The Perfect Crime vs. The Ideal Crime

What is the perfect crime? What is a crime? Simply put, an act of injustice perceivable in the degree to which it stands out from the set of ‘what should be done’ and rather what was actually done, the person having claimed responsibility being labeled a criminal. There are two aspects to every crime: the crime in itself, encompassing every event from its conception to its execution, and the aftermath that includes the consequentiality as well as the subsequentiality of the crime event. For the criminal, the title of ‘perfect crime’ can assume the form of his intentions having been conveyed to the general public as well as the victim in their fullest. It can also be the ‘perfect crime’ when the crime in itself holds not as much as importance to the criminal as do the shockwaves generated by it, and the attention the criminal can draw toward himself or herself (which is also an important reason for a crime to be committed). Since so many threads have been pulled out of this spool, the perfect crime can be perfect in ways more than one, or in one way more than the others. The reason behind this genre of crimes being so rare is the fact that if we were to analyze the crime and break it down to a series of events, you will find that most crimes are not a consequence of a series of events, rather a parallel output of atleast two such serieses. Pretty much like the butterfly effect, some happening somewhere can be identified as the prime causal event; but after that, the subsequent happenings also begin to interact with each other, making it hard for any effect to stay effective (and perfect) long. The sub-prime events may be quantified, but when they all act together within moments of each other, the effects can be attributed to any one of the sub-prime events. The chances, therefore, that a perfect event occurs is 1 in N!, where ‘N’ is the number of sub-prime events. Since the number of sub-prime events can be continuously differentiated into smaller and smaller games of two people, the value of N can run into very large numbers, reducing the probability of a perfect crime to close to zero. (Unless, of course, the number of sub-primes are zero and the prime causal event is the cause of everything consequently – as in the case of The Joker!)

So, what is the ideal crime? If you notice, the perfect crime is based on the perception of events: the important element which the police as well as the criminal will consider is the sequentiality of events whose climactic realization lay in the happening of the crime and nothing else. The perfect crime, so to say, is a symbol of the degree to which the events have been planned and executed to be. However, when we come down to the ideal crime and what such a crime symbolises, we will have to think of the impact of the event on those who choose to see it and understand something from it. The ideal crime will be committed when impacts of the events carried out are perfect, nothing else. Of course, every crime has two perspectives: the criminal’s, and the victim’s. The victim’s perception of an ideal crime will be when the crime has failed in its purpose – be it the intimidation of the target or the annihilation. But this is a very trivial and dead analysis, and ends here. However, going by the criminal’s perspective, the ideal crime will be performed when the intended effects are visible on the victim. Sexual delinquents (A) and rowdy gangs (B) may both be termed murderers if it has been proved that they have murdered someone, but A and B respond to different stimuli arising from the commitment.

The identification of a perfect crime lies in the cognition and gauging of physical events and the degree to which they have stayed according to plan. If the criminal wants event P to happen after event Q, perfection will encountered if P happens after Q. Owing to the relative abundance of sub-prime events, P and Q cannot be risked to happen simultaneously, or even Q after P. And this is just for a single series; for two or more serieses happening parallely, the sequentiality as well as the progressivity must be according to plan. Of course, all this is too hard to be controlled owing to obvious limitations. But, on the other hand, the ideal crime does not demand a perfect crime in return. The perfect crime depends overtly on the behaviour of mental and physical forces. The ideal crime just varies based on the thinking of the human mind. Ideal crimes are committed everyday: they require no more prime causal event than the crime itself, and sub-prime events are invariably born because most people will take some decision or the other based on what they have understood from the causal event they have chosen to analyse. There will always be only one perfect crime if it ever is committed, but when a crime is committed, ideal crimes will have also been because the deviation from normality which they all personify. When the urban legend raises his pick axe and walks through the open front door, the target acts out of fear. The purpose has been acheived. Most action figures in comics, not the heroes but the vile villains, are depicted as such to arouse the fear hidden in a child’s mind, to show how the actions for which the villain takes responsibility are abnormal and cause change in those things which usually don’t change – this is represented by how the villain does not resemble the general populace in appearence. However, as for the heroes who come to rescue those in trouble, that is just commercialism.

(Approx. fog index: 10.80)

Whisky and Mystics and Men, The Doors

Well, I’ll tell you a story

of whiskey and mystics and men,

And about the believers and

how the whole thing began.

First there were women and

children obeying the moon,

Then daylight brought wisdom

and fever and sickness too soon.

You can try to remind me

instead of the other, you can.

You can help to insure

that we all insecure our command.

If you don’t give a listen,

I won’t try to tell your new hand.

This is it; can’t you see

that we all have our ends in the band.

And if all of the teachers and

preachers of wealth were arraigned,

We could see quite a future

for me in the literal sands.

And if all the people

could claime to inspect such regrets,

well, we’d have no forgiveness,

forgetfullness, faithful remorse.

So I tell you, I tell you,

I tell you we must send away.

We must try to find a

new answer instead of a way.

The Calculus of Reason

Choosing between Classic and Fresh colours for the administrative pages on my blog, I realised where I was. I was stuck between the pages of division and reason. I was reasoning because I had nothing else to do, and also because by trying to reason things out, I had learnt a lot of things concerning why people were the way they were. I was a Jim Morrison who didn’t know where he was going. I was Ozzy Osbourne who didn’t know why he used to smoke. I wouldn’t be defining myself like this if I had to, but I am drawn towards the philosophy of things in a way others wouldn’t imagine. I am drawn towards the philosophy of life because I want to find colours in it that were missing in the first few days of what I would call life. I can sit for hours in a room lit with black lights, basking under the hues that shadowed smoke chose to cast me under. I can not bear to walk under the glaring white of the sun because it exposes me as different ones at the same time. It grants those who don’t deserve to imagine the chance to imagine me as someone else. I enjoy the rain because I fell it washes me everytime I walk under it, washes the world off and lets me know that I can paint it again. I will never know why some people call the simple things in life as philosophical. They are just deprived men and women and children who think they can see red, blue and green in the greyscales of reality. Thanks to constant brainwashing and unconscious institutionalization, we have lost the ability, no the opportunity, to look at life in a way different however we see it now. How many of you are able to see it in a different way everyday? We all just walk around the place because we had a home, and now we have a destination. We walk because we have a purpose. How many of you have walked around sans a purpose? Can you look at life differently? Life is never what it is or what so ever it seems to be. The divisibility of reason is being reduced everyday to chunks of logic that arise from what WE do or know. But what it actually is yet to be seen or understood.

If I drew out a gun from my pocket, I should know that I will end up in prison. If you were born here, you will die here. You might choose to die while sleeping on a Ferris wheel, but you will die here. If there is an old man who has risen out of penury unto greatness and luxury, and who is now dead, you will laud him for whatever he has managed to do, the “triumph of human spirit against all odds”. What odds? Your odds! You are the odds! We are all people. And people think alike. There is no difference between how a twenty year old Peruvian would think and how a twenty year old Vietnamese would think: both of them need sex to stay happy. We will all fall together one day into the same pit of death and decay. We will all have been born from the same womb and on the same land. But there is nobody to say all of us have to live the same way. Of course, all of this is a bit too late, isn’t it? Hmmph, it’s never too late. If I choose to live different, it is not yours to judge me. I will drink from the same cup as the untouchable, I will pee into the same river the holy man is dipping himself in, I will eat from the same plate as my fiend. It is my life to live. Our parents find it hard to let go. They hold on as if I am just a piece of gold chipped off from what is hoarded in their lockers. I need to be me for me to be. Not all men are fools. Each one will want to live on, whether in the minds of those they love as a romantic, or in the hearts of those they have hurt as a scoundrel. It is what I have chosen to make myself to be.

(Approx. fog index: 9.11)

Rendered Redundant

The flight was delayed by half an hour, but that wasn’t a problem – we spent most of our time sleeping our way through the journey, be it in the terminal gates or in the aircraft. The only thing we found wrong with the flight was that the attendants were unable to dim the lights during the trip, making it hard for us to sleep easily. Anyway, we walked through without any hitch and were waiting by the baggage claim section when I noticed something: Sharjah had changed. It was not the Sharjah I had seen three months before, when I left for Chennai, a town in the south of India. The better look of the airport was, however, a seemingly welcome change, but the city outside somehow different; the facades weren’t those which I had found easy to connect myself with. When I first landed in this dusty city two years back, it was as though I had taken a flight around the earth: Sharjah looked like what Chennai could be in the future, and/or had been in the past. The buildings were more spaced apart and the roads were less crowded, but all that could be attributed to a lesser population density than India. But everything else, beginning from the people and including the food, the traffic, the roadside eateries, the vehicles on the roads, the overcrowded shopping malls, assuming a sense of wholesomeness with a very similar ambience, made me feel as though I was at home away from home.

But it is very true that all good things must come to an end.

The city moved on. The aura generated by the feeling of belonging was fading and it was noticeable. The connections were lost, and an American could be seen at work under the foundations of the city: McDonald’s and Hardees took over the local market, wiping out cheaper but more enjoyable eateries, giant bollboards and neon banners eliminated the peaceful heralds that were the cloth banners, the people were falling prey to some alien Westernization and its vile propaganda. The populace, I felt, would soon be reduced to a pointless world of thought were things would be limited to deciding where you wanted to dine that night. The retention of a nation’s identity is very important to its people because of the sole reason that they be able to call such and such a place on the earth their home. If you give up the identity of your nation, you are surrendering your homes. In fact, with the surrender of your homes, you are also assuming other values which aren’t imbued in your skins in the first place. It is a well known fact that the Gulf nations are majorly dependent on the quanitity of oil they extract and export every year, and it is agreed that they should be considering other means of living once the resource runs out. Such a happening will obviously result in a crisis, but the leaders must not allow the doors of living and trading to be open enough to allow some foreign ideas to enter the regions. What I’m saying might seem a little too fundamental, and I may not be equipped enough to understand the troubles concerning a whole nation of more than a million people, but everything I’m saying is based on my common sense. A localite wouldn never want to walk out of his home one day and see that his childhood has faded into obscurity, now being buried under his thoughts owing to a veil draped over the gardens in which he used to play and in the streets he used to run. Things will always change, that’s true, but not to the extent of having to sacrifice your identities.

Metallica releases

Some songs from their upcoming album Death Magnetic (due to be released on September 12, 2008)

The Day That Never Comes at Metallica’s official web site

Cyanide at Youtube

Tours for the album are scheduled to begin on October 21, 2008, with supporting acts including The Sword, Lamb of God, Machine Head, and Down.

All Kinds of Nonsense

During my fourth semester in undergraduate college, I put my name up for the post of the Secretary of the fledgling Literary Club. It had been founded by Mohit, a guy a year senior to me, and the agenda for the year had to involve the inclusion of plans to extend the reaches of the club within the college. There were only a few members in the club then, and I set about looking for more people who could be interested in organizing the events and everything. I printed and put up posters, put up messages on the local network, and spoke to anyone and everyone I met while gymming/dining/washing clothes/travelling, etc. Quite a few of them were interested – an exceeding number actually – and I had to resort to taking a personal interview of each of them before proceeding further. What happened next had me deciding whether I should laugh or cry.

First question: Your name.

Answer: So-so

Second question: Any documents to support your claim of english proficiency?

Answer: I studies in english medium school… (and she went on)

Rejected.

First question: Your name.

Answer: So-so

Second question: Any documents…?

Answer: I don’t document, but I am coming first in english in the schools… (and he went on)

Rejected.

Believe it or not, I had to endure so much of nonsense for close to thirty minutes before I selected three people in whose hands I would find it comfortable to place tasks concerning the constructive use of the language. In a big college like ours, one would expect to find a little more consideration and understanding of something as momentous as the literary club – although the name does not imply the name of language being worked with, everyone takes it for granted that it is the English language, most widely used for communication purposes if taken on a global basis. Disregarding everything that comes with being part of a club that administers the quality of local communication, boys and girls walk in and out of the door just for the free biscuits and bottles of fresh juice. I know I might be getitng a little too worked up here, but what then is the use of having such and such a club? A lot of people in the college see those working as part of clubs as un-cool (whatever that may be) and as a waste of time. What they fail to see that it is just a pack of opportunities you can utilize to improve some skill which you think you are already good at working on and with. If you don’t want to work in the club, at least let those who are actually interested in what they are doing. And if the authorities don’t come to understand this, the whole system just collapses into a pit of spoofs and farces.

The practice of running and maintaining clubs in a college must not be cultivated just to find yourself ranked on some obscure list and placed in a more obscure list of colleges with clubs. If you want a club, you must have a reason and a purpose going with it: don’t breed a club and then leave it hanging in mid-air just because you think those working in it are not productive enough. A club is like a container of ideas. You must place suitable people in it to harvest those ideas. Those working in the club and the club itself are separate entities. If you want the students of your college to be able to convey whatever they are trying to say in a conceivable manner, in a way that is easily perceivable in an international arena of academicians, it doesn’t mean that they be taught that 1 + 1 = 2. It means that they have a specific medium in common to those around them, and it means that they be able to manipulate the medium according to their needs. Restricting them to knowing the numbers will only land them up in situations where they will be paid for what they know, and not what they are.

The Commitment to Seeking Power

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’, the race of men is depicted as one always on the lookout for power. Even if the fires of the power they seek for does not subside until it consumes them, men today have no consideration for themselves until they have shown the world they, too, are capable of dominating, as much as those already doing so. Power today, at least in my eyes, happens to be a concoction of the human mind, an envisioned object placed in the future of every individual and depicted as something to be picked up if ever you happen to walk past it. Your need to dominate is the fundamental element you have devised in your mind in order to safe guard your own face in the eyes of the plebian and presbytarian general while you, simultaneously, walk around with your chest thrown out and proud – all hidden by the transparent veil of what you call ‘doing what is right‘. When I have already said that an absolute power does not exist, it succeeds the collapse of one’s morals and values resulting from our need to isolate ourselves from a collective totality. (For more, read the CoV Segments, and The Supermen, The Doppelganger, and Aparheid Was Inevitable ). Power cannot exist when you have defined it within your own framework – power can exist only when you have a chance of dominating over all humanity per se, when you have a chance that you can separate yourself from the group and function separately. Since this is not possible, all you can do is fight amongst yourselves till the end.

There’s a saying that goes ‘with great power comes greater responsibility’. To mask the fatigue that comes with added responsibilities (and the frustration of having to assume more and more), you perform a few actions to keep those ‘dominated by you’ under control. If only you can keep to yourself and realize that domination is only a state of having been overpowered by the meaninglessly wanting duties of life (that you, again, take upon yourself) of life, you will come to assume greater responsibilities and greater victories with them. Staying in power is nothing but your ability to win over everything else that seeks to consume – it is all but a constantly persisting state of having to fight your way through. Nothing more and nothing less. (And I keep saying is nothing but because I am only trying to simplify things based on how I have come to see them to be).

Words and Ideas

Every time I open Wordpad, I find an empty page and a blinking cursor inviting me to a whole new world of words and ideas. I have never found a pen and a sheet of paper as compelling as a keyboard and an empty screen. The speed at which my wrist can scribble is nowhere close to the speed at which I can think. Of course, this is true for everybody – but some find a pen and paper more ‘acceptable’ because of the fact that they can establish a relationship with it. They can strike up a dance with the ink that is flowing onto the sheet, they can know what they are writing through their very handwriting, which is a very personal signature of the human mind and its thoughts. Writing has been around for ages and ages, since even the Vedas when they were first scripted, followed by the immortal Upanishads. In the Hindu household, when a child turns two (or three, I’m not sure), a ceremony is conducted wherein the child is placed on the father’s lap and his/her fingers are guided through grains of rice to script his/her name for the first time. It marks the beginning of the inception of knowledge into the child, and is a significant occasion also because the Gods’ blessings are incurred for the child’s academia. But for me, although such and such a ceremony was conducted, I have lost touch with the joy of writing something. I want to know that this world, wherein I belong, can catch up with me as I jump from idea to idea. And it has revealed to me a brilliant realm of expression. I am not a good actor, and I am very reserved when it comes to talking directly to one’s face, but when I write, I am a whole new person. There is not one troublesome soul who can disturb me when I have struck up a flame that consumes my mind and my body together in the burning of the paranormal onto the planes of eternity. When the words begin to flow, there is no stopping them – the only person who can is myself, but since I find them to be my very excellent companions in times of joy as well as distress, why should I hinder them from coming alive? I can only ask for more.

And the beauty of it all is, they never are extinguished. How much ever I ask for them, whenever I ask for them, and in whatever forms I ask for them, they are delivered. Hey, hey, this is bad, isn’t it? How can I part myself from what I am doing? I am the thinking, I am the writing, I am the path of salvation! It is me which is my thought, its is me which is my word. All that I have written is a part of me which I would like to call a feeling. How would writing be a feeling, you may ask of me. Well, I can not lie to you: I don’t know the answer. But when I do write, I feel. When I describe a lion’s roar, I can feel the strom building up in the lion’s guts as it prepares to declare its lordship. As I write about a morning mist at a hill station, I can feel the mist hugging me and drowning me in its cold. When I write that the colour of an object is red, I can feel the boldness shooting forth from the very colour and not the object which it contains. I can feel its courage as it dares to attract my attention from the myriad of colours it has been placed amongst. When I write, every syllable defines a moment of time within which it has been born, lived and consumed, within which every other word that came before it is forgotten, within which it has lived a glorious life to the fullest. When I complete a paragraph of a story, I have defined moments in the story to be found forever in your hands as your eyes flirt over the page looking for what it wants. The spaces between two words and the spaces between two thoughts are the same. Even though they come to be defined in the different dimensions of space and time, a continuum exists where their measurement is impossible, where they can not grasped as they cascade through your visualization, realization and digestion of them. As each word follows the other, a tale is spun where the events take life from their cocoons of text, and take flight from their wings of meaning. When I write, I am telling you of long forgotten and almost lost people as they live thorugh their comedies and tragedies. When I write, I speak.

The Nameless

(Los by Rammstein)

Notice the way Rammstein makes use of puns in the song to twist their dual messages around each other. This particular song, from their album ‘Reise Reise‘ (Rise, Rise), has captivated me for long. The instrumentation involved is also very minimal: two acoustic guitars that play the fundamental tune, an electric guitar that comes in the latter half of the song as a complement to the acoustic, bass guitar to support the electric, and limited percussions. Lead vocalist Til Lindemann plays a mouth organ in between for a couple of minutes. This particular video shows the band performing at Nimes, France, as part of their Volkerball (People’s Ball) tour.

Death Magnetic cover – now with reviews!

Death Magnetic cover

The greatest metal album of the year, the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic, is slowly drawing close with the event stated to be held on the 12th of September, 2008. ‘Cyanide‘, a song from the album, has already been played alive by the thrash metal band in many cities since it was first performed in Dallas.

And now, some two weeks after the release of this album, here’s what people think of it:

Rolling Stones, Pitchfork, Los Angeles Times, Blabbermouth, Metacritic.

Based on a glance through the above sites, Death Magnetic seems to have done pretty well for itself, although it doesn’t seem to live up to Master of Puppets, The Black Album or Kill ‘Em All by the same band. But yes, thankfully, it is not St. Anger.

Rapidshare link for ‘Death Magnetic‘:

http://rapidshare.com/files/142199867/METDM.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/142199763/METDM.part2.rar