January 22, 2012

Some Thoughts on Sports Allegiances

Obsessive allegiances to sports teams have always mystified me, even as I myself hold and act upon these obsessive allegiances. This most worthless of sites, for instance, has long documented my ire and despair over the trials and tribulations of the ever faltering Cal Golden Bears. But as I myself observed some years back following an especially devastating failure by my alma mater that nearly brought me to tears, the notion of caring enough to weep about a sports institution whose only relation to you is that it represents your undergraduate university is difficult to explain—at least as a rational matter. The notion that one might care the same way about a team whose only relation is even more tenuous—that it represents a city which you may have once called home—is downright preposterous.

All these rational thoughts notwithstanding, each August I inevitably get excited for the upcoming college football season (and by October, am usually reduced to despair by atrocious quarterback play). Worse still, I would have been getting similarly excited about the NFL each year, but for nearly a decade, the team I've long rooted for—the San Francisco 49ers—was stuck in a rut of horribleness that actually made it seem like Cal had a better chance of getting to the Rose Bowl than the 49ers to a playoff game.¹ One might think that after a decade of next to no expectations, my allegiance to the 49ers might have lessened. Instead, hours away from the NFC Championship, I again find myself anxiously awaiting the game—and wondering why it is that I care so much.

January 02, 2012

Rohit Reviews: Notes from Underground

I am a sick man . . . I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. With those opening sentences, Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1864 novella Notes from Underground joins the pantheon of books with awesome opening lines, alongside such masterpieces as Anna Karenina, A Tale of Two Cities (review here), Pride and Prejudice, and Huckleberry Finn. And like its compatriots just mentioned, Notes did not disappoint beyond its opening lines.

Considering that Notes is often regarded as the first existential novel, it has, unsurprisingly, long been on my list of books to read. But for whatever reason, it never was a priority, and given the length and density of other works of Russian literature (including a few by Dostoevsky himself), the almost absurdly short Notes, which clocks in at only 131 pages, always seemed to fall by the wayside. That is, until my second ill-advised book-buying binge of 2011. But length can be deceiving: despite its rather skimpy appearance, the novel still packs a rather impressive intellectual punch—and this time, without the 200 pages or so of exposition usually endemic to Russian novels.

December 31, 2011

Year in Review, 2011

Well, dear readers, it would appear that both you and I have managed successfully to keep the existential demons at bay for yet another dismal year, undeterred in our never ending pursuit of nothingness. Whether that is an accomplishment or a most miserable development, I leave for you to decide.

Rather than spread holiday cheer this year in an uncharacteristic display of misguided merriment (as I have been want to do in the past), however, I thought I might take a moment to comment on the state of this most dismal site as it charges on (futilely) into its tenth year of existence. Yes, you read that correctly: it's been ten years. Hard to imagine, really.

And while the state of its author has not much changed in that time—I remain as unmoored in a turbulent sea of loneliness, despair, and the like as ever—this site has taken a definite tumble, both in intellectual caliber and technical adequacy. I can't much help the former; tacit failure is largely what this site represents, after all. But I can and do intend to remedy the latter, probably sometime in the first or second quarter of 2012. (It's important to have goals.) So stay tuned for a better platform by which I will deliver my usual enlightenment.

Oh, and Happy New Year. Be sure to enjoy the festivities tonight. If the Mayans were right, it'll be this planet's last.

December 27, 2011

Rohit Reviews: This Side of Paradise

Only a few days ago, I lamented the slowing of my reading pace caused by what I deemed the twin malignancies of overwork and ill-conceived travel. The holidays, however, have brought some spare time and today I wrapped up the first of four new books purchased in yet another ill-advised book-buying binge last week in Brooklyn. Compared to Midnight's Children, F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise was a breeze of a read that I could most likely have finished in a day had it not been for other commitments. Having read and enjoyed The Great Gatsby a couple times (once in high school and again in college), I had rather high expectations for Fitzgerald's 1920 foray into the literary world at the tender age of twenty-three. Unfortunately, the novel ended up being somewhat of a disappointment.

December 24, 2011

Rohit Reviews: Midnight's Children

After an inspired spell of reading over the summer, the autumn again brought the twin (self-imposed) malignancies of overwork and ill-conceived travel that have long plagued me (and this site). Naturally, as a consequence, the feverish pace at which I had been consuming books ground to an unseemly halt. But as I had quietly committed to finishing the four books I bought in an ill-advised book-buying binge in July before the end of the year, I spent the last few weeks in a mad dash to finish the last—and by far, the longest and most difficult—of the lot: Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker Prize winner, Midnight's Children. We are nothing, after all, without our entirely arbitrary commitments to ourselves. (I might be nothing regardless of my entirely arbitrary commitments to myself, but that's a story for another day.)

November 28, 2011

Recent Mod Perl Woes

I would imagine that most of you (insofar as there are any of you) who read this most miserable of blogs do so with some kind of feed reader. And as you should: the code running this decrepit site has not been updated in almost five years—an eternity in the Internet era. One problem with running such an old site is that when things break, they break badly. That was precisely what happened this past weekend when what should have been a routine security upgrade of my webserver (Apache) instead took out my whole web presence.

And while I'd like to say I have fixed things, alas it isn't so. I have merely hacked them so that they are again functional; a fix, unfortunately, is still missing. For anyone experiencing issues recently with Apache and mod_perl, I have outlined the issue below. (That past sentence, by the way, should be taken as a sign for most—or all—of you to skip what comes next.)

November 11, 2011

My Romantic Quest: From Cynicism to Nihilism (Part 3)

Part of maintaining a ridiculous blog for nearly a decade, I suppose, is having to confront the ridiculous assertions one has made on said blog in one's (ridiculous) youth. In my case, one such ridiculous assertion in particular might be salient today to those readers who have followed me over the years (and, of course, to those unlucky few who have had the distinct displeasure of having made my acquaintance in person): that I would get married on a triplet date, and more specifically, November 11, 2011 (or 11/11/11). Alas, today is the day of my (Internet) wedding and the bride to be has yet to show—they never do.

Could it be that I was stood up? Could it be that I have only one chance left to marry—12/12/12—until I am old and gray (2/22/22)? Could my storied romantic quest (to ruin my life) have ended in such a failure? Say it ain't so!

October 24, 2011

Introducing LawTeX

Well, dear readers, it has been a long while—almost two months to be precise—and if it were not to ring utterly hollow, I might even be willing to apologize for my absence. But, as with many things in this (necessarily futile) life of mine, I am over apologies. Having last left you with a discussion of video games, moreover, I see no reason why I shouldn't mark my return with a discussion of something far more esoteric: LaTeX, or more specifically, the software I developed in law school to facilitate the use of LaTeX in a world dominated by (loathsome) WYSIWIG products. (That, by the way, would be the cue for most—if not all—of you to stop reading if you hadn't already.)

August 29, 2011

Virtual Reality

For all the mind-numbing technical gibberish I routinely spout on this most wretched of sites, there remains one technical topic that I have rarely—if ever—breached: video games. Considering it is a subject so closely aligned in the popular psyche with technology and computer geekery, that is as strange an omission as it is a confounding one. What could possible have motivated such a silence for over nine years of this blog's existence?

Could it be shame? But, as a rather unapologetic (computer) nerd who as recently as 2007 refused to outsource my e-mail, what possible shame could there be in admitting I like video games? None, as it were. My consummate failures are, after all, well known to this readership—to reveal, for instance, that I was a video game addict wouldn't do any more harm than, say, this entry, already has to my beleaguered (online) reputation.

So, what's the deal then? Simple: I don't write about video games because I neither play nor am interested in video games. (I know: blasphemy!) In fact, of mainstream societal indulgences today, I can't think of one (besides maybe television) in which I have less interest than gaming.

August 15, 2011

Rohit Reviews: Alice in Wonderland

My summer binge of books continues unabated, it would seem. Today, I got through Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, or more precisely, Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland, the first of three stories published in the Norton Critical Edition I purchased in my ill-advised book-buying binge some weeks ago. The other two—Through the Looking Glass and The Hunting of the Snark—will have to wait another day, however, as the 99 pages of nonsense provided courtesy of Alice was quite enough for me for one summer.

I chose to pick up Alice in Wonderland last month for several reasons, but none of them were because I was particularly excited to read the book. Children's literature, as you might guess dear readers, is not and was never really my cup of tea. I did, of course, once upon a time read children's literature, given that I had little choice in the matter in my early years; and to this day have fond, if hazy, memories of the Berenstain Bears, Boxcar Children, Hardy Boys, and of course, most stories authored by the prolific Roald Dahl. But before I was ten, I had moved onto Crichton, Grisham, and Clancy—popular and contemporary stories, without doubt, but hardly children's stories. And in high school, college, and beyond, I would abandon contemporary fiction entirely for the classics—a trend from which I have yet to deviate even today.

What compelled me to pick up Alice, then, was a combination of feeling that this was a book I should read given its literary and cultural significance and wanting a change of pace from the melancholy of recent titles such as Interpreter of Maladies and The Idiot. And on those fronts, it did not disappoint—I can now say I have read it, and it certainly was not melancholy. I must admit, however, that ultimately I don't think I really got the book.