up at the hospital, even though he was paid handsomely for the same. A few cynical nurses greeted and treated the patients. A middle-aged nurse was on a spree of giving shots to the patients who had queued themselves. Irrespective of the ailment, age or sex, she gave shots of tetracycline from a huge vial to all the patients with the same syringe and the same needle. She boasted about her newly bought plot of land in a newly built colony. Apart from doing the supposed duty of hers, she also delved into the intricacies of the land-deal to her colleague, the patients unaware of the potential risks they subjected themselves to by getting those shots. A poor and scrawny teenager from the squatters’ colony lay still on a wooden bench of the hospital. He was brought with high fever, and the same nurse gave him the same shot despite the criticality of the boy’s condition. He breathed his last, and the relatives were told coldly to take the corpse straight away. Presumably, a victim of malaria but certainly a victim of poverty. Yet everything about Sarangpur was not always disgusting.
Monsoon is the time, when there is a heightened activity in India. There is an abundance of greenery, extending over the vast expanses of land. It is the time that augments a poor farmer’s hope that he would get a better harvest the following year. It is also the time when the cattle gorge gleefully on sprawling expanses of grass with the crows, minas and cranes cavorting on them, picking symbiotically the pests from their fattened tummies. It is the time, when the rivers, lakes, canals, rivulets and streams get engorged with water. There is an aura of freshness everywhere. Rural folks flock to bigger towns to buy seeds, fertilizers, and agricultural tools. It is the merry time for the moneylenders, whose immediate preys are the poor farmers, who need money to continue their means of livelihood-agriculture. Others who also profiteer include the pharmacists and doctors, as cholera and dysentery are in endemic proportions. Kids take their first lessons in swimming in rivers or lakes in the villages, and youths ogle lasciviously at young nymphets bathing near the wells or in rivers, unwary of being watched thus. This of course does not take place everywhere, save for the countryside. Frogs hop and croak merrily, fresh and upbeat, having woken up from the long hibernation lasting over the hot summers. Many in the frenzied pursuit of their mates on the roads are flattened to death under the wheels of speeding vehicles on the roads. Their re-emergence in the monsoon reinforces the rural folks’ belief that they drop from the sky along with the rain. Kids romp merrily in puddles, much to the hollering and disenchantment of their mothers. They return home with their bodies drenched, and soiled in mud. Days are hot and sultry; and nights cool, the black clouds eclipsing the moon for most part of the season. The streets abound in black, the usual color of the umbrellas. Raincoats and other accessories inundate the local bazaars. It was one such wet day, when Akash was returning to his motherland from the States.
It was raining cats and dogs on a typical monsoon night. Akash reclined on a couch in waiting lounge of a non-descript railway junction, Shirur, in the western part of the Indian peninsula, puffing away the pernicious cigarette smoke, nicotine simply diffusing into his circulation, and the long dreary hours of waiting-the inseparable part of traveling long distance in India by train, were taking a toll of his patience. A multitude of thoughts assailed his mind. The image of the furrowed face of his mother lingered in his mind. He was returning from an overseas assignment to his motherland after a lapse of five years. He had missed the train that could reach him to his natal town, Sarangpur, another nondescript town, so infinitesimal that it did not feature in any major map of India. Therefore, he had the Hobson’s choice of waiting the whole night until the dawn, when he could get the next train to reach his destination. He was browsing intermittently through a fictional crime thriller. A few moments later, he would be overwhelmed by slumber, only to be awakened by a shrill sound the next moment, and this happened umpteen times. The ambience of night was time and again shattered by the high frequency decibels of honking diesel engines shunting the tracks, or the jargon-filled railway announcements proclaiming arrivals or departures of trains and the patter of the raindrops striking and slaking the parched earth. Serenity would descend over that hall, though fleetingly. He scrutinized that most of the fellow passengers were lost in deep slumber, and this he considered as rather strange as the conditions were conducive to making him a restive insomniac. He did not have the slightest inkling of what was in store for him, the next few moments. This time though, the source of distraction was a different one-that of someone’s footsteps.
The next moment what he saw, flouted the wildest of fantasies, which he ever had, and left him agape. His icon, his lost love-Madhavi stood before him, as a matter of an unprecedented eventuality. Madhavi looked as gorgeous as he had seen her before: the same alabaster looks, limpid eyes with ethereal glint in them, and the purple-hued satin sari silhouetting her perfect physique. The radiant glow on her face, the disobedient fringes of hair wavering on her forehead at the behest of the breeze, and her dainty, yet futile bids made to fix them gave her mien a unique blend of sophistication and innocence. After a brief haggling with the porter, who squired her to the waiting lounge along with her baggage, she reposed on a settee. When she glanced pryingly at the fellow passenger, she reckoned that most of them were totally oblivious of her arrival, some were sonorously snoring in their sleep, while the altruistic ones slept in utmost quiet; nurslings snuggled close to their mothers (blissfully unmindful of the grown-ups’ anxieties and obscurities). It seemed a safe haven to her, with most of the passengers seemingly well off, because usually travelers have a paranoid sense of the risk one carries of losing his wallets or baggage, during train journeys in India.
Her greatest fears of spending a whole night at a remote railway junction with minimal amenities were put to rest by the presence of many fellow passengers in that hall. With a curricular book huddled close to her, she began to reckon her performance in the extremely competitive I.A.S (civil services) exams that required the peregrination to the mega-city-Mumbai. For many years, she had been looking forward to that day, when her talent and perspicacity were going to be tested, in the ultimate test for the masterminds of India-the civil services’ exams. She had fared well; still she was very much wary of the fact that the slightest of recklessness on her part could make the difference, in such echelons of aptitude tests. The stakes were high for her, because her personal life had been ruined because of an unsuccessful marriage, the hangover of which entailed a lot of anguish to her. Felicitations apart, she knew very well that if she succeeded, it would herald a new chapter in her life. She would thus be able to efface the ostracism any woman faced, after any cataclysm such as divorce, in an orthodox society. She knew it for true, that if she managed to make it, then every grimace and frown that greeted her, in her bad patch, would automatically metamorphose into smiles, the duplicity with which their society treated the same individual in different ways in different times. She knew the harangues would soon turn into accolades, the sheer ecstasy of which seemed to deprive her of sleep.
The only source of distraction for her was a guy to one corner of the hall, as he seemed to ogle at her queerly. His unkempt hair, heavily untended stubble and disheveled clothes were suggestive of the fact that life was bereft of any charm for him. He was profusely smoking, the very whiff of which peeved Madhavi. Finally, when she could not stand the exasperation any more, she felt like upbraiding the guy, and she gave him a stern glare. The miasma cleared up in her mind, and she figured that she knew the guy. Her anger evaporated in a jiffy when she realized that he was none other than Akash, whom she knew for having such a long association with, right from the kindergarten to the college, and with whom she shared outstanding rapport. Almost instantly, the whole of her events of yesteryears assumed the form of a scenario, wherein each and every memory was so vivid, as if the events had occurred a few moments earlier. Every memory of their childhood was relived: the charades, pranks, chaffs, frolicking during the school recesses, and romping back to homes after a hectic day at school; the ambience of country life, the picturesque view of the lakes adjacent to their homes, where they would spend hours meandering and confabulating endlessly on week ends. Both of them were strung-up for a few moments, and it took them some time to collect their nerves to break the ice. After a few moments of initial inhibitions, the pals struck up an unrestrained and effusive tête-à-tête. Everything in their lives was reminisced with quintessential nostalgia.
Akash transcended the humble moorings of his childhood in a small township. His early childhood memories were of great trauma, the only memories, which he had of his father, been that of a drunken fiend. Bickering and strife-stricken atmosphere prevailed in their household because of his binge drinking. The ordeal ended when he died of liver-cirrhosis, leaving his children and wife to their fates. The end of one ordeal augured the beginning of another. Forced to fend for herself, Akash’s mother took up a job in a local school for eking out a livelihood but her pay was too meager to adequately subsist the family; and she faced great hardships in paying Akash’s school fees. He had the humiliating distinction of being the main fee defaulter in the school, because of which he would be frequently turned out of the school. Notwithstanding the odds, his mother was an iconic figure of feminine fortitude. She put up a courageous, though a feigned smile, on her face, even in the darkest hours of their lives, lest her child’s hopes might sulk, and he might not surmount the odds. She didn’t ever spare a thought for marrying again, despite being widowed in her prime youth. Apart from the financial constraints, she had to contend with barbs of fellow women that implied that she had devoured her husband, the vestigial remains of the draconian attitude the society had towards women in the times, when erudition was not rife in the society.
Amongst his siblings, Akash was the eldest one. There had been a plethora of sufferings in his mother’s life. The premature death of her first daughter, who had amaurotic idiocy, suffused her life with inordinate grief. Her second daughter too had a similar affliction; even though she survived, the retardation was too severe and even the most elementary tasks like feeding her were gargantuan struggles. The death of her husband, albeit a fiend, was the last jolt his mother received. Akash had no one, except his mother, to guide him in the vicissitudes of life. Life was never a bed of roses for him and he realized that his doggedness in studies could be the sole redemption from the abject penury, and the friendship of Madhavi was one of the few commiserating factors in his life. Madhavi too was a diligent student, yet they had different leanings when it came to curricular subjects in the school. What was Madhavi’s forte in studies was coincidentally the Achilles’ heel of Akash and vice-versa. Subsequently, theirs was a symbiotic relationship in the school. They helped mutually in their curricular assignments, and goaded each other to perform better and better. With the onset of youth, it was but natural for them in such proximity, to develop liking for each other, yet they knew their exigencies very well. The cherubic little girl who would turn up at his house on holidays in the wee hours of morning, and nastily pull the rug off his face, yelling, “Stupid! Get up. The Sun rose long ago, it is morning now”, had metamorphosed into a staid woman. Despite blessed with bountiful youth and sheen, she lacked the uppishness and whims, which most other girls of her age and with even a little semblance of her attributes would invariably smack of. They sang hymns of praises for each other in front of their friends, but when it came to admitting the feelings, when they came face to face, both were tongue-tied. They hinted only through allusions, the real feelings in their hearts.
Life was very unforgiving for Akash, and he did not want to compound his problems by having a relationship that would result in a lot of heartache, if things went wrong. Education was his first priority, and he regarded everything else with diminutive credence. Having passed the Intermediate Examination, they parted, opting different streams in different varsities. Letters filled the chasm of distance betwixt them for some time, but later on, they lost track of each other. Akash passed his degree course in Engineering, with good grades. Yet, there was an unfinished task ahead of him. He urged his mother to ask Madhavi’s hand in marriage for him. His mother sensing the huge pecuniary and caste disparities between their families, at first refused to comply, but ultimately she wilted to her only son’s demands. Her fears turned true when Madhavi’s parents snubbed the alliance with an air of condescension. Madhavi belonged to a family of orthodox mindset, wherein her personal choices mattered little.
Moreover, there had been no direct reciprocation of love between them, and hence elopement was an unthinkable proposition for them. Both were victims of a parochial brought-up. They could not muster courage to revolt against the traditions and prevailing milieu in their society, and the passions thus smoldered within their hearts. They grew up in a societal environment where love was a taboo word, and marriage out of self-determination, worse still, regarded akin to blasphemy. She rued for the first time over not speaking out her heart in front of Akash when she could have done so, and had thus stifled her desires. The incident left Madhavi crestfallen, and her parents sensing disaster married her to someone else, who turned out to be a tyrant; he watched with suspicion every move that Madhavi made, and subjected her to worst sort of atrocities. Living with her ex-husband-a habitually suspicious man, was a nerve wrecking experience for her. She had an overriding subconscious feeling all the time that she was under constant surveillance. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, when she decided to walk over the marriage.
Even though Akash had succeeded in his academic career, he was not jubilant. He left for the U.S with a heavy heart, tired of life. Life without Madhavi was an inconceivable idea for Akash, and despite his best efforts, he could not reconcile with the stark reality. The monotony of living in a foreign country, the haunting memories of his past, the limitless desolation took a heavy toll of him, and he became addicted to sleeping pills and subsequently to alcohol. Akash looked cadaverous and despondent, and despite all his pretensions, she sensed that he lacked enthusiasm towards life, and he seemed to be resigned weakly to a world shunning despair. She could not desist from musing that due to a strange travesty of fate she had become the source of debacle of the very person, whom she valued as her true friend, benefactor and someone she could confide in, at any moment of her life.
As the night segued into dawn, the two friends had delved into each and every intricacy of their lives. Their conversation was punctuated with deep sighs and some times when it took a lighter turn, they burst into guffaws, much to the chagrin of the fellow passengers and finally Madhavi averred, “Nobody should know better than you do, the wanton nature of man under the influence of alcohol, and the amount of nuisance he becomes unto himself, his family and the society, because your life has been imbued with sufferings as a direct consequence of your father’s binge drinking. Now, isn’t it paradoxical that you are in the same mould just because life has not turned out as exactly as you had wished it to be? Throughout our lives, we tend to long for happiness that is surreal and apocryphal, and when it does not come our way, we get disappointed and inflict harm unto ourselves in awful ways. I can understand that you have been wronged, humiliated and frustrated in life; that you have had more than the usual share of tribulations, most people have in their lives, but still you don’t have any right to destroy yourself. If you have even an iota of regard for me and the association we have had, over the years of yore, you would give up the self-destructing indulgences, you find yourself presently engaged in. Come out of this drug-induced stupor, and abandon this warped lifestyle. Drugs can’t ever be a solution to any human problem, nor can mitigate the sufferings of anyone, if he thinks thus. You have still many more years of fruitful utility. Don’t fritter with life as you are doing with it now. I believe you are strong enough to pull through these mires of drug addiction.”
They had recounted for the whole night, every tale of theirs, woeful or otherwise, and the next dawn marked the harbinger of a new era in Akash’s life. He vowed to leave behind his murky past and make a fresh start. The next morning, they set off for their native town. They felt buoyant and contented, having vented all the frustrations and trauma that had pervaded their lives over the years of separation. They experienced a sort of perpetual bliss that would linger in their lives. Akash resolved to end the spate of drug dependence that had been afflicting him for five years, and his emancipator could not have been anyone else but Madhavi, because the disappointment was related with her, if not of her own making.
After the rendezvous with Madhavi, Akash took treatment at a drug de-addiction centre. Madhavi came out successfully with flying colors in the civil services’ exams, and a grand gala ceremony was organized in her natal town to felicitate her. Despite the thunderous ovation that greeted her, she bore a wistful ex-pression on her face, and pined for the sight of her chum amongst the crowd, but he could not be found. Akash was then floundering with the agonizing ordeal of the withdrawal symptoms, and the rules of the institution stringently forbade the inmates from venturing out, lest they might flee or return inebriated. Six months later, he was off alcohol and hypnotics. After convalescing, and embracing sobriety, he met Madhavi, who by now, had taken charge of her dream-come-true job, and proposed her for marriage. This time though, she reciprocated, the world did not raise a brow either, and together they enjoyed the connubial bliss, ever after.
AN ODYSSEY TO RECUPERATION Sarangpur, a sleepy town in the Western part of the Indian peninsula in the state of Maharashtra, was not very much different from the rest of towns in the region. But to Akash and Madhavi, it meant a lot, for it was their birthplace. They grew as any other child of their age. Childhood was full of fanciful thinking and euphoria that impart life all its pleasures. It was like any other town that boasted of a few colleges, a few schools, a river, a police station, a railway station but the trains never showed up in time, a municipality that was flagrantly insensitive to the town’s sanitary conditions, a civil hospital that was equally as callous as the municipality, a lower bench court, a sprawling market, a few dilapidated cinema hills that showed medieval movies, and also a whorehouse. The trains were perennially bloated with people, particularly in its carriages without reservations. One could not imagine even a semblance of comfortable journey, without having to pay the extra bucks for the reservations. The town also boasted of a huge dairy farm that had long ceased to be one. Many of the cattle had long died, while the living ones in the dairy were in a state of utter dereliction, perhaps waiting for their ends to come. Also there was a huge a state owned farm that had similarly ceased to be one. Much of the flora was seen by people as an easy source of firewood, while a little of fauna, viz. rabbits etc were poached and devoured mercilessly.The neighborhood of Akash was a bit different from Madhavi’s, who lived in affluence, her plush villa set on the hillock overseeing the town. Neighbors pried into the personal life of the souls their next door. No information was hidden, or could be hidden. Particularly, if it pertained to anything like liaisons, illicit or otherwise. Also, the prosperity of one spelt angst to the mortal the next door in the neighborhood. The river careened across the length of the village, as if to render justice to all folks in all localities of the town. Almost every person in the town used it and abused it to the fullest extent. It was the top spot for many people to relieve themselves, for they found it impossible to do it within the four walls of a toilet, an unshakeable yet polluting obsession. The Maharashtrian governments had made a magnanimous gesture by constructing toilets in almost every house, for free or for minimal expense. Still, some spoiled the river, even if they had a water closet at home. Some did out of want of a toilet at home. There were a large number of people doing this, and at some points, the river reeked simply of human excrement. On a nearby playground, school kids played cricket. They made concession for these early morning river visitors by playing with the rubber ball. In case the stray ball hit these precariously perched spectators, who also extolled cricket while relieving themselves, it might not hurt as awfully as a leather ball would. Or in case a disgruntled chap refused to return the ball to their rightful owners, just because he was hit by it, then it might not accrue a big loss for the poor school guys. Also ubiquitous was a sight as a stinking carcass of a stray dog crushed under the wheels of a fifty-ton load of a reckless truck. If this was not enough, it was used as a bathing place of one’s cattle, and also a laundry by the washer men. And the same water the municipality supplied to the town folks, after chlorinating it. Never bother about the amount of microbes that might enter the common man’s body.
People of Sarangpur seemed to have developed some degree of tolerance to such levels of contamination in water. Those who didn’t showed up regularly at clinics. The poor headed to the public hospital, while the self-sustained ones afforded the private medicos’ fat fees. Almost equal was the plight of the government hospital. The doctor never showed up at the hospital, even though he was paid handsomely for the same. A few cynical nurses greeted and treated the patients. A middle-aged nurse was on a spree of giving shots to the patients who had queued themselves. Irrespective of the ailment, age or sex, she gave shots of tetracycline from a huge vial to all the patients with the same syringe and the same needle. She boasted about her newly bought plot of land in a newly built colony. Apart from doing the supposed duty of hers, she also delved into the intricacies of the land-deal to her colleague, the patients unaware of the potential risks they subjected themselves to by getting those shots. A poor and scrawny teenager from the squatters’ colony lay still on a wooden bench of the hospital. He was brought with high fever, and the same nurse gave him the same shot despite the criticality of the boy’s condition. He breathed his last, and the relatives were told coldly to take the corpse straight away. Presumably, a victim of malaria but certainly a victim of poverty. Yet everything about Sarangpur was not always disgusting.
Monsoon is the time, when there is a heightened activity in India. There is an abundance of greenery, extending over the vast expanses of land. It is the time that augments a poor farmer’s hope that he would get a better harvest the following year. It is also the time when the cattle gorge gleefully on sprawling expanses of grass with the crows, minas and cranes cavorting on them, picking symbiotically the pests from their fattened tummies. It is the time, when the rivers, lakes, canals, rivulets and streams get engorged with water. There is an aura of freshness everywhere. Rural folks flock to bigger towns to buy seeds, fertilizers, and agricultural tools. It is the merry time for the moneylenders, whose immediate preys are the poor farmers, who need money to continue their means of livelihood-agriculture. Others who also profiteer include the pharmacists and doctors, as cholera and dysentery are in endemic proportions. Kids take their first lessons in swimming in rivers or lakes in the villages, and youths ogle lasciviously at young nymphets bathing near the wells or in rivers, unwary of being watched thus. This of course does not take place everywhere, save for the countryside. Frogs hop and croak merrily, fresh and upbeat, having woken up from the long hibernation lasting over the hot summers. Many in the frenzied pursuit of their mates on the roads are flattened to death under the wheels of speeding vehicles on the roads. Their re-emergence in the monsoon reinforces the rural folks’ belief that they drop from the sky along with the rain. Kids romp merrily in puddles, much to the hollering and disenchantment of their mothers. They return home with their bodies drenched, and soiled in mud. Days are hot and sultry; and nights cool, the black clouds eclipsing the moon for most part of the season. The streets abound in black, the usual color of the umbrellas. Raincoats and other accessories inundate the local bazaars. It was one such wet day, when Akash was returning to his motherland from the States.
It was raining cats and dogs on a typical monsoon night. Akash reclined on a couch in waiting lounge of a non-descript railway junction, Shirur, in the western part of the Indian peninsula, puffing away the pernicious cigarette smoke, nicotine simply diffusing into his circulation, and the long dreary hours of waiting-the inseparable part of traveling long distance in India by train, were taking a toll of his patience. A multitude of thoughts assailed his mind. The image of the furrowed face of his mother lingered in his mind. He was returning from an overseas assignment to his motherland after a lapse of five years. He had missed the train that could reach him to his natal town, Sarangpur, another nondescript town, so infinitesimal that it did not feature in any major map of India. Therefore, he had the Hobson’s choice of waiting the whole night until the dawn, when he could get the next train to reach his destination. He was browsing intermittently through a fictional crime thriller. A few moments later, he would be overwhelmed by slumber, only to be awakened by a shrill sound the next moment, and this happened umpteen times. The ambience of night was time and again shattered by the high frequency decibels of honking diesel engines shunting the tracks, or the jargon-filled railway announcements proclaiming arrivals or departures of trains and the patter of the raindrops striking and slaking the parched earth. Serenity would descend over that hall, though fleetingly. He scrutinized that most of the fellow passengers were lost in deep slumber, and this he considered as rather strange as the conditions were conducive to making him a restive insomniac. He did not have the slightest inkling of what was in store for him, the next few moments. This time though, the source of distraction was a different one-that of someone’s footsteps.
The next moment what he saw, flouted the wildest of fantasies, which he ever had, and left him agape. His icon, his lost love-Madhavi stood before him, as a matter of an unprecedented eventuality. Madhavi looked as gorgeous as he had seen her before: the same alabaster looks, limpid eyes with ethereal glint in them, and the purple-hued satin sari silhouetting her perfect physique. The radiant glow on her face, the disobedient fringes of hair wavering on her forehead at the behest of the breeze, and her dainty, yet futile bids made to fix them gave her mien a unique blend of sophistication and innocence. After a brief haggling with the porter, who squired her to the waiting lounge along with her baggage, she reposed on a settee. When she glanced pryingly at the fellow passenger, she reckoned that most of them were totally oblivious of her arrival, some were sonorously snoring in their sleep, while the altruistic ones slept in utmost quiet; nurslings snuggled close to their mothers (blissfully unmindful of the grown-ups’ anxieties and obscurities). It seemed a safe haven to her, with most of the passengers seemingly well off, because usually travelers have a paranoid sense of the risk one carries of losing his wallets or baggage, during train journeys in India.
Her greatest fears of spending a whole night at a remote railway junction with minimal amenities were put to rest by the presence of many fellow passengers in that hall. With a curricular book huddled close to her, she began to reckon her performance in the extremely competitive I.A.S (civil services) exams that required the peregrination to the mega-city-Mumbai. For many years, she had been looking forward to that day, when her talent and perspicacity were going to be tested, in the ultimate test for the masterminds of India-the civil services’ exams. She had fared well; still she was very much wary of the fact that the slightest of recklessness on her part could make the difference, in such echelons of aptitude tests. The stakes were high for her, because her personal life had been ruined because of an unsuccessful marriage, the hangover of which entailed a lot of anguish to her. Felicitations apart, she knew very well that if she succeeded, it would herald a new chapter in her life. She would thus be able to efface the ostracism any woman faced, after any cataclysm such as divorce, in an orthodox society. She knew it for true, that if she managed to make it, then every grimace and frown that greeted her, in her bad patch, would automatically metamorphose into smiles, the duplicity with which their society treated the same individual in different ways in different times. She knew the harangues would soon turn into accolades, the sheer ecstasy of which seemed to deprive her of sleep.
The only source of distraction for her was a guy to one corner of the hall, as he seemed to ogle at her queerly. His unkempt hair, heavily untended stubble and disheveled clothes were suggestive of the fact that life was bereft of any charm for him. He was profusely smoking, the very whiff of which peeved Madhavi. Finally, when she could not stand the exasperation any more, she felt like upbraiding the guy, and she gave him a stern glare. The miasma cleared up in her mind, and she figured that she knew the guy. Her anger evaporated in a jiffy when she realized that he was none other than Akash, whom she knew for having such a long association with, right from the kindergarten to the college, and with whom she shared outstanding rapport. Almost instantly, the whole of her events of yesteryears assumed the form of a scenario, wherein each and every memory was so vivid, as if the events had occurred a few moments earlier. Every memory of their childhood was relived: the charades, pranks, chaffs, frolicking during the school recesses, and romping back to homes after a hectic day at school; the ambience of country life, the picturesque view of the lakes adjacent to their homes, where they would spend hours meandering and confabulating endlessly on week ends. Both of them were strung-up for a few moments, and it took them some time to collect their nerves to break the ice. After a few moments of initial inhibitions, the pals struck up an unrestrained and effusive tête-à-tête. Everything in their lives was reminisced with quintessential nostalgia.
Akash transcended the humble moorings of his childhood in a small township. His early childhood memories were of great trauma, the only memories, which he had of his father, been that of a drunken fiend. Bickering and strife-stricken atmosphere prevailed in their household because of his binge drinking. The ordeal ended when he died of liver-cirrhosis, leaving his children and wife to their fates. The end of one ordeal augured the beginning of another. Forced to fend for herself, Akash’s mother took up a job in a local school for eking out a livelihood but her pay was too meager to adequately subsist the family; and she faced great hardships in paying Akash’s school fees. He had the humiliating distinction of being the main fee defaulter in the school, because of which he would be frequently turned out of the school. Notwithstanding the odds, his mother was an iconic figure of feminine fortitude. She put up a courageous, though a feigned smile, on her face, even in the darkest hours of their lives, lest her child’s hopes might sulk, and he might not surmount the odds. She didn’t ever spare a thought for marrying again, despite being widowed in her prime youth. Apart from the financial constraints, she had to contend with barbs of fellow women that implied that she had devoured her husband, the vestigial remains of the draconian attitude the society had towards women in the times, when erudition was not rife in the society.
Amongst his siblings, Akash was the eldest one. There had been a plethora of sufferings in his mother’s life. The premature death of her first daughter, who had amaurotic idiocy, suffused her life with inordinate grief. Her second daughter too had a similar affliction; even though she survived, the retardation was too severe and even the most elementary tasks like feeding her were gargantuan struggles. The death of her husband, albeit a fiend, was the last jolt his mother received. Akash had no one, except his mother, to guide him in the vicissitudes of life. Life was never a bed of roses for him and he realized that his doggedness in studies could be the sole redemption from the abject penury, and the friendship of Madhavi was one of the few commiserating factors in his life. Madhavi too was a diligent student, yet they had different leanings when it came to curricular subjects in the school. What was Madhavi’s forte in studies was coincidentally the Achilles’ heel of Akash and vice-versa. Subsequently, theirs was a symbiotic relationship in the school. They helped mutually in their curricular assignments, and goaded each other to perform better and better. With the onset of youth, it was but natural for them in such proximity, to develop liking for each other, yet they knew their exigencies very well. The cherubic little girl who would turn up at his house on holidays in the wee hours of morning, and nastily pull the rug off his face, yelling, “Stupid! Get up. The Sun rose long ago, it is morning now”, had metamorphosed into a staid woman. Despite blessed with bountiful youth and sheen, she lacked the uppishness and whims, which most other girls of her age and with even a little semblance of her attributes would invariably smack of. They sang hymns of praises for each other in front of their friends, but when it came to admitting the feelings, when they came face to face, both were tongue-tied. They hinted only through allusions, the real feelings in their hearts.
Life was very unforgiving for Akash, and he did not want to compound his problems by having a relationship that would result in a lot of heartache, if things went wrong. Education was his first priority, and he regarded everything else with diminutive credence. Having passed the Intermediate Examination, they parted, opting different streams in different varsities. Letters filled the chasm of distance betwixt them for some time, but later on, they lost track of each other. Akash passed his degree course in Engineering, with good grades. Yet, there was an unfinished task ahead of him. He urged his mother to ask Madhavi’s hand in marriage for him. His mother sensing the huge pecuniary and caste disparities between their families, at first refused to comply, but ultimately she wilted to her only son’s demands. Her fears turned true when Madhavi’s parents snubbed the alliance with an air of condescension. Madhavi belonged to a family of orthodox mindset, wherein her personal choices mattered little.
Moreover, there had been no direct reciprocation of love between them, and hence elopement was an unthinkable proposition for them. Both were victims of a parochial brought-up. They could not muster courage to revolt against the traditions and prevailing milieu in their society, and the passions thus smoldered within their hearts. They grew up in a societal environment where love was a taboo word, and marriage out of self-determination, worse still, regarded akin to blasphemy. She rued for the first time over not speaking out her heart in front of Akash when she could have done so, and had thus stifled her desires. The incident left Madhavi crestfallen, and her parents sensing disaster married her to someone else, who turned out to be a tyrant; he watched with suspicion every move that Madhavi made, and subjected her to worst sort of atrocities. Living with her ex-husband-a habitually suspicious man, was a nerve wrecking experience for her. She had an overriding subconscious feeling all the time that she was under constant surveillance. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, when she decided to walk over the marriage.
Even though Akash had succeeded in his academic career, he was not jubilant. He left for the U.S with a heavy heart, tired of life. Life without Madhavi was an inconceivable idea for Akash, and despite his best efforts, he could not reconcile with the stark reality. The monotony of living in a foreign country, the haunting memories of his past, the limitless desolation took a heavy toll of him, and he became addicted to sleeping pills and subsequently to alcohol. Akash looked cadaverous and despondent, and despite all his pretensions, she sensed that he lacked enthusiasm towards life, and he seemed to be resigned weakly to a world shunning despair. She could not desist from musing that due to a strange travesty of fate she had become the source of debacle of the very person, whom she valued as her true friend, benefactor and someone she could confide in, at any moment of her life.
As the night segued into dawn, the two friends had delved into each and every intricacy of their lives. Their conversation was punctuated with deep sighs and some times when it took a lighter turn, they burst into guffaws, much to the chagrin of the fellow passengers and finally Madhavi averred, “Nobody should know better than you do, the wanton nature of man under the influence of alcohol, and the amount of nuisance he becomes unto himself, his family and the society, because your life has been imbued with sufferings as a direct consequence of your father’s binge drinking. Now, isn’t it paradoxical that you are in the same mould just because life has not turned out as exactly as you had wished it to be? Throughout our lives, we tend to long for happiness that is surreal and apocryphal, and when it does not come our way, we get disappointed and inflict harm unto ourselves in awful ways. I can understand that you have been wronged, humiliated and frustrated in life; that you have had more than the usual share of tribulations, most people have in their lives, but still you don’t have any right to destroy yourself. If you have even an iota of regard for me and the association we have had, over the years of yore, you would give up the self-destructing indulgences, you find yourself presently engaged in. Come out of this drug-induced stupor, and abandon this warped lifestyle. Drugs can’t ever be a solution to any human problem, nor can mitigate the sufferings of anyone, if he thinks thus. You have still many more years of fruitful utility. Don’t fritter with life as you are doing with it now. I believe you are strong enough to pull through these mires of drug addiction.”
They had recounted for the whole night, every tale of theirs, woeful or otherwise, and the next dawn marked the harbinger of a new era in Akash’s life. He vowed to leave behind his murky past and make a fresh start. The next morning, they set off for their native town. They felt buoyant and contented, having vented all the frustrations and trauma that had pervaded their lives over the years of separation. They experienced a sort of perpetual bliss that would linger in their lives. Akash resolved to end the spate of drug dependence that had been afflicting him for five years, and his emancipator could not have been anyone else but Madhavi, because the disappointment was related with her, if not of her own making.
After the rendezvous with Madhavi, Akash took treatment at a drug de-addiction centre. Madhavi came out successfully with flying colors in the civil services’ exams, and a grand gala ceremony was organized in her natal town to felicitate her. Despite the thunderous ovation that greeted her, she bore a wistful ex-pression on her face, and pined for the sight of her chum amongst the crowd, but he could not be found. Akash was then floundering with the agonizing ordeal of the withdrawal symptoms, and the rules of the institution stringently forbade the inmates from venturing out, lest they might flee or return inebriated. Six months later, he was off alcohol and hypnotics. After convalescing, and embracing sobriety, he met Madhavi, who by now, had taken charge of her dream-come-true job, and proposed her for marriage. This time though, she reciprocated, the world did not raise a brow either, and together they enjoyed the connubial bliss, ever after.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
11 stories down.
Man did we make a mistake?
without your love i cant take
another breath knowin theres no you by my side
and everytime i see you i want to run and hide
alone in my room
because you were my than my love
you were my bestfriend
i feel so lost because
i really dont know how to react around you?
kiss?
no
hug?
yea…but only for a while
what i really wanna do is hold you..just for a little while longer..
omg ill have to move on
this is so unreal!
nobody will ever compare to you
you are my first love my dear..
and i pray that noone takes my place
the way i took it
because i gave my all…
and thats what made us fall..
in love.
what about life couldnt we take?
to break this tie with each other
mistake
is what i hope we didnt make..
my heart is empty
im empty.
idk what else to say…
Ding dong merrily on high...
According to the Dorset Echo newspaper a prisoner in The Verne prison on the Isle of Portland has been caught growing a four-foot cannabis plant in his cell. According to the report the prisoner tricked the warders by passing the cannabis off as a tomato plant, but warders became suspicious when he added baubles and tinsel and turned it into a Christmas tree.
It’s good to see the prison warders were on the ball… or should I say, bauble…
Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Alone
I slowly awake from a sleep that felt like a lifetime, I feel weak and somehow empty like something is missing, something important.
As I lay I realise my arms are bound in a cross fashion leading up to my shoulders. I open my eyes but all I see is blackness, “am I blind”? I think to myself, I then realise that it must be a blind fold as for I feel a soft fabric teasingly brush against my nose.
I start attempting to sit up, it was difficult without the balance from my hands but I succeed after a few attempts.
I am able to move my legs, so using my legs I feel around the room, the floor feels soft, like its been cut into padded squares, it’s not leather but a type of fabric which I cannot name, I believe this to be a bed. I don’t have the strength to stand up so using my legs I push myself across the bed on which I have been laying on. I had been making slow progress but eventually I hit a wall with my head, is this a bed or a floor. Again feeling a little silly, I feel the wall with my legs; it feels very much the same as what I now assume is the floor.
I couldn’t bear not being able to see any longer, so using my legs again I attempt to take the blind fold of, I attempted many times to no avail, it was too difficult and my legs don’t seem to flex enough to reach my face. I lay back down resting myself after the lengthy investigation of what I assume is a 100% padded room. I would investigate further, but without the aid of my eyes I could end up bumping into something dangerous.
I just sit there with my back against the wall thinking, where am I? Why am I here? No answer came of course because I am alone.
After what felt like a good 10mins of resting I feel I am able to stand up, I obviously wasn’t strong enough yet, because upon my first step I fall forward rubbing my face along the soft surface of the floor. Turns out my blind fold was not on tight enough because my little fall managed to rub the blindfold down my face and into my mouth (I don’t open my eyes straight away in fear for what I might see), using my tongue I spit it out and it just hangs loosely around my neck.
I open my eyes but close them again quickly as the bright light is to dazzling and my eyes were yet to adjust to the sudden change in lighting conditions.
As I slowly open my eyes, bit by bit, my eyes slowly begin to regain their sight, the first thing I see is that the room is a small square, roughly about 2 meters on each wall. The entire room is covered with padded squares. There is no mirror as for I would like to know what I look like.
Wait, why don’t I know what I look like? I think to myself.
Anyway I search intently for a door so I can leave this room which is making me feel very uneasy. And as hard I looked I just couldn’t seem to find a door, I decide that maybe I should shout, but who should I shout for, I decide it’s better not to ask for someone but to ask to maybe be let me out of this strange room, and so I shout.
“HELLO CAN-“ I stop mid sentence, my voice is very high pitched but light, I should be able to recognise my own voice should I not?
Ignoring this fact I decide to shout anyway.
“HELLO, COULD SOMEONE LET ME OUT PLEASE?” …no one answers.
I now just sit there, in silence waiting for something to happen.
My eye lids begin to grow heavy, I assume I am tired so I lay down and shut my eyes, and go to sleep.
I had the most amazing dream to, and even though I can’t remember it I know it was amazing because when I awoke I felt like a new person.
Instantly getting up to have a look around I realise my arms are no longer bound to my chest, and lying next to me is a type of white garment, about twice the length of my very thin arms.
I pick it up and give it a closer inspection, I notice on the back of the garment there are metal loops and on the long sleeves that are attached to long pieces of string. I assume this is what whoever used to bind my arms together. I drop the garment on the floor in disgust when I notice to mounds on my chest.
Strange as it be, they don’t feel out of place but I don’t feel they should be there either.
I then notice a piece of paper in the middle of the floor, it has markings on it but I can’t seem to make any of it out. After staring at the paper for a certain length of time I also dropped that on the floor, in disappointment.
I start to pace around the room, bored but also confused. Why was my garment taken of me? Why is there a strange piece of paper on the floor?
I decide to attempt to answer the latter first, so I pick it up again and studied it closely, it’s just a piece of paper with a bunch of squares on it, some are coloured in and some aren’t .
Suddenly I hear a sound of footsteps coming in my direction, I panic and start hiding my bit of paper, I don’t know why it just felt like something I should do. I hid it under the garment in the corner and went to the other side of the room to pretend to sleep.
Eventually as the footsteps grew closer and louder and then without warning they just stopped, suddenly a small part of the wall starting moving outwards, I guess that would be the door.
Through the door stepped a stepped a dark figure, (at this point I am looking through the slits in my eyes) I could only see the figures footwear which were black with a little bit of heal, probably for height.
I wonder just who this figure is?
Suddenly the figure began to speak, “Hello Sophie how’re you?”
I begin to wonder who this Sophie is, I never really thought much of what my name could be, I was too preoccupied with familiarising myself with the surroundings.
But I reply anyway with the assumption that Sophie is in fact my name, “erm… could be better I suppose… how are you?”
Speaking that sentence was very strange to me; I just don’t recognise my voice or this name.
The figure replies “I am fine thank you, is there is anything I could do to make your stay in this facility any more comfortable?”
“I would defo feel more comfortable knowing where I am?”
The figure just stares at me and then a huge smile developed. It was amused at my confusion over my predicament. But the figure stopped smiling and walked into the room, “you are in an insane asylum Sophie until we can make you better again”.
And with that the figure left the room, thus finding myself on my own again.
I crawl back to the note to decipher what it all means.
There are 50×50 squares on the note, I assume each square represents a different padding in the room, also on this note two squares are coloured red, I don’t know why but I am curious to find out. I study the note carefully trying to find out exactly where I am, it says the door is north and according to the note I seem to be sat on one of the colured squares.
I shift a little bit to the left so I can get a good view of the square designated as yellow on the note, it seems normal. I slowly run my fingers along the edge of the padding, trying to maybe find a seam to lift it up. I was right, I found a groove half way round, and I lift up the padding to find nothing else but a knife, confused I hide it under the garment in case the strange figure comes back.
I then using the note start trying to find the one other square, it was difficult to find because it was near the middle and that is a lot of padding’s to search. I spent what felt like 30mins trying to find it, but my efforts were in vain because even after searching all the padding’s I still couldn’t find a seam.
I sit down, a little fed up but still optimistic on finding it.
I pick up the knife and I just sit and ponder, thinking about what I could do, all I had was a knife, a missing square and scary figure which calls me Sophie.
What should I do with the knife? Maybe I should stab the evil looking figure with it.
Is my name Sophie, could that be my name or a shortened version of Sophia or something.
My confusion slowly starts taking me over, the rooms starts spinning as I enter a state of dizziness from all the stress that I am trying my hardest to overcome. I start to lose my balance and drop the knife on the floor, I then collapse onto the floor and went what felt like a deep sleep.
I don’t know what woke me up or how long I slept, but I was still exhausted from the lack of food and water. I notice the knife on the floor; it was stood erect with the metal end firmly in one of the pads. I reach over to the knife and pull it out with ease, in fact I found it a little too easy. I investigate the padding and notice that it is in fact hollow, much like the one I found the knife in. I tear the padding open with my hands to find food.
Even though it consisted of mainly crisps, chocolate and water, I immediately started eating it all, I was after all very hungry and extremely thirsty. After I had eaten my fill, I notice a shiny object inside the little hole; I reach in and take it out. It was very strange; whenever I looked at it a strange figure look back at me in the eye it was even mimicking me. I put the object on the floor and pick up the knife quickly, there was something inside the object and I had to be ready to defend myself.
Suddenly the door behind me began to open; I had been so preoccupied with food that I hadn’t noticed the footsteps approaching the room.
I had a choice now, either stay in the room and explain what’s happening or stab the figure in the doorway and try to make a break for it. I had to think fast, I decided to make a run for it, either way I would probably regret it later and I want to at least get away from that room.
So using my new found energy I run towards the door brandishing the knife, I stab the figure as hard as I could, not knowing where I stabbed it, as long as the scary thing can’t follow me. The figure gave a little yelp as I hastily ran out the door.
The first thing I saw when I was out the room was a long, narrow, marble corridor with a large window at the end and each side of the corridor was lined with a dozen doors, which I assume lead to rooms like the one I was stuck in. I ran down the hall way as fast as I possibly could until I got to the end, which resulted in a choice. I had a choice of left or right. To the right I heard shouting and some figures emerging from the distance, to the left I heard shouting but there was no sign of anything.
I decide to go left, there seems to be little hope but I just couldn’t live myself knowing I didn’t at least try. So I am running as fast as my legs will take me, until some more figures start to emerge. I panic and try to turn round but I slide and fall to the ground. My head wallops marble floor (dizziness is taking me over), but somehow I am able to get back up and run the opposite direction back to where I came (at the end of the long corridor). But now the other set of figures were finally here in what I recognise to be long white coats. I am surrounded, there is nowhere to go.
There is only one thing left I could think to do. I run half way up the corridor towards my cell and turn round. I then start running back down as fast as my tiring legs could possibly carry me. And I jump towards the window.
As I make contact with the glass window, it begins to shatter enveloping me in glass. I felt like I was flying into the outside world and hopefully discover myself and find out who I truly am. As I was flying through the window though, one of the figures grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back through the window and smashed me onto the floor with such force. I try to struggle but one of the figures stick something into me and I begin to what feels like falling asleep.
But just as I was about to sleep, one of the many figures stood over me and said, “She gets better every time” and with that I closed my eyes.
I slowly awake from a sleep that felt like a lifetime, I feel weak and somehow empty like something is missing, something important.
THE END?
Written by supermarioex aka SMX