With the world set to come to an end tomorrow, what better time to look back and reminisce.

Confession: I used to be in a severely emo band. What do I mean by severely emo? I mean the whole nine yards, my friend—screamy singing, bleeding from playing your guitar too awesomely hard (read: incorrectly), lyrics that almost exclusively revolved around being romantically upset, songs named after Japanese bears…all of it.

Needless to say, I was pretty heavily invested in the whole genre in its mid-nineties heyday (post-DC-hardcore, pre-mall-emo).

So I was understandably psyched when it was announced earlier this week that one of my favorite mid-nineties emo bands, Christie Front Drive, was playing a reunion show at The Bell House in Brooklyn, a modest walk from my very front door. Now, I never thought I was the reunion type (as Maritime frontman, Davey van Bohlen, said of his former band, Cap’n Jazz in our earlier interview, “it sometimes makes sense to leave the past in the past”), but, after missing last year’s seemingly only ever possible Cap’n Jazz reunion show due to catastrophic weather, I now understand that it’s wiser to go see a potentially washed-up band from your youth than it is to possibly miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime awesome musical experience. So, long story short, I got my tickets.

But all these reunions—Cap’n Jazz in 2010, now Christie Front Drive, and soon new material from mid-west emo-sweethearts, Braid—all in this very specific, 16+-year-old genre, it got me thinking: What the hell is going on?

It also seems cause enough to post five of my favorite songs from this era. No, my old band’s not in there. What do you think I am? But enjoy…for, like, 24 more hours….

Braid • Urbana’s Too Dark
Braid is one of the many influential emo bands to spring forth from the rock-motional fertile grounds of the Chicago area and, happily, they’re set to release some brand new material soon. Plus they Tweet and shit. Crazy, right?

Cap’n Jazz • Little League
Another Chicago band that bore many, many bands to come, some awesome, some….very arty. Plus Davey van Bohlen et al started it when they were, what, five? And yes, I missed they’re only reunion. Ever. I’m sure it was terrible, right?

Christie Front Drive • Field
Whether this song has actual lyrics or not, I love it. Fingers crossed, guys.

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start • Song Competition
Sadly, I don’t think these fellas are around anymore, but our old band happened to play a show ages ago with them, and I’ve been in love with their math-rock-y sound ever since. And yes, that was their actual name. NERDS!!!

The Promise Ring • Watertown Plank
Totally my favorite Promise Ring song ever, and I think the first one I ever heard.

Alright, now everyone grab your backpack straps and fingerpoint to the sky, in all its fiery, final, Armageddon-ridden glory.

Most emo end times ever.

(above – photo by me of the most emo mailbox ever, used for many a show flyer in the day)

Today’s Find—The 25th Anniversary Gala of Farm Sanctuary, one of the finest non-profits in existence.

We’ve worked with Farm Sanctuary since they hired us in 2006 to redesign their original logo and re-brand the group from top to bottom. And we’re lucky enough to still be working with them today.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, Farm Sanctuary started out in 1986 (thus the math) as very much a grassroots volunteer organization, supported almost entirely by the selling of veggie dogs out of a VW van. Today, Farm Sanctuary is the country’s leading farm animal protection organization, with hundreds of thousands of supporters…most of whom don’t expect a veggie dog in return for their support. They run two huge farm animal sanctuaries—one in upstate New York, one in California; both of which you can visit—and work to end the suffering of farm animals by way of activism, education, active rescues, policy reform, some lovely merch, and anything else they can think of. So, yeah, they’re the good guys, and we’re very proud to work with them.

It prides us even further to be attending their New York gala this Saturday (they’ll be throwing an LA celebration in September). So, though we know most of our friends and clients don’t have stacks of cash lying around their houses/offices/massive yachts, we have to strongly urge anyone and everyone to join us this weekend in supporting a worthy, worthy cause. And hob-nobbing with snazzy celebs while donning decorative duds, eating flashy foods, and drinking decorative drinks. It’s win-win, really.

So, get your glitz on for the animals! Reservation information and—for those of you who can’t attend—support info here. Though we’d love to see you!

Reader, as you may or may not know, today is International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day.

Wait, let us rephrase that—as you definitely do not know, today is International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day. As far as we can tell, it was essentially proclaimed as such by four Canadians via the Facebooks. In fact, if you do a Web search for International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day—ICRAD for those in the know—you pretty much just find the Facebook page. And our blog. 

ALAS! We have never been ones to shy away from celebration or question potential problems pertaining to proper registration of international holidays. ESPECIALLY when they involve ravens and crows, who not only serve as our company’s namesake, but also fascinate us personally and visually. 

So raise your glass of dark, dark, beer, reader; tip your chapeau noir in reverence, friend; and don that slightly creepy crow mask to freak out your neighbors as we all toast these covetable corvids!

On a related note, please enjoy this superb headline from a couple years back. Oh, Metro editors.

While we were fairly unsuccessful at finding any awesome indie Indian bands (I know, how can they resist the terminology?!), we did hear about Brooklyn-based, Red Baraat, who sounds very much like an awesome Indian marching band. And we subsequently found out about an Indian band named Indus Creed from our friend, Ravi. And no, they don’t sound like Indian Creed…more like Indian Dave Matthews, really…

Then we spoke with our good friend Shehzad on his new book that discusses the effects of outsourcing work to India. Later, during his book release party at DUMBO’s powerHouse Arena, Shehzad did his best to contribute to my growing collection of angry author autographs (above). That dude can’t even be mean when he tries.

Then we posted our somewhat crazy recipe for vegan malai kofta and handed the reins over to our friend Justin so he could talk about his love of India. If you’re learning for further travel writing on the subject, check out our friend Brian’s “outsourcing travel diary,” which, in his own words, is “poorly-formatted, and also combines the worst aspects of Shehzad’s insights and Justin’s understanding.” 

Also this week and totally unrelated to our blog…as far as we know…India beat Pakistan in their cricket match to proceed to tomorrow’s cricket world cup against Sri Lanka and Gandhi’s home state banned a new book about the memorable political leader because it was accused of claiming Gandhi may have liked dudes.

Next week, I don’t know what we’re doing, man. Probably catching up on all the work we didn’t do this week. But soon we’ll have some exciting content from the likes of Rebecca Gates and Mirah! I know!

Namaste, dear readers.

A good friend of ours travels to India about once a year and has for a long time now. Now, we know plenty of people who have been to India for one reason or another—work, wedding, leisure—but we don’t know anyone who’s so obviously bound to the place like our friend, Justin. So we asked him recently to take a minute and tell us what it was that kept him going back; what he thought it might be that connected him strongly to the people, culture, and land that make up India. This is what he told us. Words and photos, courtesy of Justin. And Pico, Justin’s son, pictured in that last photo there…which I’m sure he’ll be psyched about.

The first time I ever really experienced India was in September, 1995. Back then I took part in a Buddhist Studies study abroad program through Antioch College; it was something that I had looked forward to with great enthusiasm, and it changed me forever.

I still remember very clearly the atmosphere as we exited Indira Gandhi International Airport. There was something about the late night smoky air, the dreamlike yellow tinged lights from the lamp-posts outside the airport that attracted swarms of hundreds of tiny diwali bugs, and the mixture of great bustling human activity and effortless leisure all mixed into a single moment. Needless to say, within a few short moments I was hooked.

Every minute of that trip, be it practicing Vipassana meditation in which our central instruction was something akin to “feel the mosquitoes bite you, and as they do, send them loving kindness”, exploring the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment and its surrounding villages, wandering around Mumbai or Varanasi, or experiencing the amazing beauty of the jeep ride from Darjeeling to Sikkim, was an act of confirmation. Every second was an act of chipping away at any attempt of resistance; any act to separate myself from my experiences. In this way India has become a part of me, and through my relationship with its culture, geography, and even sense of time, I have become part of it- we have become interwoven threads of being that make up the larger fabric of my being.

Since that first trip I have returned to India over a dozen times. I mainly go to continue with my study and practice of Buddhism, but there is also a little time set aside for a pilgrimage to new places—generally a place with some spiritual significance. It’s these places that seem to further connect me to India as it exists within space and across time- through pilgrimage I feel that I have the possibility to create a personal connection with say, a Buddhist Siddha from the tenth century, as well as the lineage of practice that has trickled down from him. In feeling that connection within myself, tenth century India becomes very alive for me, and I feel that I can relate to it; we constellate, and a steady stream of meaning descends from that connection.

I relate to India as a Buddhist chaplain in the sense that it is a place that inspires and challenges me. It informs my theological ground as it is the present home to much of the lineage of Buddhism that I am part of; the Karma Kagyu Lineage. Born somewhere in the ninth century, it spread from India to Tibet, and there it distilled and matured. Now it is spreading to the west, and it is amidst this new wave of transmission that India offers me the experience, the wisdom and the connection to my lineage so that I may help plant it’s seeds here, so that it may distill here, and mature, here, in Brooklyn.

As a cook, I cannot think of any other country with the range and the sophistication that India offers through its cuisine. As in many places—and I hope this will always be the case in my home—the centrality of food, and the communal sharing of food is extremely important. People come together to share food; in doing so they share one another’s experiences, including their shared experience of the food that they consume together.

I pray that just as my relationship with India will deepen and become tempered over time, that the wealth that it offers me, as a Buddhist yogi chaplain, as curious wandering father, and as a cook will continue to percolate within me and offer clarity and depth in all that I do.

A few weeks ago I was talking with my mom on the phone and outsourcing came up. Somehow. And in the usual way that most Americans think of it—”Why are all these paying jobs going to people outside of our country’s borders when our economy’s hurting and we have so many people out of work.” My mom went as far as to propose a boycott of certain companies until they bring outsourced jobs home. When I asked what would happen when everyone’s bills shot up because said companies would be paying higher wages for said jobs, the conversation sort of petered out. But it’s a commonly enough posited question and quandary. What’s not commonly talked about though is how all this outsourcing of work and, it turns out, culture is affecting the people it’s all being outsourced to. Such is the subject of a new book, Dead Ringers, written by Shehzad Nadeem, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York. We got a chance to talk with Nadeem about his book, globalization and its effect around the world, Indian Doppelgängers, and why people should read books with charts. I know. We’re WAY out of our depth.

Shehzad Nadeem: I was interested in corporate deception. Multinational companies wanted to send white collar work abroad on a mass scale to save on labor costs, but they knew that people would be anxious and angry about it. So they found a way to shift the work in a relatively invisible manner, a way of occluding the geographic signature, “Made in India.” We’re all now familiar now with the Indian call center industry, which frequently requires employees to don Western identities in providing customer service. Workers also undergo training in Western accents and popular culture and are discouraged from disclosing their location on the phone. (If pressed, many are simply told to lie.)

To employers and executives, these are white lies. To Indian workers they’re tainted gray. To Western workers they’re soot black. They’re lies that justify, complicate, and deceive. The paradox is that outsourcing is also a material truth, a series of concrete, mimetic practices. A forged truth. In a word, a masquerade. What is it like, I ask, to act like Americans and Europeans and live as if you’re in time zones a world apart?

Which relates to the title. The term “dead ringer” refers to one who strongly resembles another. In its original meaning, a ringer is a fast horse that’s furtively entered into a competition in place of a slow or injured one. Here workers in the global south are substituted for their more expensive counterparts in developed countries. To all outward appearances, the names and neutered accents, the workplace cultures and structures, the identities and lifestyles resemble those of their country of origin. Upon closer inspection, however, you see how they diverge from the mold. I found this sameness and difference fascinating.

KoR: My brain just grew. No, that all makes sense, and I think, on that level, it’s something that most of us are aware of, generally. But I think most of us view this as a recent development. How long have we actually been outsourcing these sorts of jobs? Where’d the idea originally come from?

SN: In the 1990s, General Electric established a joint venture in the country and subcontracted software development and maintenance and back-office work to Indian suppliers, such as Wipro and Tata. And British Airways sent call center work. Other multinationals, such as Microsoft, Cisco, Xerox, and Honeywell, soon followed suit. A managing director at one multinational put the rationale plainly: “The country offered us cheap labor and skilled people.”

KoR: I’ll refrain from any comment on the name of that one company. So, I have to ask—What do you think of that NBC show, “Outsourced”? I’ve only seen it once, but it seemed really odd to me to make a comedy out of that kind of situation.

SN: The first time I watched the sitcom, I cringed. I cringed, in particular, because of an off-color, phallic joke: American manager to Indian employee named Manmeet: “You mean to tell me your name is Man-meat?!” But I cringed more generally because this off-putting show reminded me of the many cringe-worthy aspects of the outsourcing industry—the graveyard shifts, the long and busy work hours, the heavy-handed management, the cultural and temporal confusion. And in this, may lay the show’s brilliance—it’s as uncomfortable to watch as the industry is to observe.

KoR: Thank god. I had a vague fear you would be like, “It’s totally an intelligent and hilarious comment on the globalization of commerce and societal consequences,” or something. But have you given any thought to pirating some sort of ‘Now the Hit NBC Series, Outsourced’ sticker and slapping it on your book for extra sales? It might work, man…

SN: A very brilliant idea.

KoR: That one’s on the house. So, at one point you write that Indians employed in this sort of work are “caught in a cycle of hope and disappointment.” Can you explain that a little bit?

SN: On my first research trip to New Delhi I took a taxi down National Highway 8 to Gurgaon, an alleged former backwater and present-day outsourcing hub and “mall capital.” When crossing the flyover that connects the two cities, my gaze drifted from the craggy fields below to the billboards above, one of which featured an outsized call center worker’s comely visage, fair and framed by raven-black hair, flashing a winning smile. Welcomed by a quaint sign that read, “Thank you for visit,” we passed through a toll and armed checkpoint and entered a relatively barren stretch of road. Then, almost without warning, the new metropolis started from the dusty plain like a strutting peacock. Its plumage was fine but its calls were loud and course. The taxi driver’s teenage son stared with mouth agog at the iridescent whirl of office towers, apartment blocks, hotels, and fine restaurants. He said slowly and with wonder, “Call center-walleh idhar rahte hai.” (“The call center ones live here”). It was not Dubai, but Gurgaon had that “city of tomorrow” feel: cement trucks, proletarians, scaffolding, and cranes offset by smartly dressed professionals shopping for Western brands at malls named Ambience, Amusement, Galaxy, Marriage, Scottish, and Specialty; the hot gleam of dynamic steal and glass facades in the afternoon sun balanced by the haze and roar of traffic and construction. These were marvelous and moving sights.

But the embrace was not entirely rapturous. The high-rises were impressive, the signage luminous, and the private clubs cozy, but there were also power outages and water shortages and slum neighborhoods. (The real estate bubble has since burst, halting mall construction and depopulating office parks and luxury housing complexes, one of which famously featured a golf course and “cigar lounge.”) Misgivings about the industry that had underwritten Gurgaon’s rapid rise were muted but multiple. Talk of poor labor conditions, dead-ends, graveyard shifts, accent neutralization, and identity shifting gave some a postcolonial pause. The same news media that had so loudly sung the industry’s praises began expressing concern. “Stressed Techies Losing Sex Drive,” read one headline. “Stressed Youth Turning to Acupressure,” warned another. We came to know that call center work “turn brains into soup” and people with “high ambitions either leave call centres for something better or get fired.” Still, outsourcing was creating jobs. And thus the animating paradox of workers’ condition: They’re reaping the benefits of the corporate search for cut-rate labor but also bearing the burdens.

KoR: How did you go about doing the legwork for this? Was it largely source material research or was there a lot of personal interviewing?

SN: The book’s based on ethnographic observation and over a hundred interviews with workers, managers, executives, trade unionists and industry reps. Naturally, companies had nothing to gain by talking to a slight, notebook-clutching researcher and so it was very difficult to get access to workplaces. But once I was able to get in—and it did take some doing—people gave of their time freely, and for that I’m infinitely grateful. All told, it took about five years to research, write, rewrite, edit, and copyedit the book. That includes the fieldwork in India – primarily in Bombay, Chennai, and Delhi—as well as New York and L.A. It was tiring but I’m happy with the end product.

KoR: How did most people react then to you wanting to talk with them about this kind of subject matter? I could see there being a defensiveness or a reluctance to realistically look at what was going on, were I them.

SN: They’re very guarded. And this sensitivity pervades workplaces. For example, when I went to one company in northern Bombay six sheepish young people were seated quietly on cramped leather couches in the lobby busily filling out job applications. Insecure security guards at the front desk checked bags for hammers, screwdrivers, cameras, recorders, and computer hardware—anything that could be used to smash, record, or steal. Passage into individual offices was restricted as the company has confidentiality agreements with its clients, such that visitors should not be allowed to espy a client’s name on letterhead or computer screen. It’s as if their work is somehow illicit; that, if found out, the game would be up.

That said, many executives often thought I was an MBA student and that, ideologically, I was like-minded. And so when people opened, they said some surprising things. The COO of one company confided only half-jokingly that he thinks India needs a short spell of dictatorship so it can quickly improve its infrastructure (roads, power supplies, etc.) and better compete with countries governed by authoritarian regimes like China. Democratic niceties just delay things. An IT leviathan, so to speak.

KoR: “Short spell of Dictatorship”? God. I feel like this kind of writing seems so important, obviously, bringing to light something that’s overlooked here in the west and may be willfully ignored by those who confront every day, I’m guessing, but it also strikes me as terribly sad. It’s just the too-familiar idea of the wealthy coming to a less wealthy place and offering jobs we don’t want, getting away with paying what many of us would consider deplorable or at least unfair wages, but still paying more than many of the workers there can be paid elsewhere. None of it seems at all right or easy to…fix, for lack of a better word, but what do we do? Is it just a matter of prying out facts, like this books is doing, so everyone talks about this and knows exactly what’s going on?

But I don’t think that this is necessarily the right standard to apply. Rather I think you also need to look at the labor conditions under which outsourced work is performed in India and see how they compare with those in the US and UK, where the work originated. Not surprisingly, they’re worse. So employees are paid relatively well but the conditions of work can be strict—hours, by turns stress-filled and Chekhovian, monitored tightly. And as a result, offices are branded “electronic sweatshops” and workers, “cyber coolies.”

KoR: All this aside, in a sense, what do you like about India? We’ve heard wonderful things, but neither of us has ever been immersed in a non-Western culture, so it all seems so intimidating to us.

SN: Gertrude Stein once said that the trouble with Oakland is that “there isn’t any there there.” In India, there’s almost too much there. On one hand, there’s the resplendent poverty and suffering of India, its sad materiality. On the other, the cultural riches it possesses are mind-boggling. Its cities and towns are so varied and its people so charming. During my field research, not a single day went by in which I didn’t laugh heartily, even when I was sick.

KoR: Alright, I’m going to test your Inner PR Guru—Tell me why I, a relatively average reading American who—while I haven’t and won’t read any of the Twilight books—reads one non-fiction book for every, say, 15 works of fiction, tell me why I should read your book. I mean, there are charts in it, man. Charts!

SN: Well, I think the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is overdrawn. Fiction writers draw on facts and they find ways to creatively dramatize them, while nonfiction writers have to develop an imaginative sympathy with their subject. Take Kafka for example. He worked as an insurance clerk by day and wrote by night. His job was at times dreadfully boring, but he used it as an entry-point into the absurd. As he wrote, “The office is not a stupid institution; it belongs more to the realm of the fantastical than the stupid.” Hence the Byzantine bureaucracies in his work, the meaningless meanderings of his characters. Without the nonfiction of his daily life, there would be no fictional metamorphosis.

You may or may not know, dear reader, that I have an awesome bike. Maybe that’s a bit forward though, like saying, “I’ve got an awesome cat.” I don’t own the cat, he’s a free spirit, and it’s disrespectful—nay, ABOMINABLE—to claim sovereignty over any spirit, especially one so mighty and wild. Such is the case with my bike, The St. Tropez. The Saint, for short.

In New York, unless you’re either crazy-tough or just crazy-crazy, you probably haven’t done that much biking around over these past few, terrible, ice-torn, blizzard-hewn months. But that time is coming to a close. Much as Sauron’s rule came to a close with one faithful act as the smoke-filled skies cleared in a singular, glorious movement, spring is here. And, though we have yet to get in to the truly awesome months, we’ve had a taste of those stoop-sitting, cheap-beer-drinking, bike-riding days. And now we’re thirsty for it.

Seems like we’re not alone. Bicycle Habitat and Recycle-a-Bicycle (the Saint’s point of origin, by the by) are holding Bicycle Trade-In Event next Saturday, March 26. You can bring your used bike to RaB’s SoHo location at 250 Lafayette for a $50 voucher to go toward your new Recycle-a-Bicycle bike—a bike risen from the ashes and built anew for you by NYC public school kids in RaB’s bike mechanic courses. Like a phoenix, but with two wheels and a lotta heart.

Need more NYC-centic bike info? Our 2009 post is here and has a wealth of hopefully still accurate knowledge.

New Yorkers, roll out!

Alright, so, for years now, we’ve been hearing about this March Madness, as it’s called. Being avid fans of NOT being fans of basketball, we never caught it.

Today, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, rather than pretend like we know what we’re talking about and going on and on about some sort of thing that WE think is SUPER-funny and somewhat relatable and then artfully bring it back to the subject with a witty jab at “the man”…we’ve decided we prefer to defer to the ever-talented, Thao Nguyen—front woman of superbly named Thao and the Get Down Stay Down and Sisters of the Planet Ambassador for Oxfam America. She’s written a wonderful piece for Bitch Media that very much deserves the five minutes it takes to read (I’m a slow reader).

IWD is organizing thousands of events all over the world today to celebrate. Find one near you!