As he runs in the rain which grows heavier by the minutes, rainwater obscuring his vision, he remembers another rainy evening from years ago, when he was running too in the shadow of a range of hills with many silver tongues of waterfalls next to a suburban train barreling towards Bombay (a city which was only visible as a glare or a portent on the horizon in the distance) - an evening in which he was attempting to outrun the overwhelming sensation of being forsaken, abandoned, rid of all hope under a stormy thundering darkness. He remembers that evening as he mixes and drinks a cocktail of tears and rain now. And it occurs to him that even though he has switched countries and cities, the rock-salty taste of emptiness, and of despair doesn't change.

This NYT story on the latest court ruling on Big Tobacco adds another datapoint to support that old (cynical) saying that the only difference between a whore and a politician is that a politician makes more money. The money section of the article:

"The federal case dates from 1999, when President Bill Clinton promised in his State of the Union address to unleash the Justice Department to bring a civil racketeering suit against tobacco manufacturers. The suit filed that year was one of the government’s largest in the scope of charges and the resources devoted to it, accusing cigarette makers of decades of fraud, deceptive advertising and dangerous marketing.

Career prosecutors working on the case protested a Justice Department decision last year to scale back its request for the companies to finance the national stop-smoking campaign, to $10 billion from $130 billion."

Doesn't the Chosen One workout with a vengence? Oy ve! si, si, but Big Tabacco is damn patriotic, for what would the Wild West be without the Marlboro man? This also reminds me that I must put in a request at the library for that recent movie on "MOD" lobbyists, Thank You For Smoking. Thank you for smoking, as you read this.

[2]Me Be Beautiful

Calling all the desi natural cosmetics folks; this market is huge -

"Euromonitor International, a market research group in London, has forecast that the $3.9 billion global natural cosmetics market will grow annually by 9 percent through 2008, to $5.8 billion, compared with a growth rate of 1 percent for conventional cosmetics and personal care."

• if done right. Maybe Madonna can be persuaded to get back to her "OM/Hindu" shtick from her recent foray into Middle East peacekeeping. A pop song that mentions the powers of turmeric and chandan may work to make it all hip and cool! Also is someone already selling this stuff in the market?

I rarely look at the local newspaper, Atlanta Journal Constitution. But today, when I did so, an article on a federal civil rights lawsuit against "speech codes" at Georgia Tech (the university I attend) caught by attention. The lawsuit was filed by Alliance Defense Fund on the behalf of two "conservative" (i.e., College Republican) students, and claims that "Tech actively censors disfavored expression on campus and that the Tech environment squelches First Amendment freedoms through policies outlined in the Student Code of Conduct and the Housing Community Guide"*.

In other words, these noble crusaders for free speech want to express, freely without censure, their contempt for gays, feminists, and other ideological enemies. And this week a Federal judge ruled that Tech has to get rid of these pesky housing codes, which prevent these "Godly" students from, for example, outlining in graphic detail the horrors their imagined version of Hell that await "sodomites". I for one think the judge is right; any kind of speech should be allowed even if it is driven by prejudice and malice**. Let the mudslinging games begin. These folks (by the way, I wonder, why are they hiding out at Tech battling "sodomites" instead of fighting in the Chosen One's Mess-o-potamian "Crusade"? Do they want me point them to the Tech ROTC?) should be made welcome, so that they can bring their "crosses" to burn in the university. And to counter this, I would suggest to their opponents that they screen or enact scenes from Monty Python's "Life of Brian".

*Ref: Technique’s article **I am an Edward Abbey type libertarian when it comes to free speech issues; no pussyfooting for me. Meanwhile will you upright citizens on the behalf of an alien (yours truely) let FCC know that it shouldn't regulate/ fine wardrobe malfunctions, and bleeped words like "fuck" over as illogical Flawell-ian rants?!