Environment Friendly Life of Jumbled Anman

Pessimists vs Optimists

2011-06-13T11:14:00.003+05:30

" Optimists think that we live in one of the best possible worlds. Pessimists know we do."

This is a pretty smart quote which I read in a maths/physics book of all the places( I don't think it's an original and I might have heard it earlier).

Nevertheless, the more important point is that this quote implies what I have always suspected : Pessimists are a more learned lot than their counterparts.

PS: Keep a lookout for all the science journals, one of them will be publishing a study on this soon.

Haiku:Part 2

2011-05-26T09:18:00.002+05:30

Obama killed
Osama thrilled
We don't care

Things to do before thirty
Half to remain unchecked
Things to do before forty

FCB VS ManU
they play
I lose sleep

Tata speaks..
Indians work hard
Don't work at Tatas

Platinum Credit Card
Medi-claim Policy
Do Not Disturb

His, yours, mine
Job hunt
our favourite pastime

Facebook for losers
Twitter for poseurs
Hey, add me

Earthquake in Japan
Scam in India
Good Morning

Communists down in Bengal
Socialists down in Spain
Time for siesta

Volcano in Iceland
What a pretty sight
from the airport

Higher education
addition, subtraction and presentation
90% of jobs

Shane Warne
Pink Balls
Gentleman's game

24 hour news channels
with 24 minutes
of news

12 ways "it" can die

2011-04-28T13:52:00.010+05:30

Rejoice lovers of football and lovers of humanity in general. Probability of Mourinho dying soon ain't so bad.

1) He speaks so much (without any pause whatsoever) at a post match conference that he dies of dehydration.

2) For once he actually decides to think about strategies related to playing football rather than breaking shins and his little brain explodes due to overwhelming complexity of all that.

3) He actually kicks a football for the first time in his life , and his body just capitulates under the enormous task that it is for him.

4) A disgruntled Real Madrid fan or any random bored person who has had enough of his bitching just pops one in his nose that he bleeds to death.

5) Pepe tackles him in one of the training sessions.

6) His luck runs out and club owners decide that they need to hire somebody with a brain to coach players worth hundreds of millions of dollars and he is unemployed and poor and dies a beggar outside one of the gates of Stamford Bridge.

7) Portuguese government sanctions its first mercy-killing for a patient suffering from an extreme case of schizophrenia.

8) TATR(The Association of Tortured Referees) decide to take the matter in their own hands and terminate him by whistling in his ears non-stop for 5 hours.

9) Media suddenly becomes intelligent and starts ignoring him and he hangs himself leaving behind a lengthy suicide note as a last ditch attempt to seek attention.

10) He tries to out-pout Ronaldo and bursts his facial muscles.

11) Lightning strikes him when he is doing one of his post-win stadium ostrich runs.

12) His own son kills him because he wouldn't allow him to get this tattoo:"I wish Pep was my father."

Personally I would prefer either No. 1 because it would make a funny Youtube video or No. 6 because it is slow and painful - the way I would like. Well, I won't be choosy and pop up the champagne in any case.

Build up to the big game

2011-02-16T12:59:00.012+05:30

The censor board has changed the certification for the Arsenal - Barcelona match at Emirates Stadium from PG( U/A) to U -well obviously, now that Bacary Sagna is suspended for the game.

Look at him - somebody recommend him to those people at Monsters Inc. Spare the little Chintu- Mintu (who have just started to embrace football) this horror. Also now that he won't be there - Arsenal fans can even cut the team photo from the newspaper tomorrow and "dress up" their walls.

The Board's decision should be applauded.There is no other reason why little kids can't watch this game. I mean where else would you see such beautiful,violence-free, nudity-free, profanity-free, sex-free football. There are no Italians who just need an excuse to remove their shirts and ... shorts, there is no John Heitinga or Mathieu Flamini or Zinedine Zidane who may cause cracked shins, bloody skulls or heart attacks on field and there is no Didier Drogba who may utter a motherfucker- or two on camera. Also, there are no Paul Scholes and Gary Neville with their on-field lovemaking - no seriously - what else is this: THE KISS ( Please click on the link - I am obviously not going to put that picture here. They might very well change the name from Old Trafford to Brokeback Mountain )

Oh and yes Sir Nicklas Bendtner - YOU ARE GOD. The spectators, the fans, the manager, your mother or even the ball may not be able to see it - but I do. You are a legend, THE best player to have ever played this game. Sad that we may not even be able to see you play today.

And is it only me, or you also think that old nursery rhymes are losing their relevance in modern families. I mean which kid wants to know about a farmer these days? So I'll suggest something new- we'll keep the vibe and the tune, we'll just change the lyrics.

Old Arsenal had a club
E-I-E-I-O
And in that club they had a manager
eww-Y-eww-Y-Oh!
With a "moan-moan" here and a "moan-moan" there
Here a "moan", there a "moan"
Everywhere a "moan-moan"
Old Arsenal had a club
E-I-E-I-O

Well this post was not supposed to take a pot shot at Arsenal F.C. I really like Arsenal. Agreed, they have Sagna, Bendtner and Wenger but I still like them. It's just that I like FC Barcelona a bit more. Sad, that there are no real characters in FCB - Pique was one but now that Shakira is his girlfriend you can't even make fun of him.

PS: Somebody needs to torture( extra points for this) and kill those fucking idiots who supposedly do the game analysis on Ten Sports/Action. I am OK, even if Barca concedes the first leg to Arsenal if all 3 of them ( or at least the one on the left and one on the right to the one in the center) die of heart attacks.

Seriously?

2010-12-03T01:22:00.003+05:30

NASA found bacteria whose DNA is made up of Arsenic instead of normal earth stuff. And they are shitting their pants in disbelief and amazement. It's understandable to be thrilled to have found a new "alien" life form, but what they say is this : "The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth"

I mean is it only me or some of you have also thought (since you were born) that looking for water/oxygen may not be the best strategy to find aliens. Why the fuck do aliens have to be like us. In fact on this very blog I wrote in a post dated July 10, 2007 :

"They fools ( read NASA scientists) look for drops of water in search of life.. Look at me, I am an extraterrestrial...I eat uranium and I DON'T breathe."

Now I understand why this blog is so highly rated. It's because I inadvertently make such path-breaking statements even in random, seemingly frivolous posts.
Am I a genius, or NASA needs to recruit people who are not dumb?

The Sirens of Titan

2010-10-29T14:01:00.009+05:30

"He was a machine, like all Tralfamadorians. The Tralfamadorians, according to Salo, manufactured each other. No one knew for certain how the first machine had come into being. The legend was this: Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore." "

Above is an excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan". It is in no way a representative of the general theme, or a major turning point or for that matter the high point of humor in the novel( that is if you consider this as humor). How can it be? Sirens contains ideas worth 10 different full length novels and in the end it is about meaninglessness of it all, so how can a small excerpt give any sort of glimpse into the novel? Not the excerpt above and definitely not the pathetic little description on the back of the novel which makes it sound like B-grade science-fiction.
Around three years back Kurt Vonnegut re-ignited the passion for books in me and turned me into what I can safely say an avid reader. Around one and a half years back when I had read all what Vonnegut had ever written, it felt like a huge void ( much like when football season ends in May) , but this was different considering that possibly my glory days of being a keen reader were gone for good. Direct comparison of any author I read subsequently with Vonnegut didn't help the cause at all. But it turned out to be naive assumption considering that all Vonnegut books can be re-read and re-re-read without losing any of their charm. I finished reading The Sirens of Titan again today.
The closest I can come to describe The Sirens of Titan is that it is a brilliant satire on religion( in its The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent) , War/Military( in its brain-washed Martian army), Stock Markets ( in its richest man on earth who became a billionaire by betting on stocks with initials corresponding to letters in bible) ,human life in general (in its human beings used to serve an unbelievably trivial cause) among lots and lots of other things. I may have given more than decent amount of spoilers above , but it hardly matters because The Sirens of Titan can't be spoilt. I read it second time with almost the same amount of awe and curiosity as the first time. Jasper Fforde in his amazing introduction in the copy I have desperately tries to say that Sirens is not a science-fiction novel, Vonnegut uses science just as a medium to convey some great concepts. To be fair, Vonnegut doesn't even try to give any (ridiculous) explanation to all the science and technology he has used in Sirens- which is a good thing because it would have unnecessarily made the novel twice as thicker without serving any purpose in this case. This novel needs to be read.By everyone.
Even if Mercury,Mars,Titan, aliens, galaxies, wave-phenomena, chrono-synclastic infundibula and space-ships fueled by UWTB( Universal Will to Become) are not your thing, this book is.
Even if absurd & convoluted are not your thing, this book is.
Even if cynicism is not your thing, this book is.
Even if books are not your thing, this book is.
It's hard to believe but you will find The Sirens of Titan bleak, depressing, funny and uplifting at the same time. Worst thing that could happen to you after reading it is that you may stop taking your life very seriously and thereby ruining it. It's still worth it.
The Sirens of Titan has my highest possible recommendation. Thank you Mr. Vonnegut, may you rest in peace.

Opinions & Snobbery

2010-09-26T00:16:00.006+05:30

I like people with opinions, even when I find their opinion ridiculous.

PS: I would have proudly worn that T-shirt 7 years back ( especially if I had thought of the idea)
That was the time when I had simple segmentation of people:

Child in Time/Burn Type: Yeah, we can be friends
Highway Star/Black Night Type: Yeah, you have potential
Hush Type: See you at the party!
Smoke on the Water Type: Please stay away from me

Now I don't listen to Deep Purple.
Now only idiots wear that T-Shirt.
Now I have opinions on many other subjects other than music.

Nitpicking

2010-07-20T16:14:00.008+05:30

Oh, I am getting sucked into this. Blame it on internet. I have no personal vendetta against Christopher Nolan and I loved Inception . But what's with all this reverence and all this "most intelligent thing" to come out since String theory bullshit. Get a grip people.
Ok, let's start from the basics ( no I am not discussing the movie plot here, I mean THE basics) - A problem is "interesting" in one of these 2 conditions: 1) Problem itself is very complex and difficult to solve 2) Problem is not that difficult but the solution seems obvious only when you have seen it. Have you ever tried working on an Excel file made by someone else - specially someone smart ass. Let's say he is trying to solve a simple problem : What is 2+3? But he changes his problem to: What is (10/2 -1 )/2 + 2^3 -5 and he is extremely fond of cell references - he keeps the 10 in sheet no. 5 , he keeps the 5 in sheet no. 27 and so on. Boy, wouldn't you have hard time trying to decipher the problem/solution and who would blame you if you thought that the guy has made an amazing excel model. David Lynch is that smart ass - if you have ever watched Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway you would know what I am talking about. Great entertainment- Yes , but super smart- No.
Not that Nolan tried to emulate Lynch . The underlying problem in his movie itself was simple enough - in fact too simple for my liking. My complain is that he should have thought more about an "interesting" problem rather than devoting so much time on complex(and sometimes unnecessary) and long drawn solution. And it had flaws.
Talking about smart movies- Memento was smart.Sixth Sense was smart. Even Ocean's 11 was smart- so what if they didn't have Penrose's Staircase and Totems , they had Pinch!
Inception is a straight-forward summer blockbuster with awesome visual effects which amount to a great watch and let's keep it at that. It doesn't require second or third viewing for "in-depth" understanding. I don't think I really missed any point,and even if I did it was not because I was not paying attention or the "model" is ingenious , but just because it is Nolan's Excel file .

Jose - The Man

2010-06-01T00:01:00.001+05:30

"I am Jose Mourinho and I don't change - I arrive with all my qualities and all my defects."

Qualities:Ability to blabber entertaining 1-liners like the one above

Defects: Ability to kill everything we like about football, The 9-1 formation, The way he encourages his players to not touch the ball as long as possible, Megalomania, Cockiness, Lack of respect for players, Blaming everyone and everything in a loss, Taking credit for everything and everyone in a win, Lack of adventurism, Claiming magical abilities when he wins with teams with owners who bought him such players who would have won the league 90% of the times anyway- even without a coach ,Portuguese lineage, Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, The way he worries more about off-pitch entertainment that he provides during post match interviews than on-pitch entertainment that his team provides during the match, His love for everyone with abominable pouts - Ronaldo, his dog and others.

Oh, humiliating Real Madrid again next season will be much much more sweeter.

Surreal

2010-05-13T22:37:00.004+05:30

The trick is to keep your MP3 player switched on when you get off the train.

Footbridge at K.U.R.L.A. station is where humanity descends. But, well, you have your MP3 player. So, you can afford to climb the stairs at your leisurely pace ignoring the pleas from the people behind you when the world around you is rushing as if you are the only one with all the time in the world. And suddenly you see a guy swinging to Head like a hole playing in your earphones.Or he may just be straightening his neck after sustaining an elbow. In such a wonderful, dreamlike setting, strange things are bound to happen.Like day before yesterday, I almost had a crush on this middle aged woman because she was singing The great gig in the sky to me. It took me some time to realize that she was actually shouting at me because I had stepped on her foot. OR probably she was singing The great gig in the sky to me. Sigh, I will never know. Anyway, the point is you will always find a singer to any song playing in your player. Seriously. Mathematically also. Work out the numbers. It may seem improbable after considering various factors like lip movement mapping, mood of the song etc but you are forgetting that you have the power of infinity! I mean as soon as you put infinite number of people in the equation, everything tilts in your favor.

PS1: Final round of matches in La Liga this Sunday. Considering that Barca leads Real by 1 point and faces the relegation battling Valladolid, it looks like a done and dusted deal. But it looked like a done and dusted deal in 2007 too. Oh, I have rarely encountered such nail biting, heartbreaking stuff. And it was going all too well for Barca that day until the last few minutes. In a space of 10-12 seconds Real scored a goal there to level the scoreline 2-2 and Barca conceded a goal here to Espanyol ( who else? god save people who have such neighbors) to level the score 2-2, thereby gifting the league to Real.
Anyway, I won't write more about that stuff 'coz I figured this guy writes much better than me.
So here's what you do: Read THIS , then watch THIS (Hollywood drama and all. Yeah Messi's famous Hand of God replica also here. Btw a caution, don't read too much into the video, it's made by a Real Madrid fan) and then read THIS and consider yourself well prepared for Sunday.

PS2: K.U.R.L.A. : Kick U Right into the Lower Abdomen ( I thought at the starting of the post that I'll come up with a good backronym by the end of the post. Well.

PS3:
head like a hole
black as your soul
I'd rather die
than give you control

Maradona would have definitely scored

2010-04-07T20:43:00.002+05:30

Maradona could have and would have scored that 4th goal yesterday. After all, dribbling past 3 players, shooting the ball , getting it back on rebound from the goalkeeper and again shooting it in the net(from a ridiculous angle) in 88th minute against an Arsenal team which had almost given up is no big deal for "El Diego". He has scored better goals and more important goals in his illustrious career. But Maradona wouldn't have waited for a second after getting the ball on rebound just so he could notice the gap between the legs of Almunia, Maradona wouldn't have waited one second to leave absolutely nothing to chance; he would have smashed the ball at the goal and WOULD have got his goal. Messi's first 3 goals yesterday - a super strike from zero available space, a composed box finish, or the arrogant chip will definitely be more talked about because of their importance or apparent beauty. But it's the 4th goal I have watched countless number of times since yesterday with a gaped mouth. Messi would never bang a ball in the goal from outside the box hoping for a scared goalkeeper or a slight deflection off a defender like say Ronaldo or Rooney. Messi in a way is like any other FC Barcelona player in believing that philosophy - have you seen those crazy Barca defenders who would rather pass or dribble the ball inside their own penalty area ( and boy can they pass & dribble) than clear the ball arbitrarily. Messi just takes it to another level.This strive for perfection makes him miss some goals which he would have otherwise scored if he had given LUCK some breathing space.After all, it's an imperfect world. But who will explain that to Messi. For him end does not justify the means. Any one of us will take "Hence Proved" any day. Maradona will take" Hence Proved" any day. Messi will not.Maradona is like us. Messi is not.

Romance

2010-04-02T12:25:00.006+05:30

If Bryce Dallas Howard and Rebecca Hall decide not to marry me (due to family pressures, their inability to understand Indian accent, Shiv Sena or any other insecurities they may have) they should marry this guy: This Guy
I'll be happy for them( true love and all).

PS1: I know that I have mentioned Elisha Cuthbert and Jessica Alba before on this very blog (along with pictures and all) but those were more immature infatuations. I have grown older and wiser after that.
PS2: If you haven't seen "The Village", "Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona" and "Trainspotting" you won't get the essence of what I am talking about. Also you should kill yourself.
PS3: Yeah yeah, go ahead , go to Google images, Youtube, whatever.

This is Ground Control to Major Tom

2010-03-16T15:17:00.005+05:30

Loneliness and dashed hopes are the worst that could happen to a person or as Kurt Vonnegut would say about them- "Fates worse than Death". But then, Vonnegut is Vonnegut. When he is at his pessimistic,cynical & depressed best, he could have convinced you that even writing blogs or for that matter reading them are fates worse than death. "Life is no way to treat an animal" is what he wanted as his epitaph - you get the point. Ironically though, Slapstick, Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Bluebeard... are few of my favorite books and all of them are very funny.

I saw "Moon" again today. It's such a brilliant little film.In this movie about the Moon and cloning(ok, this is only a minor spoiler), I felt much sadder for Sam Bell( played by amazing Sam Rockwell) who is suffering from loneliness and dashed hopes than I felt for the whole of Na'vi civilization, or for Tom Hanks dying of Aids or for Tom Hanks on a failed mission or for Tom Hanks stranded on the island or for the retarded Tom Hanks - nothing against Tom Hanks. In short, Moon is a rare sci-fi classic. And it is directed by Duncan Jones(debut movie) who is son of the man who gave us the most memorable sci-fi song ever ( yes, there are sci-fi songs too!) . I am talking about David Bowie and his "Space Oddity" released in 1969 just days before the moon landing. I absolutely love the song and you can listen to it here .Going by "Moon" , Duncan Jones has a great career ahead of him - starting with the sequel to Moon!

The unique thing about sci-fi movies is that they have something out of the ordinary (as per the definition) , and hence more interesting and at the same time since it's science there is a "distinct" possibility of them being true/turning out to be true - quite often more believable than the crap they try to sell us in other "real-life" dramas. Sadly though, whenever someone talks about sci-fi movies all we can think of is people dressed up in funny costumes fighting with tube- lights, USA saving the world or Mila Jovovich kicking asses and killing people - not bad, but not good enough. But there have been few excellent sci-fi movies, there are at least 6 I can definitely vouch for , 6 movies which will take your breath away , 6 movies which everyone should, must, have to watch : 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future , Contact, Gattaca, Children of Men & Moon.

PS: In 1999-2000 , I probably would have included The Matrix in the above list but now I just feel like punching Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne whenever I see their faces in the movie and I feel like puking when I listen to dialogues like these:
Neo: What is the Matrix?
Trinity:The answer is out there, Neo, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.

2010-01-29T22:28:00.003+05:30

"Mediocrities everywhere.. I absolve you.. I absolve you.. I absolve you....I absolve you.. I absolve you all."

Quote courtesy : " Amadeus"

They don't love you like I love you

2010-01-13T23:47:00.005+05:30

She may not be conventionally pretty but who wouldn't fall in love with her after listening to this.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

All I Need

2009-12-30T22:59:00.007+05:30

An interesting football world cup, a new Radiohead album, even just a new flavour of bingo potato chips may make 2010 more eventful/exciting than this year. But it would be damn difficult to top this decade where I have gone to 2 colleges,worked in 3 different companies in 3 different fields, lived in 6 cities and visited many more, discovered Internet, Music, Movies, Alcohol,Vonnegut and That 70's show and almost died 5 times(just to make it sound more dramatic).
Ever wondered how cool it would be if you could spend a large part of your life(say 10-15 years) pursuing just one special thing( that's a different matter that fear of failure would probably stop you from start pursuing it in the first place). For example this guy in this movie builds a rocket in his backyard and even takes a trip around the earth after fighting against the society, FBI, government and common sense of the viewers . "Astronaut Farmer" is the name of the movie, not that it's a great movie, but still could provide some inspiration.
Anyway, (Warning: anticlimax ahead-), I haven't had any such vision/talent in the last decade.
But I probably will, in the next.

OR I can simply have more fun :)

Of Animals,Colours,Rock & Roll,Drugs,Alice & Desire

2009-11-24T22:48:00.013+05:30

Is it a coincidence that the two grooviest songs ever are named White Rabbit & Black Dog ?

Hey hey mama said the way you move,
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.

Importance of science in day to day life

2009-11-08T21:18:00.003+05:30

The title of the post may sound like that of a 6th standard essay but believe you me , the post itself is much deeper and can have very positive effect on your life.
Somebody may ask why he needs to know why it rains or what we breathe - after all he is not the one who is searching for water on Moon or Mars ( and I keep coming back to water on Moon and Mars). Well, a very valid point except that you won't be a hit at the parties. You simply have to say that you are shocked that Large Hadron Collider stopped working because a bird dropped a piece of bread on it! Some poor soul may ask what actually Large Hadron Collider is and you just have to say that LHC is a frighteningly ambitious project - protons and stuff collide at high speeds and a big-bang kind of scenario is replicated. Some moron may even ask what actually big-bang scenario is - to this you just have to say - " You must be kidding, even India TV knows what a big-bang is" and that moron will be left visibly embarrassed. Finally, a drunk buffoon with a foolish smirk on his face would comment - if LHC is so advanced and all how can a fucking bird "dropping" make it stop? Here, you have to be careful enough to bring out your most contemptuous look and say - it's complicated... you won't understand. By the end of this statement everybody in the party will be in awe of you.
Science can have unlimited other benefits in your daily life - knowledge about global warming can help you win elections, knowledge about chemistry and chemicals and drugs can make you win tennis matches and what not.
Science can help you get ahead. Science can help you get away. I'll explain how but first a bit of diversion:

****************************DROGBA***********************************
The Persons of the Play: Didier Drogba

Act 1:

Scene: A Football field.

Drogba comes charging in the penalty area , bulldozing his way through 3 defenders using sheer brute force.Oh Drogba, you animal!!

Act 2:

Scene: A Football field.

Drogba sensing that he has lost control of the ball due to the lack of skills/confidence/hard work brilliantly grabs the opportunity to fall down on the ground just because the lace of the left shoe of one of the defenders somehow manages to touch the lace of the right shoe of Drogba.

Act 3:

Scene: A Football field.

Drogba rolls on the ground holding his face. He seems to be in an unbelievable agony. Spectators are shocked. Stretcher arrives.

Final Act

Scene: A Football field.

Ending 1: Referee gives a penalty. Drogba gets up within a blink of an eyelid, takes the penalty and scores.

Alternate Ending ( more popular): Referee gives Drogba a yellow card for theatrics. Drogba has a look of sheer disbelief on his face. He is angry and he wants to show it. He hurls choicest of abuses on national television.

******************************The End*******************************************

Didier Drogba recently commented that he falls down so easily because he is very tall and his Centre of Gravity lies way above the ground unlike some midgets like Wayne Rooney. Applause , Sir Drogba. What scientific acumen!! While you are at it, you wouldn't mind explaining why an impact on your foot is so painful for your face...maybe a nerve connecting foot to the face.

I hope by now you have realized how science can help in your daily life. And the good thing is that you don't even need to be well read or anything . You can get away with almost anything. You can't prove/disprove anything in science just like religion or ghosts. If on a bad day you tell someone that you saw an apple rising up (as opposed to falling down) and the other person is laughing at you uncontrollably , you should first make the other person shut up and then say to himin an astonished tone - " Which century are you living in? Pluto is not even a planet now. You still believe in that Newtonian shit?"

News!

2009-09-25T00:12:00.004+05:30

They found water on moon! What the fuck did Neil Armstrong and party do on Moon? Jump around, take photos, come back and become legends? I mean what the fuck. All this time we were wasting our time searching for water on that planet. Oh what an anti-climax.All this while, aliens on the moon may be watching you cheating in the exams or bathing in the shower using household binoculars.

Rani Mukherjee says that she'll quit acting if "Dil Bole Hadippa" doesn't do well. And my faith in God is renewed.

Talking about Gods, Messi is now the best paid player in the history of football. And from the first few games of the season it seems he has ..hold your breath..improved his game further.
Also, Xavi lost the ball in the last match, first time since 2006.

Champions trophy is the most awaited cricket event of the year - i mean that's what ESPN- Star Sports tells us every other minute. Oh wait, breaking news coming from Australia, oh and England , and from South Africa and Pakistan, India too. Ponting is saying it, Pietersen is saying it, even Gavaskar is saying it( this must be really big!) : "One day cricket is a kind of game where the team which plays better on the day wins!!" . Ah, what novelty - especially considering that in Basketball the team that played better yesterday wins, in football the team that played better two weeks back wins and in hockey the team that plays worse on the day wins.

Finally, Fidel Castro praises an American President ! According to him Obama had the courage to admit that developed nations have fucked up the environment beyond recognition. Castro must have been a really attentive student in his childhood days, if he could catch that from Obama's emotionally enlightening speech - "We can.. blah blah ....yawn.. change is inevitable...blah blah... the time has come... blah.. we can.. blah.. change... yawn ... stop people like me from uttering so much of nonsensical globe to contain global warming.. blah..".

Our home minister says that Common Wealth Games is an opportunity for Delhiites to change their "behavioral pattern". True. They'll learn to cope with rejection. Not that CWG committee is very sexy anyway.

Air chief Marshal says that Chinese have a better air-force than India! That's really encouraging. No seriously.At least we have an air-force! I thought all our planes had crashed in trial runs only.

From 2nd October onwards bastards will be spelt as basterds as a mark of respect. That's when "Inglourious Basterds" releases in India.

Swine Flu is suddenly feeling ignored. Come on people have some heart - force a sneeze here and there, report to a news channel that the truck hitting the pedestrian was not the real cause of his death- swine flu was, do a bonfire of Tamiflus, eat some half-cooked pork, do something!

An Experiment in Masochism

2009-09-20T15:22:00.008+05:30

Nine Inch Nails' album - "The Downward Spiral" is one of the best pieces of music I have ever heard. It's angry, it's violent, it's depressing and it's not for weak at heart. This 1994 album is an industrial rock classic- no I am not throwing jargon at you - it actually sounds like it was recorded in a steel factory. The Downward Spiral opens with "Mr. Self Destruct".
Here's what you have to do :

Step 1: Go to a calm, tranquil place
Step 2: Put on your earphones
Step 3: Turn up the volume to "Are you fucking nuts !" level
Step 4: Play "Mr. Self Destruct"
Step 5: Sit back and relax(while you have time)

There's this thing about "Mr. Self Destruct" - it's loud, it's hard, it's abrasive , it's downright nasty. But it's hypnotic and it is in some way pleasurable. I'll try to explain - ever tried scratching your nails on the wall, what if doing that could make you get rid of lifelong torture of trimming your nails again and again.Ever heard the chalk make that whistling sound on the black-board, what if someone was drawing a billion dollar treasure-map for you. Well, that's Mr. Self Destruct for you.
You'll be left shaken for sometime after you have heard the song. But after say 5 minutes when the after-effects have worn out, you'll play the song -again.
Quite an apt name for the song I must say. It is written for some kind of addiction, most probably heroin. But it could very well be about the song's addiction itself.

I am the need you have for more
(and I control you)
I take you where you want to go
I give you all you need to know
I drag you down I use you up
Mr. Self-destruct

PS: There are hundreds of live performances of Mr. Self Destruct on Youtube. This one is just the AUDIO. But it's not of great quality.You ought to download - to understand the full implications of the experiment.

Carolina Drama

2009-09-12T16:04:00.002+05:30

The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely - Carolina Drama

I'm not sure if there's a point to this story
But I'm going to tell it again
So many other people try to tell the tale
Not one of them knows the end

It was a junk-house in South Carolina
Held a boy the age of ten
Along with his older brother Billy
And a mother and her boyfriend
Who was a triple loser with some blue tattoos
That were given to him when he was young
And a drunk temper that was easy to lose
And thank god he didn't own a gun

Well, Billy woke up in the back of his truck
Took a minute to open his eyes
He took a peep into the back of the house
And found himself a big surprise
He didn't see his brother but there was his mother
With her red-headed head in her hands
While the boyfriend had his gloves wrapped around an old priest
Trying to choke the man

Ah Ah Ahhh...

Billy looked up from the window to the truck
Threw up, and had to struggle to stand
He saw that red-necked bastard with a hammer
Turn the priest into a shell of a man
The priest was putting up the fight of his life
But he was old and he was bound to lose
The boyfriend hit as hard as he could
And knocked the priest right down to his shoes

Well, now Billy knew but never actually met
The preacher lying there in the room
He heard himself say, "That must be my daddy"
Then he knew what he was gonna do
Billy got up enough courage, took it up
And grabbed the first blunt thing he could find
It was a cold, glass bottle of milk
That got delivered every morning at nine

Ah Ah Ahhh...

Billy broke in and saw the blood on the floor, and
He turned around and put the lock on the door
He looked dead into the boyfriend's eye
His mother was a ghost, too upset to cry, then
He took a step toward the man on the ground
From his mouth trickled out a little audible sound
He heard the boyfriend shout, "Get out!"
And Billy said, "Not till I know what this is all about"
"Well, this preacher here was attacking your mama"
But Billy knew just who was starting the drama
So Billy took dead aim at his face
And smashed the bottle on the man who left his dad in disgrace, and
The white milk dripped down with the blood, and the
Boyfriend fell down dead for good
Right next to the preacher who was gasping for air
And Billy shouted, "Daddy, why'd you have to come back here?"
His mama reached behind the sugar and honey, and
Pulled out an envelope filled with money
"Your daddy gave us this," she collapsed in tears
"He's been paying all the bills for years"
"Mama, let's put this body underneath the trees
and put Daddy in the truck and head to Tennessee"
Just then, his little brother came in
Holding the milk man's hat and a bottle of gin singing,

La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la, la la la...
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la, la la la...
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah

Well now you heard another side to the story
But you wanna know how it ends?
If you must know, the truth about the tale
Go and ask the milkman

I refuse to be a victim OR Revenge of the harassed

2009-09-08T21:28:00.006+05:30

Autos in Bangalore will stalk you.As you amble on the side of the road( feeling lucky to be getting some exercise), they will keep up with you. They'll block your view, they'll confine you, they'll give you claustrophobia and then when you finally give up and ask ," Forum chaloge kya?", auto-driver won't say a word and will turn away and accelerate at such a rate that would put Ferraris to shame. Apparently , a distance of less than 2 kms is beneath their dignity.
Sometimes, you may be lucky and an auto-wallah may stoop below his level and even consider traveling 0.75 kms. He'll say in a way which will leave you utterly obliged - "Chalo bees rupaiye de dena. " ( btw the minimum charge of the autos in Bangalore is Rs 12 for a distance of 2 kms). You'll try your luck - " 20 rupaiye kyun?" . He'll say in a matter of factly manner - " wahaan se khaali aana padta hai." Then you being a logic fan and all will say -" khaali bhi aaya to bhi total distance 1.5 kms hota hai. Minimum charge to 2 km ka hota hai na." Auto- wallah sensing his limited logical abilities and seeing that he's losing the argument takes a seemingly sentimental stand - " Kya saahab. Badi badi software companiyon mai kaam karte ho. Garib se kya choti si baat ko leke lad rahe ho!" In other words : " Either you give 20 bucks or you can take your ass somewhere else."
No wonder, for the excellent service they provide, auto-drivers in Bangalore consider themselves tip-worthy. Consider this: you have just availed a Rs 43 worth of service. You dutifully pay him 50 bucks and while you are expecting some change back, the esteemed service provider is ready to take-off. And when you ask for the change, this is what he says- " Saat rupaiye mai building banaoge kya bhai?" What a hardhitting question I must say! Hats off to you sir. You really deserve a tip.

In Delhi, you need to know your distances.As they say, it's the capital.You get down at New Delhi railway station and have to go to India Gate. So you ask for a ride. Capital is quite well-known for it's tourist friendliness and the auto-wallah is over-zealous to live up to that reputation. So he decides to make an announcement - " Bhaisaahab ko India Gate ghoomne jaana hai!!" And he goes on to describe how India Gate is almost at the other corner of Delhi and you are lucky to be going to India Gate because on your way you will receive a complete Delhi tour. So Rs 150 he is asking for is really like peanuts. But you know better. You ask 2 other auto-drivers for their best rates, and they say in exemplary unison -" Rs 150 only". But your well-wishers have pre-warned you - in Delhi bargaining at autos work much in the same way as it works in the Palika Bazaar. So you take a stand - Rs 75 and no more. After some negotiation final figure arrived is Rs 100. You revel in your accomplishment. Oh, btw in Delhi auto meters are used only to put up a show in front of the super-strict Delhi Traffic Police. Anyway, in about 10-15 minutes, after about 4-5 kms, at about 35-40 bucks on the meter you reach your destination. And when you express your shock , this is what you hear - "Stick to your word. Be a man."
Even the "Easy Cab" service which is supposed to be Delhi's answer to all these hassles refuse to be left behind. And only amazing alertness can get you from getting fleeced when the Taxi-Driver puts up the night charge(1.5 times) meter in broad daylight hoping you'll be too busy on phone or too rich or mostly too naive to notice .

The above are real experiences I have had in Bangalore and Delhi. But wasn't Mumbai supposed to be the mecca of discipline,professionalism and honesty.It took me some time to realize that all three start and end the moment taxi driver puts down his meter which he will do even before you can blink your eyelid. Oh, this is too common to even deserve a mention - this is when I gave a 500 rupee note to the taxi guy for the payment of Rs 30 toll and he gave me back 70 bucks. And when I asked him about the other 400 bucks, he said with a childlike-innocence - what 500 bucks? I just had to threaten him a little before he confessed, not to his failed crime but his poor vision/memory. Then there was this time when the taxi meter reading from airport to my house defied all normal logic. And in my utter disgust I just skipped the haggling part and warned the taxi guy that I had been living in the area for last two years and I knew the people around pretty well. It would just take a call before he would be badly beaten up by a mob. He could even get lynched if he was unlucky. Yes, I really said that. This was enough to scare the guy into taking the right fare. Or this time only few days back when meter reading seemed ok, but the card he was using used a multiplier of 20 instead of 14 ( hence a meter fare of 400 instead of 275). And this time- it was the payback time. So I made it very clear to the taxi driver - " Today is your unlucky day. The correct meter fare is 275, but I'll pay you only 200 and you can do nothing about it. Either you accept that or you can come to the police station with me."
And I thoroughly and unashamedly enjoyed that part. And I will look forward to every opportunity to do so again and again and again and AGAIN.

Kaminey Review

2009-08-31T13:54:00.000+05:30

You don't become a Quentin Tarantino film by using some violence, foul language and cocaine. You need some engaging dialogue.

You don't become a Guy Ritchie film by having some gangsters who desperately try to act unique/cool/psychotic( but fail miserably at that). You need some humour and intelligent plot/twists.

You don't become a coming of age Bollywood film by having a kissing and condom searching scene.

I'll just say it without being diplomatic: Kaminey is a piece of crap. I slept twice during the movie and was awakened only by the loud and mediocre background score.

Ten best songs of the decade

2009-08-24T23:31:00.004+05:30

I have spent a large part of the 2000s listening to the songs from 90s and 70s (ok 80s and 60s too), but I have caught up with time from time to time. And whatever I may normally proclaim, there has been plenty of awesome music this decade too. The title maybe a bit misleading(but only just) because I have taken only 1 song per band. Anyway here are the songs which you must listen to NOW( I can't stress enough how brilliant they are):

(again, in no paricular order)

1) Parting of the Sensory - Modest Mouse ( We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank)

Stairway to Heaven of the modern era.

2) How to Disappear Completely - Radiohead ( Kid A)

Oh, this was tough. Radiohead has released 4 albums in this decade. Yes, 4. But Kid A is special.

3) Can't Stop - Red Hot Chili Peppers( By the Way)

Cool lyrics,cool bass, cool intro, coolest video. A very very cool song.

4) Rebellion(Lies) - Arcade Fire( Funeral)

Who knew Canada could produce such musicians! This song is so beautiful that it's scary.

5) Fans - Kings of Leon( Because of the Times)

KOL can go on to become Led Zeppelin of this generation - they are so consistently brilliant, they have style and they rock. "Fans" - the song that got me hopelessly hooked to them.

6) I Never Came - Queens of the Stone Age( Lullabies to Paralyze)

Forget the music, forget the lyrics, just follow the voice. Well, a lesser known song from QOTSA, but this song just never leaves me.

7) Man of the Hour - Pearl Jam(Live at Benaroya Hall / Big Fish OST)

Pearl Jam has been rather disappoiniting in 2000s( considering how fucking awesome they were in 90s) but then, only they can produce such gems out of nowhere.

8) Lateralus - Tool(Lateralus)

You can either spend hours discussing spiritual and evolutionary connotations of this(or any other Tool song) like all those crazy Tool fans , or you can just rock out to this masterful song.

9) The Union Forever - The White Stripes( White Blood Cells)

Something about this song, probably the raw quality of it makes it irresistible.

10) The Way We Get By - Spoon( Kill the Moonlight)

I had to justify my earlier post on this blog.

Can we have more "total creativity" please?

2009-08-18T22:38:00.006+05:30

Today I'll talk about this genre of sci-fi movies - (natural) disaster movies. Any disaster movie/book can be broken down into 5 distinct parts - 1) The Cause 2) The Primary Effect 3) The Secondary Effect 4) The Approach 5) The Solution. Almost all of the movies are very creative in the first two parts , but leave a lot to desire in the last two - especially the last one. I'll use and abuse 3 movies to prove my point.

Armageddon

Cause: Some asteroid gets naughty ( happens due to lack of parental control)

Primary Effect: It is on a collision course with earth. ( who wouldn't want to bang the earth!!)

Secondary Effect :It will create kilometer high waves, dust blanket and all the other cool things resulting in mass extinction, total annihilation or any apocalyptic phrase you might know. ( Are you kidding me? Oh my God!)

Approach - A bunch of people who drill holes will drill a hole in the damn thing. ( quite obviously)

Solution: NUKE THE BLOODY THING. ( Now we are being creative!)

Sunshine

Cause: Sun is infected with Q-ball( refer to the great google for greater details). Btw, this is never told in the movie, but is assumed to be a common knowledge - oh come on, who wouldn't know what a Q-ball is? ( Don't go out in the sun.Don't stare at the sun. Hell, at least Q-ball had the balls.)

Primary Effect: The sun will soon stop shining. ( Go on, I am all kicked. Perpetual Night Life and all!)

Secondary Effect: sun's death => earth's death ( Are you kidding me? Oh my God!)

Approach: Travel to the sun in a sexy spaceship with a sexy reflective shield which can never burn, which can never melt, which can never give up. ( only 6000 degree celsius. That's like insides of my oven)

Solution:NUKE THE BLOODY THING.( Holy shit. I could have never thought of that!)

The Core

Cause: A man induced earthquake. ( We have heard of this..haven't we)

Primary effect: Earth's core stops spinning. ( But we haven't heard of this!)

Secondary effect: Earth's electromagnetic layer gets all fucked up causing beautiful thunderstorms and giving free passage to the almighty UV rays which will result in, yes you guessed it- mass extinction. ( Are you kidding me? Oh my God!)

Approach: Fly inside the Earth in a laser guided rocket made of indestructible material quite amazingly named "unobtainium" in the movie! ( No space travel this.)

Solution: NUKE THE BLOODY THING.( I am getting goose bumps!)

So you have got the point. If you haven't - Nuking is the panacea. Someone may argue that nuking looked like the only logical solution in those cases. But why are we talking logic now? Who wants logic? Even I could have suggested some options(worthy of the extremely creative causes and effects) if they had paid me to write the script. It's like the writers got an idea but didn't want to work on it. It's like they loved to initiate it but got bored of it in the middle. It's like what Kurt Vonnegut has said ," “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” ( maybe not a very apt quote but a quote nevertheless. Vonnegut one at that)

For a change , it would be great to see some movies with very normal causes and effects but very imaginative solutions. But that's always difficult, isn't it?

Gifting Ideas

2009-08-11T23:36:00.005+05:30

One of my Wingies got married some days back. Rest of us dutifully chose a seemingly perfect gift after exchanging 100 emails or so. This time we have really outdone ourselves - yet again. To give you some background - it started with a camcorder ( Can you believe it? A camcorder! yuk), but it was the first one, so we can blame our lack of creativity on our lack of experience. Next one got a Playstation 3. Yeah, he is damn happy with it but his wife is not. The third one got an Apple TV( which is really cool) but not without lot of deliberation . Options like Treadmill ( which initially seemed a pretty cool idea but was rejected because we thought that it might give an impression that we think that they are unfit!) , Skiing & snowboarding kits, Home Theater System, Handheld GPS , even Telescope(:D) were discussed and discarded.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - iRobot Roomba 500 series.
It's a vacuum cleaning robot with wireless command center, virtual lighthouses and what not. You just have to press the clean button and you can go out for a movie while Roomba cleans your whole house room by room, without getting stuck , without falling down. It automatically recharges if it runs out of energy and finally returns to its dock after finishing the cleaning! Ain't it hi-tech?
But the real clincher was not its utility or coolness or technology. The real clincher was the reviews like this : " Love my girl Rosie." OR " Roger is a family member now."

Check out the video : Roomba At Work

Possibilities

2009-08-05T00:56:00.004+05:30

It could be what Jack the Ripper thought of his prospective victims.
It could be what Milky Way thinks of unruly earth.
It could be what a Biology geek thinks of a juicy frog(still alive) kept in the lab.
It could be what Gorbachev thought of Soviet Union.
It could be what a critic thinks of somebody's self respect.
It could be what Black Mamba thought of Bill (before deciding to use the boring 3-step technique)
It could be what Pink Floyd thought of that radio jockey who used to babble a lot.

"One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces" - One of these days, Meddle.

My deepest, darkest secret

2009-07-20T21:30:00.002+05:30

There are two words which I just can't pronounce : Infrastructure & Theta. And they are not even widely acknowledged tongue-twisters!

I mean who the fuck creates these words. Who places two 'r's in strategically idiotic places in a word so as to make it impossible to articulate.And I suspect I am not the only one here. I have seen many people using the short forms like "infra","i-structure" ,"IS"," roads and bridges", "r & b" in conversations which they try to project as cool but is actually a trick to mask their inability to pronounce the correct word.And we cry of lack of infrastructure in this country. I say if we can't pronounce it how can we expect to develop it.A wise man once said that development begins at the grassroots level. Change the word - let's say to "bricky" or "tartarum" and you'll see 10 Shanghais in India by the end of the next year. How is China doing it? Haven't you figured it out yet - THEY DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH.And I am especially sick because in my line of work THIS word just doesn't leave me alone. I mean, " INDIA LACKS GOOD SPORTS INFRASTRUCTURE." is the most uttered sentence in this business.How unlucky can I get?
For those who are reading this with contempt for my articulation abilities, I say get your tongues checked or apply for a job at a circus nearby because no normal person can pronounce INFRASTRUCTURE with ease.

Thank god I don't have to say "theta" much these days.I have left theta far behind in those days of trigonometry & differential equations."Teta", oh sorry, "Tetha" sorry again, "Thetha" , sorry yet again, "Theta" is a nightmare of a word to speak, if you haven't realized it yet.It's a total tongue-fuck. Look at alpha, beta, gamma, pi,delta,iota,omega,mu .. they are so smooth, so easy and hence have become so legendary in what they represent or how often they are used in life governing physical laws or mathematical equations. Yeah yeah, "THETA" also has a fair share of usage( though nothing in comparison to others i mentioned) but that's because of limitation of Greek alphabet and obsession of scientists with them.No wonder "theta" was the symbol of death in Greece. Symbol of death it is. Death of linguistic common sense. Death of beauty of speech.

Greatest Ever?..hmm.. How? Are you joking?

2009-07-07T23:58:00.004+05:30

First it was about not being consistent enough to justify the style.
Then it was about not breaking Pete's record.
Then it was about not enough competition.
Then it was about not hitting volleys.
Then it was about not hitting aces.
Then it was about not enough mental strength.
Then it was about not winning on all kinds of surfaces.
Now it's about not winning against that bullfighter in the finals ( even if he can't manage to reach the finals).
Then it will be about not winning all 4 finals in the same year.
Then it will be about not winning all the finals in straight sets.
Then it will be about not controlling your emotions when you win or lose.
Then it will be about not making loud grunting noises.
Then it will be about not winning with one eye closed and both hands tied together.

You people, do you just want to keep debating because you love debating or are you seriously blind/dumb.

31 songs

2009-06-09T13:05:00.006+05:30

Yes, I found my alter ego. It is the English author Nick Hornby. And this one isn't the Fight Club type everything-that-I-am-not alter eg0 but a perfect substitute, a similar-traits alter ego. He thinks like me. He loves his football and football club. He loves his music. To be very frank, I am not a die-hard fan of Nick Hornby's writings. He is witty and intelligent and passionate , but his books are not what I'll kill for. I have read only 2 of his books - Fever Pitch and 31 songs/ Songbook ( this one I am still reading) and I have seen 2 movies based on his books - High Fidelity and About a Boy- that's about it. Moreover, our choices don't match - he loves Arsenal and he loves mediocre music. But we think alike. If I had written a book on my favorite music it would have read pretty much exactly the same( except obviously the songs). Obviously , I don't have those kind of writing skills - that's why I let my alter-ego do the hard work. When I said I am still reading "31 songs", it's because I haven't heard many of his favorite songs( remember I told you his music choice is mediocre), so everyday I have to listen to 1 song from the book, try to like it and then read the chapter on it. But the way he writes makes you want to fall in love with music all over again. And we think alike.
He says, "All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do" . That's not him, that's me.
He also says, " If people remember songs only because they have some memories attached to them, then they don't love music at all." I agree.
He says many other things in the book which I wholeheartedly agree with.
Now, the cheapest and most cliched thing to do would be to make my own list of 31 songs which is exactly what I'm going to do. As I have told you , I am not as good a writer as Nick Hornby so I can't write chapters , but I'll write small paragraphs on the songs I like.Again, it is impossible for me to select my favorite 31 songs( as it would have been for Nick Hornby), so I'll just write about some great songs and why I consider them great.

In no particular order:

Spoon - The Way We Get By

Unfortunately, this song is associated very strongly with OC. Yes, I am talking about that crappy drama of/for teenagers which had nothing going for it except for some seriously good looking female actors. Anyway thanks to OC people noticed this song, people noticed Spoon. I heard this song 6-7 years back and it appealed to me then. Why wouldn't it? It's damn catchy and talks about getting high and listening to Iggy Pop( What's the deal with Iggy Pop. I mean, why do so many people tell us to listen to Iggy Pop?) OR if we don't take words just for face-value, basically living a carefree life. If more people had listened to it, it could have easily replaced "Another Brick in the Wall 2" as the college anthem. What's the big deal of not wanting education,isn't it granted anyway? "The Way We Get By" is more insightful /apt that way. It reminds me of another great song by Smashing Pumpkins, "1979",which has a similar theme and on some other day would have been on the list instead of this song.The way we get by is so universal in its playable quality that you can play it in parties, you can play it during a road trip, you can play it in your headphones in the repeat mode, you can play it anywhere. And what a wonderful use of piano!
Why should this song appeal to me now? Why shouldn't it? I still crave for a carefree life or as Iggy Pop would say I still have a "Lust for Life".

"We go out in stormy weather
We rarely practice discern
And that's the way we get by"

Who wouldn't have done this sometime?
Who wouldn't want to do this forever?

You would be crazy to think that I'll be crazy enough to write about all 31 songs right now. I probably will, in due course of time.But not now.
Meanwhile I'll force you to listen to "The Way We Get By", and get cross if you don't like it as much as I do.

Greatness

2009-05-28T03:32:00.005+05:30

Too bad that you need a resume to prove that you are too good.
But then,nothing can be too bad for those who are too good.

Quite possibly the greatest team to have EVER played football. I believe it today. I believed it even a month back.

PS: I can slaughter 1000 lambs right now if it would please Xavi, Iniesta or Messi.

PPS: I just wanted to add this VIDEO. As Phil Ball from ESPN- Soccernet would put it - pure romance.

From CIA files

2009-05-26T00:58:00.006+05:30

Two North Koreans - Xing Zoohoo (x) & Yang Ponguin (y) having a breakfast conversation. (Translated to English for the benefit of the readers)

x: You know what I feel like doing today?
y: What?
x: I feel like stealing an atom-bomb from the Kilju facility.
y: And do what?
x: Nuke the bloody Great Wall.
y: That China one?
x: Yup
y:And how do you plan to steal this bomb?
x: Oh it's easy. I'll just bribe the security guards.I don't even need to spend money.I have lots of southie( South Korean) videos and movie CDs! Sure they can't resist those.
y: Hmm.. yeah. But how will you take it from here? Won't they catch you at the airport?
x: Oh they'll catch but I'll bribe again. You wouldn't think that I am naive enough to use all my rare CD collection on the kilju security guards alone! But I think, that sucker may be very heavy for my backpack. Sometimes these economy class airlines can be pretty strict on their weight rules.
y: So?
x: I won't steal the ready-made bomb. I'll steal plutonium.I've heard there are lots of factories in China which do this bomb-making stuff at very low cost! And with a 2-day delivery guarantee too!
y: And what if they catch you at the Chinese airport?
x: Oh, that's no problem. I'll just say that plutonium is for the ultra-confidential next generation power generation technology to be first tested in Shanghai.
y:Pretty cool. But why Great Wall of China? I mean, it's been there for years! It's one of the wonders of the world! Why would you want to destroy it?
x: What purpose is it fulfilling now? I mean, it's just there. Like the Appendix. Like the wisdom teeth. It's not even a pretty sight.
y: Oh, what are you saying! you can even spot Great Wall from space!
x: Which idiot would like to go to space and spot earthly things and that too a bloody brick & stone wall. Aren't there enough mindboggling stuff in the space itself? It's like going to India and searching for North Korean Lizard noodles instead of enjoying Hyderabadi Biryani!
y: But isn't it a waste of a nuclear bomb?
x: Waste? What do you mean? You'll rather kill people?
y: No, no. I mean why waste a bomb to destroy a wall. And anyway it's like 7000 kms . I don't think one bomb would be enough.
x: Sure it won't be enough. But it will surely develop some cracks in the bitch. Moreover, it's symbolic.We don't want barriers. We don't want WALLS . I think even Chinese people will welcome this act of mine.
y: Oh, what a noble thought.You inspire me.

Movie List

2009-04-21T22:54:00.021+05:30

10 MUST WATCH cult movies:

28 days later

What is scary: Waking up and finding yourself in midst of chaos or waking up and finding yourself totally alone? The bloodthirsty disease-infected "zombies" or the "sane" army personnel who are supposed to protect you?
The brilliant shots of deserted London streets, the breathtaking soundtrack, the bit of gore or the edgier, non-crowd pleasing Danny Boyle; everything about this movie is pure classic.

The Descent

I'll just say that this is the best horror movie I have EVER seen. Yes I liked it better and I found it scarier than than Shining and Exorcist and Halloween and Omen and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho and Rosemary's baby and Blair Witch Project. If the creatures don't kill you, claustrophobia will.

The Blair Witch Project

OK, the handy cam may be the only reason why this has achieved the cult status. But quite frankly, the "true story" feel it gave, the very palpable desperation and fear it contained, the torch on the face, the horrific ending, everything blew me away when I saw it for the first time.

Clerks

Enough of horror movies. For those who can't tolerate a generous helping of foul language, twisted jokes or Kevin Smith( read bordering to toilet) humour even clerks is a horror movie. For others like me , watching these two people talking crap for 1.5 hours at a grocery store is a laugh riot.

Office Space
A movie with the tagline : "Work Sucks" has to be a cult movie, isn't it?
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

Pink Floyd: The Wall

What have we here, laddie? Mysterious scribblings? A secret code? No! Poems, no less! Poems, everybody!

Barton Fink

One of the best Coen Brothers movie. Definitely the weirdest.
It's got everything : Broadway, Hollywood, writers, murderers, mutilated corpses, very fine acting, confusing ending and your own interpretation.
Dark, surreal and exquisite.

Pi

Maths and mystery of the universe.

Dazed and Confused

It was the last day of school in 1976, a time they'd never forget... if only they could remember.

All those who love 70s, raise your hand!

Adaptation

It may sound blasphemous but I liked this better than the legendary "Being John Malkovich".( From the same Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman combination).
Even Nicolas Cage couldn't make me like it less.

Enlightenment

2009-04-04T12:14:00.005+05:30

I thought I understood the meaning of treachery and deception, politics and power struggle, murders and suicides, good and evil, grandmothers and relationships, marriages and infidelity, entertainment and cruelty, family and kingdom, slavery and freedom, monarchy and tyranny, fear and loyalty, reason and treason, kings and gods, food and poison,own blood and cold blood.
And then I read "I, Claudius".

Messiahs are not Gods after all

2009-03-24T23:40:00.011+05:30

There was a moment in the Barca - Malaga match on Sunday when Messi was in a one-on-one situation with the Malaga goalkeeper. And he missed. There was a stunned silence in Camp Nou. Even TV commentators stopped talking for few seconds. Pep Guardiola sat there with his mouth open. It wasn't that Barca was in a desperate need of a goal - they were already 3-0 up. It's not uncommon for strikers to miss such chances. This chance probably won't even qualify as a sitter.
Still, people were speechless.It wasn't anger. It wasn't surprise. It wasn't even shock. It was sheer disbelief that struck everybody.

Anyway, coming back to the missed opportunity. Actually, goalkeeper made a decent save and it was a clear-cut corner. Probably referee too was too stunned to notice that; he whistled away for a goal kick. Under normal circumstances, a normal player would show his disgust , even hurl a Latin version of motherfucker towards the referee( if he can afford to take a yellow card). But well, Messi was so very disappointed with his own mistake that he couldn't care less about mistakes made by other lesser mortals.

Messi's mistake was not the only speechless moment at Camp Nou that night. One came before that. That was when Messi scored a goal, well, which only Messi can. Crowd went silent for a moment. And only after the brilliance of the goal had sunk in, that the stadium went into ruptures.

Godzilla

2009-03-02T22:17:00.008+05:30

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

Oh no, they say he's got to go go go Godzilla
Oh no, there goes Tokyo go go Godzilla

History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men

- Blue Oyster Cult

One fine day

2009-01-23T02:37:00.012+05:30

I'll be brutally honest and say that I was not born with a burning desire to join a sports management company. In fact, I don't think anybody in India knows what a sports management company does ( even now, I am not sure). Some knowledgeable people may disagree, but I bet even they didn't know much 15 months back. IPL did not exist then. Also, economy was doing pretty good.

Anyway it was just a regular night. 3 of us were sitting in a restaurant , having dinner, gulping beer. We always had(still have) arguments in general on random topics. Beer just made the discussions much more passionate & uninhibited. Anyway the topic for the day was : "Future of Indian Sports."
If I remember correctly, Indian youth football team had won something important that day( important from Indian perspective but utterly inconsequential in the larger scheme of things).
So Pranil said, "I see a great future for Indian football and Indian sports in general". Pranil was/is the optimistic type. We(me & Meka, pessimistic,cynical type) said " what nonsense". And hence, the discussion began.
Facts were quoted. History was misquoted. Passions rose. Even tempers rose.Naturally, volumes also rose. So much so that everybody else in the restaurant stopped eating and started staring at us. It seemed, some of them even wanted to join the conversation ( who wouldn't?).

Meka had slowly phased out of the discussion because he thought watching two people fight over something that doesn't affect anyone of them was much more amusing. He just made sure that argument didn't die down by carefully voicing his opinions now and then.

Noisy BLAH.BLAH.
Mellowed out BLAH.BLAH.

"Indians lack skills, strength and stamina required for football. You can acquire one or two of those but not all three. You have to be born with at least something."
"Not true man. Have you seen kids playing football in the park in front of our building. They are damn good."
"Have you seen Brazilian or even Japanese kids play?"
"I bet if there is an excellent academy here in Bangalore , excellent football players can be produced."
"Why don't you open a fucking academy?"
"Oh. Actually a good idea. Let 's start an academy."
"Huh? I was just kidding. Anyway we(you) don't have resources to start an academy. Why don't you start with a small football tournament or something. Probably for schools. You'll know what talent we have here."
"Right. We can field our own team! Getting funds for kids shouldn't be a big problem."
"Yeah it shouldn't be."
"Let's do it."
"Ok. Although I am not convinced about the talent, it can still turn out to be a good business idea. We can even start a club!"

BLAH. BLAH.

"Waiter. Bill."

Normally these grand plans which start at the table, end at the table itself. But not this time. Next day emails were exchanged.Definite plans were made.Time lines were decided.

And after a week of not doing anything, we reached a grand conclusion :
"We don't know anything."

So we pondered over the fact if there was someone who knew. I decided to do some research and was pleasantly surprised to find some companies in India who did something in sports. And one of them was located very close to my house!We thought we could get them as our partner, or still better- tactfully extract some gyan and do our own thing.
So, I went to meet them. And here I am working for them. For the past 14 months.

We still can't/don't even contemplate opening up an academy.
Pranil is still working in his old tech-startup. He sometimes tells me, "Dude!A beer changed your life!"

A philosophical take on Life & Universe

2009-01-06T23:00:00.009+05:30

Somewhere some scientists are perspiring over the fact that they underestimated the mass of Milky Way and that our beloved galaxy will "collide" with the big daddy Andromeda much earlier than what was predicted earlier. And hold your breath, collision will happen in less than Seven billion years. Holy Cow! I have already started preparing my bucket list. Have you? Moreover the dude says, "One thing we don't know yet is whether Andromeda will hit us square on, or whether it will be a glancing blow."
SERIOUSLY, who pays these guys? Recession anyone?

By the way, I am not exactly opposed to all these scientific studies. I believe only curiosity & exploration(no matter how misplaced it may be) can make life on earth worth living. Yeah yeah I have heard the argument on why waste money on sending rockets to moon when you can spend the same money on building roads or distributing food. I am in no mood to point out flaws in that argument right now. But well, the argument is flawed.

My only grudge is that despite this focus on scientific research and all, the advancement in the technology has been nowhere close to what we had expected in 1950s and 1960s.
We thought that man would be traveling to Jupiter and beyond in 2001. And what do we know, we clap like infants when we watch Neil Armstrong jump on moon. On MOON? Distance between Earth and Jupiter is like 900 million kilometers. And moon is just a stone throw away. Last time I checked pictures from one of the satellites I could spot the ball which went missing when Yuvraj was molesting Broad.
That too happened in 60s & 70s. That too probably never happened.

We thought that we would have cocktail parties with aliens. And what we have are some people getting orgasm on sighting some ice on Mars which ain't enough even for 1 whiskey on the rocks.

We thought that we would have pet robots who'll wash our clothes, do our homework, tell jokes to us or even assassinate people for us. What we have is an aluminum box which mumbles 1 of the 10 pre-recorded messages after measuring our body temperature and we think that we have got the friend we had been waiting for whole our life.

We thought we would travel through time. But all we have is lack of time. *****
We thought we would develop advanced telepathy. What we've got here is a failure to communicate.
( I could not resist that :))

I can go on and on. But what's the point ? It will just add to the frustration.

I don't know what the reasons are for this utter failure. Is it that the Cold War is over? ( Which idiot said peace and development go hand in hand). Or is it due to the invention of internet?( We have porn and social networking, what else do we need?)
Maybe in 7 billion years..........

***** Socrates would have been proud of this line!

4+43+25+28

2008-12-17T00:15:00.004+05:30

If you are so used to excel sheets that it is taking you more time to calculate the sum of the numbers in the header than to read this sentence, you are on your way to prove all those scientists,filmmakers, songwriters and authors who talked about machines taking over us in future right. (OK, sentence was too long. No need to get optimistic).
Anyway the point is: Sum = 100. 4,43,25,28 is not a random combination of numbers and if you look towards the right side of the page under "Blog Archive" you will see the same numbers.
This is my 100th post!
And my first post was on the same day : Dec 17. (Coincidence eh? I swear to god I did not plan this).
December 17,2005 - 3 fucking years and I believed I get bored with things quickly. I am not sure why I believed what I believed 'coz I have also watched every episode of That 70s show thrice ( on an average). And I suspect that thrice is a very conservative estimate.
That makes it about (8 * 24 * 3 * 22 / 60) = 211.2 HOURS on That 70s show alone. How much free time have I had in life ? Scary.Satisfying at the same time.

Make some noise Camp Nou

2008-12-08T00:27:00.008+05:30

Can you spot the lowest point in the graph? That was when FC Barcelona bought a young Brazilian called Ronaldinho.Although he was injured for the first half of the season, he came back later when Barca was languishing in the 2nd half of the table and almost single-handedly led to an astonishing turnaround. Barca finished 2nd .That was when world took notice of Ronaldinho. Me too. That was also the time when my love affair with FC Barcelona started. Next two seasons Barca won the Liga.In style. They won Champions League too. 2006-07 & 2007-08( yeah that extended line I made in paint) were two seasons when Barca woefully underperformed and even then I was unwavering in my devotion for them. That is when I realized that my football club loyalty had come of age.

Ronaldinho is gone. Barca is back. Camp Nou is back too. When we were becoming used to the sight of the half empty stadium ( that would still be 50,000 people) with people waving white handkerchiefs(Traditional way to show disgust in Spain) Barca decided to start playing well. Obscenely well.And Saturday night when I started watching Barca-Valencia at 2.30 A.M. in a half-asleep state I was completely awakened in few minutes. I am not sure what it was - scintillating display of football or the packed & noisy Camp Nou. There were roars, there were chants. Yes Messi still has the largest share of chants & understandably so, but Xavi, Eto'o, Alves,Bojan, Puyol and now even Henry are frequently being vociferously praised by the Camp Nou crowd- and that defines Barca this season. Everyone is genuinely contributing. Everyone is hungry.Even the coach.
To give you some idea of how well Barcelona is playing:

FCB is currently top of the league with a 6 points difference between them and 2nd placed Villarreal
FCB has been unbeaten in last 20 games!
FCB has scored 44 goals in14 league matches; much more than any other team. You can calculate the average. Including the Champions league games in the analysis will only push the average up.
If FCB has scored the most they have conceded the least too. Only 9 goals in 14 matches. Cheers to Valdes!
This makes the goal difference of FCB equal to a mindblowing 35 which is exactly equal to the sum of goal differences of next 4 teams namely - Villarreal, Valencia, Sevilla & Real Madrid.
Samuel Eto'o is the leading scorer of the league with 14 goals.

So they are not only winning.They are winning in style.But "More than just Winning" should be expected from something which is "More than a Club".
Oh and what about Real Madrid? Funny to recall the statement that Great Bern Schuster ( RM coach) made when they produced some enterprising wins earlier this season : "Real Madrid is so good that we toy with other teams." Now look who is being toyed?
Currently Real Madrid is 5th in the league. Currently Real Madrid is pissing in their pants - because they are going to face Barcelona in Camp Nou THIS WEEK.
December was being touted as the "Horror Month", "The Grand Slam" or "The Month of Misery" because the big 5 teams in La Liga were supposed to play each other. Well by the looks of it , misery is only for the teams who have faced or about to face Barcelona. FCB defeated Sevilla away 3-0, FCB defeated Valencia home 4-0. FCB to face Real Madrid and Villarreal in coming weeks.
Sure this Barca is not the dream team of early 90's ( with Guardiola, Koeman, Hagi, Laudrup, Romario etc). Sure Messi is still not what Ronaldinho was. But they are getting there.
I am obviously thrilled. And plan to remain the same in the second half of the season too.

There's still time

2008-11-19T21:52:00.004+05:30

to save Music.Start listening to Kings of Leon. Please.

For further help:

Best Albums :
Because of the Times
Aha Shake Heartbreak
Youth & Young Manhood
Only by the Night

Best Songs:
Fans
Milk
Knocked Up
Taper Jean Girl
Arizona
My Party
King of the Rodeo
Molly's Chambers
The Bucket
The Runner
Sex on Fire

Dial C for Cricket

2008-10-22T23:11:00.006+05:30

The title for the post has been directly lifted from the cricket show being aired on NEO Cricket nowadays. Not that I was awestruck by the name and decided to use it for my blog post, but because I watched the show just now. Well here I have to say that this caller/talk show is nowhere as cheesy as its name. In fact I am very impressed by the NEO cricket's coverage of the Test series. And I really love Dial C for Cricket. I am normally not a big fan of these caller shows mainly because the questions asked are too generic and the answers given are more so. Something like :
Caller: " What should India do to win the Test match"
Answer from an expert: "Hmm.. lets see... they should bat well and they should bowl well. Oh yes they have to concentrate on the fielding too."
Caller is almost crying with enlightment by now.
But not on Dial C for Cricket. They have non-vague questions which they discuss ,say " Who is better: Mishra or Chawla?" and they have all the historical records - one days, test, ranji, India A, Irani etc to provide some meat to the discussion. They properly involve the callers in the discussion,even multiple-callers at the same time. The show is informative - for example now I know that Cheteshwar Pujara is the upcoming hotshot batsman and Mounish Parmar is the Indian Murlitahran - both due to the spin and controversial action.I like the presenter guy. He knows what he is speaking - unlike almost all the other anchors. As far as experts are concerned we don't have many options, do we? This show involves Lalchand Rajput, Ramiz Raja, Arun Lal & Ian Chappell which are conveniently rotated.
I am glad that there is no Sunil Gavaskar on the show. I respect him and all that but his extreme patriotism gets on to my nerves. Don't get me wrong. I am a fairly patriotic guy but not at the expense of all conceivable logic. If Zaheer Khan abuses someone its just good natured bantering, but if some other team player does it, its outright disgusting and a shame for the game of cricket. If Saurav Ganguly is causing a huge amount of delay because he is waiting for the 12th man to bring him new gloves - thats understandable and completely natural but if Shane Watson has problems with his run-up its dirty delaying tactics. Give me a break.
Ok coming back to NEO cricket , commentary is as good/bad it can get. Surprisingly and unfortunately the commentary hasn't changed much in last 20 years. It's like a set of statements that new commentators inherit from the old commentators. Say, taking a single run after hitting a four is the greatest thing a cricketer can do. I mean what the fuck? Why is taking a single run on a ball which was an innocent full toss, or a flighted lolly , or a delicious over-pitched delivery SO great? or say, Straight Drive is mindboggingly classy shot even if it hit the stumps on the other side. Now we are not talking about placement , are we?
Anyway. Tendulkar broke Lara's record and I am really happy for him. Yes there were times when I had bets with friends on who will score more, Azhar or Tendulkar and I invariably put my money on the traitor. Yes there were times when there were angry calls from all ( even bongs) - get the fuck Ganguly out of the team. And I was one of the few who said , Tendulkar goes first and only then goes Dada. But well Tendulkar is Tendulkar. Nobody can deny that,not even me. And people complain - he is just playing for the records. Oh, I am still thankful to him. You can be the most selfish guy on the earth if you are that talented. You have earned that.
India- Australia series is as interesting as it was supposed to be. I could do with more on field/off field abuse though. Oh come on. Nobody is watching India-Pakistan these days because of all the friendship bullshit. Indians may say all that - Australians are arrogant, unsportsmenlike, abusive and all that. Australians may say all that for Indians too. But the fact is they can't wait to play each other. Its like angry sex.Some people say people so keenly follow India-Australia series because of excellent quality of cricket and close matches. Hmm, I am sure you remember the Bhajji-Symonds "Maa Ki" incident but can you tell me how much did India score in that innings? Can you? CAN YOU?
Funny sighting: An ad featuring Lalit Modi where he says I had this vision..blah blah... What vision are you talking about? The vision which BCCI couldn't see for so many decades of existence with all the money and all the fanaticism or the vision about the game which you rubbished only few months earlier or the vision which was served to you in a platter by a "rebel"?
Phew. My Champions League Football matches are about to start. Good Night.

A(N) (IN)COMPLETE GUIDE TO SCI-FI LITERATURE

2008-09-30T22:16:00.009+05:30

These are the greatest science fiction books ever written. Almost.

( Not in any particular order)

1984 - George Orwell

Grim, Disturbing, Claustrophobic ,one of the best books ever written. THE ONE on totalitarianism future. You don't need to read Fahrenheit 451 after this.

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke

A classic from probably my favorite sci-fi author. Human Race , better take heed.

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke

Although the movie has a special place in my heart , book itself was brilliant and well more straightforward than the movie.

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke

Physics, Geometry, Exploration. This one is not for cheap thrills, this one is for the sheer spirit of adventure.

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

Arguably almost all Kurt Vonnegut books are sci-fi but not for me. You don't want to miss a science fiction masterpiece from an author who is Douglas Adams, Philip Dick, George Orwell, Mark Twain all combined and more. The Absurd. The Purpose of Human Life.

Complete Short Story Collection - Isaac Asimov

You don't need any full length novel to discover the genius of the master. In fact, these are better than anything else.

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

No, the movie WAS NOT based on the book. Read this and be blown away.

Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

I'm not AS big a fan as countless others. But this started it all. So, how can you NOT read this?

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein

This was not science ONLY. It was much more. That may be precisely the reason I am not a big fan of some of his other books like the revered Stranger in a Strange Land - which may be the perfect book for those who are not big on hard sci-fi.

Collection of short stories - Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick probably had the greatest imagination of all. He will present you the future with such immaculate details that you will wonder if he has traveled back in time. You can't imagine what scope these numerous stories (on which numerous movies have been made) cover. Start with a few.

UBIK - Philip K. Dick

A comedy on reality gone wrong!

Do Paranoids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick

The book on which Blade Runner was only loosely based. But the fun is in the details.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Since everybody on the planet seems to have read it, what are you waiting for?

Hyperion - Dan Simmons

This is one of the few contemporary( read post 80s) sci-fi books in the list. Perhaps I haven't read many. But i am not taking anything away from this complex, grand, awesome book. NOT for easy reading.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Probably one of the most widely loved books - and I am not talking only about science fiction here. And there's a reason to it. If any science fiction book could provide great entertainment to anyone and everyone,this is it. You may forget it as soon as you have read it, but you'll have one hell of a time while reading it.

Notable Omissions:

Dune - Frank Herbert

I have thought of reading it so many times, but somehow never actually did. I don't think I ever will.

The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

I remember reading it as a kid. I didn't like it then. I don't think I will like it now.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

An acclaimed classic on dystopian future. My problem with this book is that it explains futuristic things like biological engineering which I can hardly relate to. It was an extremely difficult read for me.

Neuromancer - William Gibson

A cult novel. But then cyberpunks and hacking is too real now to be interesting :)

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick

Probably because I am reading it NOW!!

Everything.Nothing really.

2008-09-15T22:42:00.009+05:30

70's movies took themselves very seriously. Look at Godfather. Look at Taxi Driver. Look at The Deer Hunter. Look at Monty Python & the Holy Grail.Look at Dawn of the Dead : Are we supposed to get scared of those funny zombies? Problem is director thought we should and he made a serious movie. Hell, look at A Clockwork Orange. Look at Apocalypse Now. I found it over-the-top. But I'll give it credit for the Best Opening Scene Ever. Ever. And what is the best closing scene? For me its a tie between Trainspotting and Fight Club. Anyway. I am not saying that 70s movies were bad. Some of them are my favourites but most of them suffered from this "greatness" delusion.

In 2000s we are facing almost the same problem, and with an attached "reality" bug.I have already said they have sort of destroyed the Batman. They have sort of destroyed James Bond too. Casino Royale was more of a romantic tragedy than a slick spy thriller. I don't want stupid Roger Moore or Sean Connery movies but give me a Golden Eye anyday.Spiderman too. Look at There Will Be Blood. Look at V for Vendetta : It highlights everything that is wrong with this decade.

80's was funny.80's was damn good too. I can't imagine Die Hard or Indians Jones being made in 70s or 2000s. Ditto with Back to the Future.Imagine if Amadeus was made in 70s. They just couldn't depict Mozart as a human being which he was. Imagine if Breakfast Club was made in 70s. Someone would have definitely committed suicide. You get the point. You do.Look at Full Metal Jacket.

90s is my favourite. It knew how to balance. And it gave us Pulp Fiction.It gave us Fight Club. It gave us American Beauty ( which was again in 70s mode but still great). It even gave us Groundhog Day. It gave us Lock, Stock & Two smoking Barrels. It gave us True Lies.It gave us The Big Lebowski. And well, many more.

And I always thought that we have this habit of glorifying the past and underrating the present. That is normal.That is obvious. How can we say that we have surpassed the best in the past, then there won't be any unattainable benchmarks left. It's no fun then.And its evident in every walk of life.We will still say, will always say: Borg was better than Federer. Sampras was better than Federer.Oh, when Rod Laver himself says this : “I would be honoured to even be compared to Roger. He is such an unbelievable talent, and is capable of anything. Roger could be the greatest tennis player of all time.” , we'll say that he's just being modest.

And when McEnroe says this : "I've seen the Lavers, I played against some of the great players - the Samprases, Beckers, Connors', Borgs, you name it…He's probably the greatest player that ever lived…He can beat half the guys with his eyes closed!”, we'll say that the old man has gone nuts. For similar reasons "Citizen Kane" will always remain the greatest movie ever.

Actually, its not a bad idea to acknowledge greatness in the present era now.Its high time that we acknowledge that this generation has actually achieved something considering that those buggers have fired the Large Hadron Collider and the world might get sucked into any of the black holes soon. I don't know how is it taking so much time though. Science.

Fortunately,the great concept of marketing is fast changing the scenario. And we are reminded again and again that what we just saw, heard or touched was the greatest thing ever. But unfortunately marketing lowers the benchmarks drastically.It even promotes mediocrity. Surely. Look at The Dark Knight. Look at iphone. Look at Manchester United. Look at Mona Lisa. Look at Surf Excel.Look at Zodiac. Yes I'm talking about that serial killer on which at least 3 movies have been made and numerous books have been written. I am not sure, how good a killer Zodiac was, but he sure was an ace marketer. Oh, how he gave those idiot policemen the puzzles which had no solutions. How he claimed to have killed scores of people. Brilliant. Anyway.

I feel most of the crimes, thefts, even terrorist acts are done by individuals who want to get the satisfaction of having done something in life. Most of them are acts of ambition and fulfillment rather than revenge, religion or greed. Well the same feeling is inherent in almost all human beings. That's why people want to become rich or popular or both. That's why people want to climb Mt. Everest even if noone gives a fuck. Oh, all this crap came to my mind when I saw the last scene of "Wanted" when the hero says :"This is me taking control. blah.blah.blah. This is me taking control of my life. What the fuck have YOU done lately?"

You may get inspired by that statement. As they say(who?) : inspiration can come from the crappiest of sources. You may even get depressed by that.As they say : depression can come from the crappiest of sources. But then, it all comes down to whether glass is half full or half empty.

Enough.

PS: I used to be funny :O

Mind-Boggling Science Fiction 2

2008-08-10T19:50:00.005+05:30

One day after getting drunk:

My Buddy(stammering): I have to tell you a secret today.

Me: What?

My Buddy: I am from the future.

Me: Huh?

My Buddy: I have come from the year 2150.

Me(excited): Really!And I was wondering how you get drunk so easily.Now I know. You people in 2150 must have seriously fucked up minds with all that pollution and global warming.

My Buddy: Yeah we are really fucked up physically & mentally, but we all are much more developed spiritually.

Me: Spiritually? huh? What crap...anyway where is the time machine!! I want to see it!!

My Buddy: Time Travel doesn't work that way. It's more of a mental travel than physical. Your mind travels back or forward in time,and occupies a physical form( a body) which is temporarily without a mind.

Me: Temporarily without a mind?

My Buddy: Yeah.Quite often you see some people acting "absent-minded". Well their minds are literally absent. Someone who had traveled back and occupied that body leaves it, and that body is without a mind for some time before some other mind occupies it. And since so many people are traveling from the future these days, nobody remains absent-minded for long.
We just have to use a 6-digit alpha-numeric code to initiate time travel. For eg. my code is 61c3h9

Me: Oh what did you say, your code was? 63d8h9?

My Buddy: No. 63c1h9

Me: 7h1d8q?

My Buddy: 6c19dh

Me: 9r8ic1?

My Buddy: 6ihr91.

Me: 8s9w1q?

My Buddy: Shit. I was drunk and you made me forget my code.

Me(laughing): I am sorry man. I was just messing with you. But, its not a problem. Is it?

My Buddy: Ofcourse it is!!There can be hmm... (36)^6 possible codes. How much is it?!!

Me: Wait I'll calculate on my mobile phone. Well it is a pretty huge number: 2,17,67,82,336!!!

My Buddy(shocked): And to try out all those codes will take me my whole lifetime!

Me: But you must have stored your code on your phone or a piece of paper or something.

My Buddy: I did! But remember I told you my phone got stolen today on a local train!

Me:Oh yes. Shit. Guess you are stuck in the year 2008 now.

My Buddy(sobbing): Yes I am stuck in this spiritually deprived era.

Me: huh?..what crap.

Mind-boggling Science Fiction

2008-07-31T23:22:00.003+05:30

Voice from the Radio: Hello, I am a resident of planet Tribe2453. In other words I am an alien for you people.

Me: Hi

Voice from the Radio: Just Hi? Anyway, you need not be scared of me, my intentions are purely exploratory. I am just a child on my planet, and this is part of our school assignment , which was to study the culture of some third world planet and then make a detailed presentation in the class.

Me(bored): So what do you want from me?

Voice from the Radio: I will just reside in your mind for 6 months.We have the technology for that and it's a totally unintrusive method. You won't feel a thing and continue to live a normal life.

Me: Why me? Go reside in Nelson Mandela's mind or Oprah Winfrey's mind. You'll get a better perspective. I am nobody.

Voice from the Radio: I selected you from the Random Human Generator.And, you are as good as anybody for my study.

Me(getting irritated): No. I don't want to be a part of it.Get lost.

Voice from the Radio(surprised): You don't have to be rude. I was just requesting you.

Me(getting really pissed): Ok I'll say it politely : Why don't you go and fuck yourself.

Voice from the Radio(shocked):Now you are swearing in front of a child!Don't you have any shame?

Me(hysterical): Child? Where? Oh you .. fucking son of a fucking alien bitch.

Voice from the Radio(sobbing): That's it. I am destroying Earth.I don't care if i get a 'D' in my assignment.

And so, our beloved planet earth met its premature end due to one reckless human being.

Today I am going to make a bold statement.

2008-07-28T22:46:00.004+05:30

But first some background.

I have only ONE obsession in life - Music. Yes, I have seen many, really many movies. Yes, I have even walked 1.5 kms at 1 A.M. in the night to a friend's place and woke him up from his blissful sleep because I wanted to see Barca- Real football match and my cable-wallah had suddenly decided to take ESPN off. Still, Music is/has been my only obsession.

I have loved so many bands over all these years, loved so many songs;but never thought of saying such a thing, ACTUALLY never dared to say such a thing, which is this :

FAKE PLASTIC TREES by Radiohead is the best song I have ever heard.

And I say this now, after having heard it millions of time over so many years.
I don't want to degrade Fake Plastic Trees by giving justifications. But I see no reason why anyone who is alive should not like it. ACTUALLY: I see no reason why anyone should NOT like it and still be alive.

If you have never heard it, do yourself a HUGE favor- Buy "The Bends" CD , or download the high quality mp3 from the internet, or watch it on youtube, or give me your email address, or request it in a pub, do something NOW. Believe me, you would have done something worthwhile after a long long time.

Her green plastic watering can
For her fake Chinese rubber plant
In the fake plastic earth.
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself.
It wears her out, it wears her out.

She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns.
He used to do surgery
For girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins.
And it wears him out, it wears him out.
It wears him out, it wears him out.

She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love.
But I can't help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run.
And it wears me out, it wears me out.
It wears me out, it wears me out.

And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted
All the time, all the time.
Oh, oh.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-20T23:38:00.008+05:30

I like you Mr. Christopher Nolan, but I like Batman more. Yes, I have serious issues with The Dark Knight. I liked your movie but right now I may go to ridiculous extents to ridicule it. Let's get few things straight:

There are NO superheroes in real life. So why these desperate attempts to make a realistic Batman? What's the need for Bruce Wayne to speak in a ridiculous heavy voice when he is wearing the suit? Does it add authenticity? Oh, try breaking some bones of Batman or making him crippled for life when he jumps from a 40 storeyed building to add authenticity next time.

Gotham is not a real city. And it is the mother of all DARK corrupt crime-plagued cities. I don't remember when was the last time we saw daylight in Gotham city like you have shown in your movies. And what's with Batman going to Hong Kong? Are we supposed to care about rest of the world too? What next? Batman will stop driving the Bat-mobile due to rising Oil prices?

The adversaries of Batman are supposed to be brilliant,eccentric people who have definite plans of world domination or large scale homicide. Not some random guy who just wants to kill all people with a machine gun. Where is the technology which will hypnotize all the people of Gotham? Where are the chemicals which bring out your darkest fears? Oh, I forgot, these things don't happen in a real world. But believe me a quintessential villain of a cult superhero series chasing trucks and shooting them with rocket launchers looks very CHEAP.

And by the way, last time I checked Joker is supposed to be a funny guy. Damn scary, but funny. A truly multidimensional character. Not a plain cold blooded psycho. For that I'll watch Javier Bardem in No country For Old Men. But then, we are not supposed to be critical of the acting of a person who is dead.

We are over-awed by the moral dilemmas of Batman already. We don't need to bother ourselves with the moral dilemmas of common people. You know what I am talking about: I didn't particularly like the boat scene.

Batman ladies are supposed to look ravishing. Say, Kim Basingerly ravishing. Even Nicole Kidman looked her best in one of the Batman movies. Maggie Gyllenhaal was far from ravishing( particularly in this movie). But then,which beautiful lady in a real world will fall for a creep dressed like a bat?

Even the transformation of Harvy Dent to Two-Face was not very convincing.

There was this Basin City . More corrupt and much darker than Gotham City.
But when Basin City was brought to life in a movie-form it was magnificent, not realistic but magnificent. Watch Sin City Mr. Nolan and take some inspiration. That is what a comic book adaptation ought to be.

I like Tim Burton's version of Batman much better.
But if you ask me which Batman movie I love the most : I'll say Mask of the Phantasm.

Something I don't understand

2008-07-12T00:01:00.005+05:30

This happens in movies all the time : The bad guy threatens the heroine that if she doesn't tell the hero that she doesn't love him, he will kill him.
Even in Spiderman 3.

The heroine gets scared and is ready to sacrifice her love for her love. And so she tells the hero that she doesn't love him anymore and is having sex with someone else while villain watches all this from behind a tree with a cruel sense of satisfaction. So far so good.

Now what I don't understand is why can't the heroine give a call to hero after say half an hour and tell him the truth. It's not that the bad guy is tapping her mobile calls or something ( she IS anyway shown talking to the hero and hurting him more and more). Hero can obviously keep on pretending that he is hurt to fool the bad guy. Oh come on, he is the bloody Spider-man - if he can save the world , he surely can act a little.

But then there are so many other things in the movies which we don't understand like how can John Abraham and Josh Hartnett always remain so sexy even if they are playing poor, old, crippled nincompoops.If you didn't get it, there was an unbelievable amount of sarcasm and contempt hidden in the previous statement.

Once in a Lifetime Kind of Stuff *

2008-07-07T13:37:00.003+05:30

I saw 100% Solar Eclipse from my naked eyes.

I saw Spain lift the Euro Cup.

I saw probably the best ever Tennis match which would have given me a heart-attack if I was 65. The match left me incredibly sad though**

* I hope not for the sake of Spain
** Federer will win again. This year. Next year. Next to next year. French Open too. If trophies & records are the only proof that you need to believe, he will have them. He will.

How to save Planet Earth?

2008-07-02T22:40:00.003+05:30

Tell Everybody To Read KURT VONNEGUT.

Slumdog Millionaire

2008-07-02T21:52:00.004+05:30

Danny Boyle is one of the best and definitely the most versatile director of this generation. These are the movies he has directed till now( I have seen all!) :

1) Shallow Grave ( One of the most ignored movies ever! A psychological thriller! A masterpiece!)
2) Trainspotting ( Well what can I say. The best DRUGS movie. One of the greatest movies EVER.)
3) A Life Less Ordinary ( An underrated, amazingly COOL Romantic Comedy)
4) The Beach( Again an underrated & unique adventure-thriller)
5) 28 Days Later( The best ZOMBIE movie ever)
6) Millions( The best FAMILY movie ever)
7) Sunshine( The best Sci-Fi movie in recent times. Since1997(Contact & Gattaca) to be precise)

And when Danny Boyle decides to direct a movie shot in India , with Indian actors and based on Kaun Banega Crorepati, we must take notice.

Slumdog Millionaire : "A comedy centered around an illiterate kid who looks to become a contestant on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be A Millionaire in order to re-establish contact with the girl he loves, who is an ardent fan of the show."
It stars Dev Patel(who?), Irrfan Khan( obviously) , Anil Kapoor( well) and Freida Pinto(who?)

Haiku

2008-06-27T14:27:00.001+05:30

pass the ball
beautiful football
way Spain play

He killed a man
He surrendered
He killed the suspense

Monsoon
Poet writes a poem
I wash my clothes

I slapped a girl
She slapped me back
News these days

My friends
They tease me
I also tease them

If TV
is an idiot box
then I am an idiot

Leaking tap in the next room
Makes some sound
I am lazy

Anti-Glare Lens
I spend more
Eyes still ache

Overrated
Overhyped
Ronaldo

Up,up,up
Down, down, down
Stock Market last year and this year

Radiohead makes music
Pearl Jam makes music
Others copy

I drink beer
I lose control and
I feel happy

Pepsi without the fizz
is like Coca-Cola
without the fizz

HP DV-1000
My hot laptop
My burnt laptop

Crisp Notes
Crashed Windows
Bill Gates

This
is addictive
I can go on and on and on

To hell with
Haiku aficionados
who think I murdered the art

Overheard

2008-06-24T23:14:00.004+05:30

Characters:
Ronaldo: Christiano Ronaldo ( Portugal & Manchester United)
AAFL: An Average Football Lover

Ronaldo: I am best in the world.
AAFL: Who says so?
Ronaldo: The whole world.
AAFL: Hmm..no. Italians say Kaka is the best, Spanish say Messi is the best , Germans say Ribery is the best, and now Russians say Arshavin is the best.
Ronaldo: Oh is it? But here in England wherever I read, wherever I hear , they say I am the best. They can't be foolish. England is a football loving country and is known for its fair judgments.
AAFL: hmm.. yeah English people do say that. But English people also said that Alan Shearer was the best striker in the world at the time of Baggio and Ronaldo.
Ronaldo: Who? I don't know these players.Sorry my history is weak.
AAFL: Yeah, I figured that part.. when you were talking about England and...
Ronaldo(interrupting): And there was another Ronaldo playing football earlier? Is he dead now?
AAFL: Dead! No. He is injured. He is still playing for Milan. And well he is considered by many as the best striker( perhaps the best player) ever.
Ronaldo: Is it? Was he better than Pele, Maradona and ME!!!??
AAFL( trying to be polite) : Hmm... probably.
Ronaldo: Oh it can't be ! Look at the number of goals I scored this season. Manchester United won the Premier League and the Champions League because of ME.
AAFL( losing his patience) : And still ManU barely won the league and barely won the champions league. In Fact Chelsea was the better team in the Finals! And remember you missed the penalty too! You tend to get nervous.
Ronaldo : Nervous and me? Are you serious? I have scored so many penalties. It was just once that I missed.
AAFL: You missed against Barcelona too in the semis. Remember?
Ronaldo : Every great player makes mistakes. I am not GOD you see.But I have made up for all those by scoring so many goals.
AAFL: But don't you think ManU could have scored more goals if you had remained a Midfielder which was your assigned role, and not try to be a striker. And could luck have played a little role in your success?
Ronaldo: What nonsense are you talking. I was awesome , always. Thats why all the defenders were so scared of me;they kicked me and fouled me again and again.
AAFL: Well, if you had passed more and ran less........
Ronaldo: Oh you shut up. What do you know about football. The best club on earth - Real Madrid - is planning to buy me for 100 million dollars . Do you even know that 100 million has 4 zeroes in it!
AAFL: Who says Real Madrid is the best club on earth?
Ronaldo: I say that. And if it is not, it will be when I join them.I'll show all Messi supporters who is the best.
AAFL: But many people think that Messi is more talented and he played better than you in the Champions League... but we'll leave that. I think Real Madrid is buying you to sell more T-Shirts than for footballing reasons.
Ronaldo: What rubbish. But yeah , you are right I will sell more T-shirts. After all I am so drop dead gorgeous. I have charmed so many hookers and Bipasha Basu with my good looks and smooth moves.
AAFL: I have also charmed those hookers and Bipasha Basu and I paid less than you!
Ronaldo: You are jealous,disrespectful and arrogant. One day you'll understand and that day is not far.
AAFL: You are dumb, disloyal and greedy. One day you'll be disillusioned and that day is very near.
Ronaldo: I don't like you.
AAFL. I don't like you.

PS: I don't like Ronaldo.

Itch

2008-06-24T22:50:00.003+05:30

Few months back I had posted on how I longed to see No Country For Old Men. Although the movie didn't turn out to be as good as I had expected but still it had plenty of kickass-ness and it even got the Oscar.
Coen brothers have done it AGAIN. Yes, there is Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight , David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla , but the movie which I JUST can't wait to watch is Burn After Reading.
It is a crime-comedy and reminds me of Big Lebowski , even Lock,Stock & Two Smoking Barrels!
It stars Brad Pitt ( he is one actor whose movies are never ever bad) , George Clooney, John Malkovich,Frances Mcdormand(obviously) & Tilda Swinton.

Watch the hilarious trailer here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tEDPZNWG4o

My PUB

2008-06-09T20:51:00.000+05:30

Enter: Place is dimly lit. Several lamps are strategically placed that may be used later to give psychedelic effects. There are several large screens on the walls, in fact even the roof is a dome shaped screen. Sound System is top-notch.

Announcement: Hello All, welcome to the Pink Floyd night at Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum. If you haven't googled for the meaning of the pub yet, let me tell you that Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum was a term used by Kurt Vonnegut in one of his novels.We assume that you are all Pink Floyd fans since you paid 1000 rupees cover charge and cleared the basic Pink Floyd Quiz at the entrance. We are sorry for your friends who couldn't make it.Here we want to clarify that we are not acting prudish or anything but this pub is meant for serious music lovers. We wanted to keep out certain type of people : "Hey! I needed some air conditioned place to meet my friends" , "Hey look at me, I am so cool... I listen to Pink Floyd" etc will qualify as these type of people. But at the same time we want Pink Floyd's music to reach more & more number of people , thats why we kept the quiz simple: "Name any seven Pink Floyd songs" , " Write 2 lines from any Pink Floyd song other than Another Brick In the Wall 2 & Coming Back to Life" , "Is Roger Waters Dead (Y/N)"? , " Do you like the band Good Charlotte(Y/N)?" etc.
So are you ready for the Pink Floyd Experience? ................ ( Applause)
Please Note that NO SONG REQUEST will be entertained.
Let the Music begin.

Playing :
1) Marooned ( Division Bell ) ( Breathtaking Scenery on the screens)
2) Speak to me/Breathe ( Dark Side of the Moon)
3) On the Turning Away ( A Momentary Lapse of Reason)

Announcement : You are about to hear original unabridged Echoes which is 23 minutes long. If anyone of you think that it might be too long or too boring for you , you may take your full refund from the entrance - No Questions asked. Thank you for joining us.

Playing :
4) Echoes ( Meddle)
5) Mother ( The Wall)
6) Time( Dark Side of the Moon)
7) Brain Damage / Eclipse ( Dark Side of the Moon)

Announcement : We urge you to order whatever it takes you to reach higher state of mind other than the music obviously : Booze, Tobacco, Marijuana , LSD , food or water. Now is the time.

Playing :
8) Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun( A Saucerful of Secrets)
9) Astronomy Domine ( Piper at the Gates of Dawn)
10) One of these Days( Meddle)
11) Shine on You Crazy Diamond 1 & 2( Wish You were Here)
12) Comfortably Numb ( The Wall)

Announcement : We know that you have had a mind-boggling experience till now. We understand that for some of you this "Psychedelic Awesomeness" might have been too much to handle. Hence we'll play some catchy, relatively "less demanding" songs now. These will help you regain your breath. Some of you may even feel like dancing but as you would have read the rules printed on your Menu Card : " Dancing will not be tolerated ". However , you may rotate your head, rapidly blink your eyes, tap your neck : these won't count as dancing.

Playing :
13) Arnold Layne ( Relics)
14) Another Brick in the Wall 1 ( The Wall)
15) Happiest Days of our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall 2 ( The Wall )
16) Pigs - Three Different Ones ( Animals )
17) Have a Cigar ( Wish You Were Here)

Announcement: People, this is to remind you that you can buy Pink Floyd merchandise from our store just outside the Music area, but only after the music for the night is over. Merchandise includes Pink Floyd CDs , DVDs , T-shirts and memorabilia. You can also consult our expert panel for advice on sound system, acoustics , lighting arrangements worthy of Pink Floyd Music that can be setup in your house. There is a surprise for you ! We are having a lucky draw and the winner gets to meet David Gilmour or Roger Waters depending on his choice.

Playing:
18) Hey You( The Wall )
19) Sorrow( A Momentary Lapse of Reason)
20) High Hopes ( Division Bell)
21) Wearing the Inside Out( Division Bell)
22) If(Atom Heart Mother)

Announcement: Thank you all very much. Actually we are sure that the feeling is reciprocative.You can join us again next Friday for Pink Floyd - Redux. There you'll listen to songs from albums which we missed out on this week due to time constraints. Also you'll get to see some really rare video footages of Pink Floyd. All of you who are present today will get 50% discount on everything next Friday. Some great news : We'll have a Pearl Jam night tomorrow and Radiohead night the day after. We guarantee you a similar experience.

Playing:
23) Wish You Were Here ( Wish You Were Here)

PS:From The Sirens of Titan: " Chrono means time. Synclastic means curved towards the same side in all directions,like the skin of an orange.Infundibulum is what the ancient Romans like Julius Caesar and Nero called a funnel."

Life is Puzzles

2008-06-04T21:29:00.000+05:30

From time to time in our life we are faced with puzzles, some of them even having achieved CULT status , by virtue of their difficulty level ,their commercial value , their importance or their uniqueness.
I am sure at least 10,000 people would have asked you this( however lame you might have thought it was even at that time) when you were a kid:
Let, x= 1,
then, x^2 = x
x^2 - 1 = x-1
(x-1)(x+1) = (x-1)
or x+1 = 1
or 2=1. How?

Then the classic waiter puzzle : 3 of you go to a restaurant and your bill comes out to be 27. So you pay the waiter 30 rupees(10 rupees each). But the manager finds a totaling mistake and says to the waiter that bill is 25 rupees and not 27 rupees. The smart ass waiter thinks how will they divide 5 rupees among them, so he keeps 2 rupees with himself and gives back 3 rupees. So effectively, all 3 of you have paid 9 rupees each , that makes it 9 * 3 = 27 rupees. 2 rupees are with the waiter , so it makes 27 + 2 = 29 rupees. You had initially paid 30 rupees , so where has 1 rupee disappeared?

And surely this one made me scratch my head:
You die and find yourself standing in front of 2 gates. 1 leads to hell and the other leads to heaven. There are 2 gatekeepers , 1 of them always speaks the truth and other one always speaks the lie. BUT the catch is you don't know which is which. You have to ask ONLY 1 question to ONLY 1 gatekeeper and find out which gate leads to heaven!

You grow up, and puzzles change.
Oh, who wouldn't have heard of the great puzzle which couldn't be solved for almost 400 years. I am talking about Fermat's Last Theorem : x^n + y^n = z^n is not possible for any integer n>2.
I remember watching Andrew Wiles explain his proof on Discovery Channel. I didn't understand a fuck but I still clapped.

And then our Calculus days , where again some people tried to prove that 2=1.
We know that,
x^2 = x+x+x+...... ( x times)
Differentiating both the sides w.r.t. x
2x = 1+1+1+...(x times)
or 2x =x
or 2=1!

There was a time when I was obsessed with Time Travel ; and obviously the paradoxes! What if I go back and kill myself! And then there was this amazing short story : All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein : " A woman undergoes a sex change, goes back in time and impregnates his previous self( girl) and is born as the offspring! So basically this guy is both his mother and father!!! And then there were others of himself too." Phew. You have to read it!

There are puzzles of seemingly great importance like how can universe expand all the time, or how does human consciousness work( which Roger Penrose tried to explain, and I tried to read)
Then there is a mind boggling question -WHAT is the meaning of LIFE - which Monty Python tried to explain or which KURT Vonnegut almost found an answer to : "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

Douglas Adams found a mind boggling answer to some important question though - 42.

But there is one thing that has been puzzling me for so many years, and that is how come SPAIN has the best football squad in Europe , if not in the world and still it fails to win or even do well in any major tournament. And moreover WHY I keep supporting them.

PS: I'll be supporting Spain in EURO 2008. Italy, France & Germany should be the other 3 semi-finalists.

Long Nonsense

2008-05-05T23:29:00.000+05:30

Bush says that Food prices have increased because people in India eat more. I totally agree.First of all they produce billions and after that they eat too. But what can I say , I'll only suggest that instead of complaining you should look for more innovative solutions to the problem. You have done that before .... Remember people in India used to wear more clothes too, but then, you didn't complain of rising cloth prices, instead you totally used it to your advantage and what do we have now: the great Porn industry of America! And thank you for that!We hope that some brilliant idea comes out of America from the present crisis too. This might sound cliched but is absolutely apt : Necessity is the Mother of Invention.
Oh, all this talk of increasing population and food shortage reminds me of this movie which I loved by the way: "Idiocracy". Not many of you may have heard of this movie and I also bumped into it accidentally.Its a satirical nonsense comedy from the director of Office Space. It has a simple but ingenious storyline : Concerned with the population growth all intelligent people stop reproducing, but on the other hand idiots keep on reproducing. So the future world is astonishingly dumbed -down, and our average guy from the present after 500 years of hibernation ( side plot) becomes the most intelligent creature on earth !!
Bleak future , I must say. Then there was Children of Men which also predicted apocalyptic future; but I won't go into that. But I will definitely mention here that Children of Men and Gattaca are two such breathtakingly beautiful movies ( I mean literally, cinematography and all), that I can keep watching them continuously forever. No kidding.
I can also keep listening to Pink Floyd's - Shine on You Crazy Diamond and Beatles' - A Day in the Life also, forever.
But I seriously wonder how some people can keep doing their Finance job forever. Do they really like it? Have you seen American Psycho? I remember this dialogue from the movie( happening in a bar):

Drunk Girl: What do you do?
Christian Bale: I am into Murders and Executions mostly.
Drunk Girl: Do you like it?
Christian Bale: It depends.Why?
Drunk Girl: Because guys who I know are into Mergers and Acquisitions really don't like it.

Only alcohol can bring out such brilliant mis-interpretations.But again I have realized in few years that alcohol is overrated( I thought I would die before I say this). Now no longer I wake up the next morning and feel utterly embarrassed of what I did last night .Where's the fun then?

One thing that is surely not overrated though is FC Barcelona , even after its pathetic season. Mostly they lacked the right attitude and team spirit. Also they must realize that they can win matches by playing beautiful football and scoring from free play against depressingly defensive mindset of other clubs in Europe only if they have brilliant strikers ( what Eto'o and Ronaldinho were 2 years back and what Messi is almost). Otherwise they have to rely on free kicks and corner kicks, long balls and long shots. And they need players who do that. What to say, world is not fair. Life is not fair.

If life was fair this wouldn't be happening:

Titanic has just sunk and Jack and Rose are fighting for their lives in ice cold water. Finally they get hold of a plank.

Jack ( shivering..almost dying off) : Oh Rose! I love you from the bottom of my heart.
Rose( comfortable...almost dozing off) : Oh Jack! I love you from the top of my plank.

Aren't Cynicism and Pessimism Awesome?

2008-04-08T23:17:00.000+05:30

1) Have you read the best books? Did you love the bleak future of 1984 ? Brave New World?Did Holden Caulfield entertain you by finding fault in everyone and everything? Isn't Chuck Palahniuk most cynical of all living authors right now? And isn't he good?Have you read Survivor? Isn't Kurt Vonnegut the best author ever? The most intelligent and the wittiest? Probably most cynical ? Pessimist too? And addictive?Have you read Slapstick? Cat's Cradle? Mother Night? Breakfast of Champions?Slaughterhouse 5? Hocus Pocus? Timequake?Any?Did Kurt Vonnegut write this:"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand." ? Do you agree?

2) Have you watched the best movies ? Appreciated the under-rated movies where the world is ending? Enjoyed the underlying pessimism in an otherwise average movie based on a life of a loser ( eg: Lonesome Jim) ? Do movies based on Nuclear Wars, Future with Tyrannical society , Apocalypse, Doomsday,Judgment Day,Shift in space-time continuum and other exciting stuff excite you? Wasn't Stanley Kubrick great? Isn't Dr. Strangelove one of the best comedies( So do you think a movie in which the world ends CAN be a comedy?)? Full Metal Jacket?Clockwork Orange? Do you enjoy new, surrealistic , sci-fi movies which predict hopeless future (eg: Southland Tales) ? Have you seen Fight Club? Have you seen Clerks?

3) Have you heard the best music? Rock Music? Do you find Radiohead brilliant? Even inspiring?Did Pink Floyd write this : "and everything under the sun is in tune ;but the sun is eclipsed by the moon."? Is Pink Floyd God?Is God Pink Floyd? Do you love Dark Side of the Moon? Wish you were Here? Meddle? Wall?Animals? Do you believe any government in power is pathetic, like all rock bands do? Do you believe in an inconvenient truth , like all rock bands do?Aren't all good bands cynical?Pessimist? Isn't happy,optimistic music generally written by retards? Did R.E.M. write this: " Its the end of the world as we know it; And I am feeling fine."? Are good bands still naming their albums like this: " We were Dead before the Ship even sank."?

If your answer to some of the questions above is YES , chances are you belong to The Club!
( knowingly or unknowingly)

Don't you feel lucky now?!

Megadeth and a Death

2008-03-21T22:44:00.000+05:30

I was in Bangalore to see Megadeth. And I am extremely glad I was.
We were copiously drunk when we entered but were still sober enough to know what was going on around us ( which is FYI the perfect state to attend a rock concert - wild but conscious , eager to head bang but eager to pay attention to music ). Anyway we were surprised when there were just cursory security checks( like those at the shopping malls) unlike previous rock concerts ( I am not sure what the reason was. Whether authorities have understood that music fans should be set free or authorities have understood that no point wasting time - people still manage, or authorities have understood - the world would be a much better place without these crazy metal freaks, to hell with them , let them die.)
As soon as we entered the ground we understood the real reason ( or at least a part of the reason) for lack of security checks. For the first time in any international concert in Bangalore( probably in India) booze was being sold inside the arena!( thanks to Sir Vijay Mallya). And then people couldn't help cursing themselves for unnecessary having drank so much outside and taken so much of troubles ( like sore feet) for smuggling small whisky bottles inside. And well there was Bungee Jumping inside the arena !! and that too under lights... so there was the woodstock environment for you. ( Ironically most of the people were too stoned or too drunk to be that brave or that adventurous. On the other hand most of the people were too stoned and too drunk and hence too brave and too adventurous. My first thought was how much will I puke if I did jump.)
Anyway , frankly speaking I haven't heard much of Machine Head but they played really well and all the lightning in the sky played well too.
Megadeth was pure bliss.
Although only Dave Mustaine was there from their original lineup, but thats Dave Mustaine!
And what a setlist!!! They played the big four from rust in peace - holy wars, hangar 18, tornado of souls,take no prisoners, they played trust, they played symphony of destruction,they played a tout le monde, they played peace sells,they played in my darkest hour, and obviously they played some from their latest - United Abominations.They even played Mechanix/Four Horsemen ( Oh yes , it was Mustaine time Metallica).I couldn't have asked for more.
I have never seen a more educated crowd in a rock concert. Crowd sang each and every song word by word. It was a place where any real fan could belong.
Watch this if you don't believe me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvg7DUBJd0

And we were in the 9th or 10th row from the stage ( thats a tremendous achievement when you consider 25000 to 30000 people , drunk, violent people.) There were several Mosh Pits ( I am not sure that I like the trend but its just a fallout) and we were standing beside one (didn't dare go inside it).

Fuck Mark Knopfler, Fuck Joe Satriani, Fuck Iron Maiden, Fuck Aerosmith , Fuck Bangalore authorities ( who'll keep the volume of live thrash metal songs less than those of lullabies) , Megadeth kicked ass!

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Sir Arthur Charles Clarke ( 16.12.1917 - 19.3.2008)

Arthur C. Clarke was more concerned with the wonders of science and exploration and less with politics ,human behaviour ,character development and other mundane stuff (unlike Robert Heinlein ,Isaac Asimov,Philip Dick, Orson Scott and others). Thats why he was my favourite sci-fi author ( and unfortunately that was the reason why some people didn't like him).
I'll eagerly wait for the movie adaptation of Rendezvous with Rama ( to be directed by David Fincher). Its almost an impossible to be made into a movie kind of book, but then so was 2001.

My first post on a socially relevant issue...and probably last too.

2008-03-11T23:11:00.000+05:30

I am sort of sick of people complaining about why there's so much money in Cricket in India and why ain't government and the big businessmen spending enough money on other sports.
First of all to those people who don't like cricket being too commercialized and big companies spending millions in IPL : YOU, stop being jealous and start selling your own beer. Then you can do whatever you want from your money.
And now to those people who think government and all the rich people should spend money on other sports too(like Hockey) and not cricket :
Some games are intrinsically boring and some are intrinsically interesting. Or let me put it this way, people of different countries / of different cultures/of different levels of average intelligence / of different levels of average inherent barbarism are intrinsically made to like some games or to intrinsically hate some game. Some people might even evolve to like different games in different periods of time.
So now tell me if no one in India wants to watch hockey is it government that is to be blamed? If no one will even recognize any national Hockey team player if he comes in some ad, why should any company spend money on them? Oh don't tell me they don't show enough hockey on TV , they show all the international matches, hell they even show PHL. Its just that you DON'T watch hockey matches.And you complain government gives crores to cricketers who won CB series and government doesn't give a penny to football players or hockey players after they win anything significant.Why should it? Government earns so much from cricket - tickets, tourism, taxes and what not..what does government earn from Hockey? Isn't everything return on investment. If only you would have spent hundreds to watch a Hockey match rather than spending thousands on watching a cricket match, Hockey players would have also got some booty from the government.Some of you socialists might rise up and say its not always return on investment for the government , its charity too!But then again, charity in cricket affects millions of people, charity in Hockey will affect what -10, at max 20 people? So where does charity make more sense?
There's this another argument that people put forward that unless you spend lot of money in Hockey, how will the game develop, how will we get a good team, and unless we get a good team which wins tournaments why will people follow hockey? Ok, so when was the last time Indian Hockey team won the Olympic Gold Medal - I think 1980.And when was the last time Indian cricket team won the world cup - 1983. Not much of a difference I say, but still you suckers keep on watching cricket day after day , year after year. WHY?And well England didn't even qualify for the Euro cup, still those suckers will keep on watching Football , no matter what. And if performance is the key factor , why don't people complain of government not investing enough money in Kabbaddi. India is a world beater in Kabbaddi!!! Then you'll say Kabbaddi is not a popular enough sport. But then how popular is Hockey. Or how popular is cricket? What 10, or say 20 countries play cricket, more than 300 countries play football. And performance ha! India is ranked 165 or something in Football , still more number of people watch football than hockey in India. Its not even important if India is playing or not.And sometimes you don't even need government backing for good performances.Its just the talent and interest. How much did the government spend on hockey facilities before India won all the gold medals in 1930s,40s and 50s?How much did Indian government spend on Chess before Vishwanathan Anand became world number 1?
Now we arrive at the basic question -is Hockey really so boring? Well, I don't know.Maybe its not glamorous enough, but then even cricket is not glamorous , only when all these players are selected for national teams and they start putting hair gel that the team look glamorous. Or is it too short a game. Is it that we Indians have too much time at hand and unless its complete 8 hours of entertainment, its not paisa wasool.There can be many reasons, but the fact remains not many people watch hockey in India.
Finally your desperate attempt: Hockey is the national game after all .But then as I said, tastes of people evolve, once upon a time people used to like hockey, now they like cricket. As simple as that.Government may decide now that Hockey no longer deserves to be the national game and they make Cricket the national game. But you never know, after all these ICLs , IPLs and what not people might get bored of cricket too, and government may have to make football the national game after 20 years.
Don't you understand that this Hockey vs Cricket argument is as futile as saying why don't big production companies produce movies based on Cannibalism and why do they spend so much money on romantic movies?Or why does government spend so much money on development of tourism in Goa and why not in Jhumritalaya. So what if Goa has beautiful beaches and no one wants to go to Jhumritalaya?
Well nothing against other games.I personally like football much much more than cricket, but there has to be a disparity(determined by market forces) in government spends!

Van Der Merwe

2008-03-06T00:03:00.000+05:30

Today I got this brilliant forward again in my Yahoo mail and while I was getting irritated with the world this made my day. I had read this few years back. And in all these years and among infinite number of forwarded jokes,poems,stories,pictures,songs I have received, this one remains- and by far - the best forward I have ever received.
And I don't mean to infringe any copyright laws but people please bow down to the genius of
The Private Eye - Van der Merwe

But first a Warning.
Restricted : High level bone-chilling Thrill, blood-curdling Violence and hair-raising Sexual innuendos( I have copied this from the amazing warning on this Pulp Fiction DVD I have : Restricted: High level coarse language,medium level violence and drug use.)

Anyway, hold your breath,here it is:

The Private Eye - Van der Merwe

(With that low monotonous Detective voice)

I was sitting in my office when a case came in.
So I finished two bottles from it.

I was tough, so tough I wore my clothes out from the
inside.

Suddenly a tall blonde walked past my window.
I knew she was tall because I was on the second floor.

The phone rang and I knew something was wrong.
I didn't have a phone.

It was a girl and she was in trouble. I knew she was,
'cause she said so.

I raced down the stairs and called a cab. The cab
stopped with a jerk.
Then the jerk got out and I got in.

We took the corner at hundred kilometres per hour, but
a cop stopped us and told us to put the corner back.

We kept on the pavement, because there was a sign that
said:"Keep Death Off Our Roads".

Then we were out of the city. I knew it, because we
were not hitting so many pedestrians.

As we came to her house, she greeted me with a burning
kiss.
Then she Took the cigarette out and kissed me again.

She pointed two thirty-eights at me. She also had a
gun.

She had the most beautiful blonde hair I have ever
seen - hanging from her left nostril.

She had teeth like the ten commandments - all broken.

She also had the most beautiful eyes - so beautiful
that the one eye could not stop looking at the other
one.

There was a man on the floor. He had stab wounds in
his heart, bullet wounds in his head and his wrists
were slashed.
He was dead.

I said: "Lady, if this man was alive, he sure would be
ill".

So I took her for a drive to calm her nerves.

Suddenly a brick came flying through the window and
hit her on the left breast - breaking three of my
fingers.

We had a flat tyre, so I pumped and she pumped and I
pumped. Then we got out and fixed the flat tyre.

Then I took her home and as I was kissing her
goodnight, her father opened the door and stepped on
my back, almost breaking it.

As I was giving her a final good-night kiss, she
closed her legs and broke my nose.

Now I am more careful on my assignments

So which is your favorite line of the story,eh?
I obviously don't read the forwards these days as religiously as i used to and anyway nowadays I find most of them irritating. But then I find lot of stuff irritating these days. And then I wonder Is it me or the world actually has become more irritating?

Take for example this Airtel ad which bombards my TV screen at a frequency of twice every minute,in which two boys play football and this person talks about talking and barriers breaking . Dudes , an advice: Sell your goddamn SIM cards and stop worrying about world peace.It was nice when you started this noble series of ads some years ago but enough is enough. Moreover,this ad is not even shot properly; I can bet millions that the ball which the boy kicked wouldn't cross the fence. So there's the irony : YOU can't even shoot the bloody ad properly and YOU talk of world peace?Take a cue from Hutch.When they thought that the goddamn dog and the goddamn kid had started getting on to the nerves of people they sold themselves to Vodafone and good that the Vodafone asked the goddamn dog and the goddamn kid to fuck off.

Or the way all commentators,news readers, and common people refer to Indian cricket team as Team India! What's more scary is that this "Team" trend is catching up!!Yesterday only, I saw a home delivery guy of this Chinese Restaurant chain - Yo China -wearing a T-shirt which proudly displayed " Team Yo China!".
What now,they'll display a board of "Team Dead" outside the graveyard? Get a life people.

Nowadays they can't even use "la" properly in the songs.
Remember Don't You Forget About Me ( Simple Minds) - Oh my favorite 80s pop song!
It was la, that made the song legendary: " laaaaaa laalalalaa laalalalaa laalaalalaaaa lalaaaaa"
or even Marilyn Manson's Rock is dead ( what a n enlightening use of la it was!!)
Where has the beauty of "la" gone?

I just absolutely love my speakers

2008-02-15T23:49:00.001+05:30

It has nothing to do with the fact that I am drunk.

It has nothing to do with the fact that I am listening to Parting of the Sensory by Modest Mouse which has successfully made an entry into my All Time Favorite Songs List.

Some people with zero aesthetic sense might describe them as 2 beautiful Dildos and a beautiful Shitpot ( I won't lie,even I thought the same when I first saw them).

But the fact remains that they are beautiful and they play freaking amazing sound.

And also that I love Music.

Living on the edge

2008-02-03T00:15:00.001+05:30

Recently when I visited a friend in hospital ( he has broken some bones) , I realized that I never feel out of place or awkward in a hospital. Not that I like visiting hospitals , but its like a visit to any other not so desirable place, say the mess of my erstwhile hostel in Kharagpur. And there's a reason for that .I have been quite literally living my life on the edge ( intentionally or unintentionally).How much my friends might fail to believe, its a truth that I used to lead quite an active lifestyle in my childhood. Come to think of it I have received injuries in every possible place and at every possible place. I have fallen down from stairs - twice and resultantly got my head stitched - twice (once i almost lost my eye). Not to mention those usual falls from the cycles and two-wheelers. Oh and then there have been really freak incidents which might inspire David Lynch.Like this one, on Diwali, when I was standing as far as one can stand after lighting a bomb. And well absolutely no problem with fire or sound, but something flew and hit my forehead and I came to know about it only when i felt the streak of blood ( believe me it was that painless).And yes you guessed it, I received two stitches on my forehead.I have broken bones too.Once while playing cricket, when inspired by Jonty Rhodes, I tried to grab a ball traveling at the speed just below that of sound , and my poor index finger had to bear the brunt of this extreme enthusiasm.
And then obviously this relatively recent one when I broke both Tibia and Fibula of my right leg (Ask me anything about human skeletal system. I am the Master. Ok ,of at least the lower right hand side part). This happened after I fell(flew) down from a bicycle in god knows what spidermanly manner. Believe me there is not a sight more disgusting and scary than watching your right leg barely hanging at an angle of 70 degrees( from the usual position) with a bone almost protruding out. And though it is damn painful, pain is the last thing you are worrying about then.
Now here you have to understand , I am no Samuel L. Jackson from Unbreakable but I am no Bruce Willis either.
All the above incidents have more or less been my own doing.But then, tell me how do you control diseases and fevers and what not.As a kid, I have seen 105 degree fevers and I have seen fevers with absolutely undecipherable sources. I have had syringes inserted on my butt and on my arm countless number of times. Oh imagine a child, say 8-9 years old sitting in a clinic. Nurses are trying to be their motherly/sisterly best talking about Sachin Tendulkar and Madhuri Dixit , trying to divert his attention from the fast approaching syringe. And well the child is thinking, don't act stupid and insert the goddamn thing fast, I have to go home and watch my favourite TV show.That child was me.
Oh and talking about freaky things again. On this one, even Stephen King would be proud. Both of my wisdom teeth were absolutely horizontal (talk about my crooked wisdom). And well the dentist had to hammer them one by one( literally, yes with a hammer) for 1 hour each to get them out ( and well the experience even with anaesthesia, was dreadful) and the pain which lasted for 3-4 days after that is the most I have ever experienced for such a long stretch.
Surprisingly I have never been a victim of more common things like Jaundice or Cavities.

But then, does all the above mentioned stuff justify the title of the post? Probably not. But then I have to add the stuff which I did intentionally. Like all my exciting drunken adventures. I'll write about them someday when I am drunk. Or even non-drunken ones. Like this one when I was pissing inside a tunnel ( midway of the tunnel).And then suddenly a train appeared from nowhere , like a rabbit out of the hat, like a gush of wind , like a zombie in 28 days later, like a moorhiwaala in a Calcutta local train, like this unfortunate attempt at humour in an otherwise drab post. Anyway, I realized then that the tunnel wasn't exactly wide and there was absolutely no space to provide the train a safe passage ( I tell you these gults are crazy, this tunnel was in Vizag). For an athletic person it wasn't much of a problem , he could easily beat the train and come out of the tunnel safely. For limping me ( this incident was only some months after my fracture) , it was a matter of life and death.I somehow managed.Thank God.

And then, I still like Marilyn Manson (I used to worship him,well his music, few years back) and ask anybody, anyone who likes Marilyn Manson is indeed living on the edge. Finally look at my job which evokes such kind of response from other people :" ... its a wonderful thing you are doing for sports.So what's your full time job?"
Do I need to say anything else?

*************************************************************************************

Joke of the Month(and its not even a joke) : Harbhajan says that I said "teri maa ki.." to Symonds which might have sounded like"Monkey" to him. Oh come on, I don't understand how could have the NDTV newsreader said this with a straight face!

Megadeth is coming to Bangalore. I might not enjoy it as much as I would have few years back but still Dave Mustaine remains one of the best guitarist ever, Holy Wars remains one of the best metal songs ever,Hangar 18 remains one of the best guitar songs ever, Tornado of Souls remains one of the catchiest metal songs ever,Rust in Peace remains one of the best albums ever.

*************************************************************************************

Radical Use of Racial Abuse

2008-01-08T21:30:00.001+05:30

So again , once again Cricket has become interesting.I somehow feel ICC has this hidden agenda to introduce controversies from time to time so as to make the game more interesting. Hats off to you Mr. Speed.No seriously,hats off to you.Oh, all you hypocrites, won't you wake up 6 in the morning and watch the next India-Australia test ( I know I know you didn't wake up that early for the last test match). No? Then why is that the 10 sec slot on Star Cricket will sell for 75000 instead of 50000.And you say why sledging, why racial abuse(we'll come back to this later), why excessive appealing, why shameless appealing, and well why bad umpiring(we'll come back to this later too).

Now lets talk about the issue at hand.
First of all . Let's celebrate. Now we Indians can feel proud that even we can "racially" abuse Australians!(finally!) Yeah, yeah now all of you will throw ICC encyclopedia at me saying that racial abuse is not limited to colour of the skin but lot of other ethnic factors. But then we Indians weren't aware of that fact( maybe due to our poor ignorant upbringing).Thank you for enlightening us. Now we won't miss any opportunity to "racially" abuse you.
And well I wonder how many cases are pending against fellow school students of Symonds ( you went to a school Andrew didn't you? ) for "racially" abusing him. Oh didn't they call you Monkey Symondy all throughout your school life? Don't lie.Or were you too big for them and they were too scared to tease you ( no wonder Bhajji called you Big Monkey).God is fair after all.If he didn't let you evolve properly, he at least made you bigger. If that's the case congratulations Mr. Symonds for being "The Bully" instead of being "The Tormented". And it seems you have successfully taken your bullying nature to the cricket field. And when a little Sardar tried to raise his voice , he paid the price ( good for him that you couldn't beat him up like you did to your fellow students). You managed to bully even the ICC panel who believed every word of yours like a gospel.
So this is the new knowledge we have gained from Australian players and media. You can call them any name you want ,ranging from a bastard to more colourful ones like mfucker ( oh I heard all of them on TV) but don't dare call Hayden a Wild Boar, Mitchell Johnson a lizard, Ponting a rattle snake or Michael Clarke a parakeet.For that matter don't utter name of any animal on pitch coz somebody might feel racially abused.You never know ,one moment you are praising the Australian team that they fought like tigers and the very next moment you are being banned for 5 test matches. And we as ignorant kids thought that "Kutta" was the safest Gaali to use ;we didn't know that we were racially abusing the other guy!!
And you blind fucking ape ( yes you Bucknor ) now that you have made one of the worst decisions ever made by a professional umpire/ an amateur umpire / any living soul to have done umpiring ( yes I am referring to that horrible Dravid decision), you can feel proud and leave Indian Cricket Team alone.

Enough Ire.

2007

2008-01-04T13:28:00.000+05:30

My friend Bob told me once ...... " The answer, my friend,is blowin' in the wind"
I haven't found the wind yet, but yeah, his music was good.

Yet another year of being clueless, yet being enlightened by Music,Movies, Football, Alcohol and Travel.

So, 2007 was pretty good. 2008 will probably be better.

PS: Ain't the new template smooth!? God bless you stranger.

A longish football update

2007-12-21T23:04:00.001+05:30

First things first.December 23 it is ; when Barca will kick Real's ass with or without Messi. Oh how relieved all Real Madrid supporters would be(remember last year's Messi hat trick?)But alas, King Eto'o is back so all the Real supporters have got another excuse to piss in their pants.
Henry was always redundant in this Barca lineup and now that he is playing not so fabulously there is not much thinking required.And I hate to say this but Gudjohnsen is playing much better and is more useful than Henry.Well, looking at the current developments it seems Ronaldinho will also start on bench.This is nothing short of unbelievable that an 18 year old Mexican is given preference over (The Great)Ronaldinho and a 17 year old Spaniard over (The Great)Henry;but thats Barcelona for you.By the way, Real Madrid is no pushover.It has a whole lot of scary new players and rejuvenated older players.As always there is tremendous amount of hype surrounding "El Clasico" , but this is one match that never fails to deliver.

This is the draw for the Champions League first knockout stage.Well there are some really close fixtures but I am generally pretty good at predictions :) All the teams that will win are on the left hand side.

Barcelona - Celtic
Barcelona doesn't have a very good record against Celtic....but come on, Celtic??..huh??

Real Madrid- Roma
This is really tough, but I think after 3-4 years of poor performances in UCL Real Madrid will live up to its name.

Porto - Schalke
Porto is in a good form.

Chelsea - Olympiacos
Chelsea is still good enough( that is if Drogba stays)

Inter Milan - Liverpool
I will go with Inter.They are in red hot form. They have some great young players and when Ibrahimovic is in mood( he is sort of moody) , he is probably the best striker in the world.Liverpool have been outdoing themselves for last few years in UCL but how long?

Man Utd - Lyon
Lyon will again under perform.And well ManU is playing good. One thing I fail to understand is how come Lyon provides at least 3-4 world class players to other big clubs every goddamn year and still don't perform well enough in UCL.They'll always remain underdogs.

Sevilla- Fenerbahce
Sevilla is just too good.Even with their dodgy league form they are just too classy.No surprise they finished ahead of hot shot Arsenal in the group stages.

Arsenal - AC Milan
This is the most difficult call.Even Milan might be too tired of performing so well at the European stage every year.And Arsenal and Wenger might be just too keen to win this.Even the world footballer of the year might not be able to save Milan.

Euro 2008 draw was also held some days back.Whats with France and Italy they can't seem to live without each other.Add Netherlands and Romania with them and you get the group of death. I think Netherlands will be sacrificed(I always find them overrated).
Spain's group is also no easy one. Sweden ,Greece and Russia with Spain. I feel the defending Champion and the England killer will be knocked out and Spain-Sweden will go through.Did I tell you that this is the last time I am giving Spain a chance to live up to their potential. If they fail to reach even the semis I am through with them :)

Well settled in Navi Mumbai....well almost

2007-12-01T00:05:00.000+05:30

Yippeee! I got internet connection at home today ! Well its an altogether different matter that I don't have any source of drinking water , any source of food or any clean clothes to wear at home yet ( oh I have a washing machine ....but I guess, writing a post on your blog is much more interesting and much less grueling than washing your clothes in a semi-automatic BPL washing machine) .
Oh, my house is decent.It could have been better if my sweet landlord aunty would have told me few things earlier or if I had taken pains to inquire a bit more.For example she told me later,that the geyser is connected to the direct water supply and I can get hot water only from 6-8 in the morning or 6-8 in the evening. And then she says , its not a big deal, you'll anyway get up for office before 8 and also you have the gas connection and also you don't require hot water in Bombay. And then I say aunty you are so good at making assumptions.Then there is this another example , when I ask her to re-paint one of the rooms because the paint has worn off; and she told me yes yes no problems, only that paint will again wear off in the rains when the water seeps in at will through the walls of the room.Oh sometimes even small pool builds up in the room , where you can float your paper boats.And then she says , its not a big deal , it won't rain as much as it rained last year and also you must love paper boats and anyway you won't be staying here till the rainy season, will you?And then I say, aunty you are so good at making assumptions. And then she says , I am generally very considerate. And then I wonder what the fuck should I say to her!
The main concern now is Football ( I mean TV ) and well yes also drinking water, food and clean clothes.

I'll miss Bangalore

2007-11-21T03:04:00.001+05:30

I'll miss

Purple Haze 1, Tavern,LOR,Pecos,Styx,Maya,Opus,Le Rock,I Bar,Amnesia, Athena,Guzzlers, Beach, Madira,Stones,Mojos,Unwind Island,Purple Haze 2,13th floor and well others.

But I don't want to sound like a drunkard

I'll also miss

Coffee Day 1,Coffee Day 2,Coffee Day3,Coffee Day 4, Barista1, Barista 2 , Barista 3,Java City, Brew-ha-ha,Sweet Chariot Cafe,Infinitea and well others.

But I don't want to sound like a caffeine addict.

I'll also miss

Angeethi,Queens,Casa Piccola,Casa Del Sol,Chung Wah,Coconut Grove,RR,Tandoor, Paramount, Empire,Rendezvous,Mast Kalandar,Koshy's,Only Place,Coast to Coast,Millers 46,Ice and Spice, Corner House,Barbeque Nation,Herbs and Spices,India Gate,TGIF and well others.

But I don't want to sound like a food junkie.
But I can't help it.What else do you do?You either drink or you eat in Bangalore ( or for that matter any city)

Anyway,
I'll also miss

Tennis Courts, the Football ground,the Original DVD rental shop, the Pirated DVD rental shop, Gym ,Swimming Pool,Rangashankara, Chowdiah Memorial Hall,Alliance Francaise and
THE PALACE GROUNDS(I'll be back for the next Pearl Jam/RHCP/Dream Theater/ Megadeth /Metallica show).

And I'll also miss

the car drives, the weather,the people......

But I don't want to sound like a poet.
I'll leave that to Robert Plant.

............
California sunlight, sweet Calcutta rain
Honolulu starbright - the song remains the same.

Sing out Hare Hare, dance the Hoochie Koo.
City lights are oh so bright, as we go sliding... sliding... sliding through.

(Led Zeppelin- The song remains the same)

PS1: No no, I am not going on a world tour.I am just shifting to Bombay.
PS2:No no, not the Playstation 2.
PS3:I am not sure whether the song was very apt for this post...but what the hell, Zeppelin was on , on my Winamp.
PS4: the PS2 joke was bad. I know.

Picture these

2007-11-15T14:07:00.000+05:30

When you spend enormous amount of time on internet you stumble upon these. And, I am not complaining.

Lets choose some better topic if we are so keen on debating

2007-11-15T13:38:00.000+05:30

For a minute forget all your biases :

Argentina Vs Brazil
Maradona Vs Pele
FC Barcelona Vs Real Madrid
Catalans Vs Castillans
White Vs Black
Maroon Vs White
Blue Vs Yellow
Stripes Vs Plain
19 Vs 10
Right Vs Left
Nike Vs Adidas
Just past adolescence Vs Just attained adulthood

And watch objectively.
Robinho is one of the best, but Messi is the best.
But thanks to both of them, Saturday and Sunday late nights on ESPN/Star Sports are supremely entertaining.

Anticipation.

2007-10-26T17:58:00.000+05:30

I don't remember, when was the last time I waited so eagerly for any movie.

That it is written-directed by Coen brothers is obviously a big factor.Oh I have loved almost all of their movies - The Big Lebowski,Miller's Crossing,Raising Arizona,Barton Fink,O Brother where art thou ? etc - although their most acclaimed Fargo is the one which I find grossly overrated.
That it will be visually stunning is not even a question.( Look at the list of movies I have written above for God's Sake).And it is based on supposedly great Cormac McCarthy's novel.

But more importantly, the trailer. THE TRAILER. It won't be an exaggeration if I say that it is one of the best trailer I have ever seen.Ok I don't know why. Nowdays almost all movies have brilliant trailers, where they show the best scenes/cuts from the movie and finally when you watch the movie, you come to know that those were the only scenes watchable.
But this one is different. It is dark.It is wicked. And it forewarns you what to expect of the movie.And boy, does Javier Bardem look chilling as the bad guy.I mean really chilling. Javier Bardem has this"Hey, look I am so psycho" look or lack of look on his face.And well they reaffirm my feelings about him in the trailer, when they are discussing him: "Just how dangerous is he?" "Compared to what.......bubonic plague?"

Watch the trailer here: TRAILER
Don't blame me, if you choke upon the trailer.I almost did.

Another movie which I am looking forward to see ( obviously not as much as the one above) is Into the Wild.
It has an intriguing storyline. And the wonderfully mellow soundtrack , where all the songs are done solely by Eddie Vedder(obviously I already have the soundtrack ).

Watch the song Hard Sun from the movie here : Hard Sun

PS: Watched Shoot em Up today on big screen.Imagine cheesy.Imagine gross. And I mean , really, really test your imagination.And then you'll be hugely surprised when you watch the movie.Whether positively or negatively depends purely on your taste.If you can watch a single person killing atleast 200-250 people ( and yes its not a bomb blast,where BOOM, and 100 people are dead.He kills them one by one) and you can enjoy dialogues like this :

"Well I was just remembering a limmerick. There once was a woman who was quite begat. She had three babies named Nat, Pat, and Tat. She said it was fun in the breeding, but found it was hell in the feeding when she saw there was no tit for Tat. You have caused me no end of trouble, but now I shall return the favor. Tit for Tat, right?"

or
this
"You want to know the difference between this luxury car and a porcupine?
With the car, the prick's on the inside. "

then you are in for a treat! Else please don't watch.

Rock n Roll is still rebellious

2007-10-18T17:15:00.000+05:30

You can't imagine how sad I feel when I download music from internet.And when that music belongs to the Gods like Radiohead the guilt is just too much for me to handle.And so I am forced to buy their CDs from time to time even if I already have their high quality mp3s on my comp ( just to wash away some of my sins). Oh yeah, 192-320 kbps is good enough quality for me , even though I can make out a distinct difference between a mp3 and a CD sound.

Mind you , I don't use the term "God" very liberally.Apart from Radiohead , I have used it only for Pearl Jam and Pink Floyd.And in other fields,say sports, I have used it for Zidane and Ronaldinho and now I use it for Messi.I have used it for Federer too. While Federer's God-dom looks challenged by a 20 yr old dude from Serbia who can imitate Sharapova better than Sharapova( don't tell me you haven't seen his videos); Messi it seems, won't have any competition for some years.Obviously this conclusion is contingent upon some assumptions like :
1) Other lesser football players won't take out their frustration of their wives' infidelity on poor boy's shin.

2)Messi won't become fat due to drinking and over eating or would not be involved in other controversial stuff like rape charges ( like other famous dudes from Argentina). This ain't a very improbable assumption, considering that Messi is a mama's boy who sleeps at 9'o clock every night.But then it doesn't take much time for a mama's boy to grow up.

And my habit of deviating from the topic............

Coming back to Music , coming back to musical Gods. While Pink Floyd has stopped producing any new music and Pearl Jam's last two albums were mediocre to say the least , Radiohead just won't let go of its genius.And I thought after Hail to the Thief , enough is enough ( just how long can a band keep on producing amazing stuff. Even if all the other tracks were rotten, I would still rate Hail to the Thief 5/5 just for one "Where I end and you begin" . And surprise, surprise other tracks were also classics). But well its Radiohead, and their latest album "In Rainbows", might not be as brilliant as Kid A, Bends, Ok Computer or even Hail to the Thief , its still a Radiohead album. Any other band would die happily the day it produces an album like this.
But this post was not meant to be a review of In rainbows.
Whenever Radiohead is about to release any album, there is an unbelievabale amount of buzz in whole world.And well, when Radiohead decides to release an album which you can download( even for free) from their own website you can imagine how much crazy millions of people will go.
Their contract with EMI expired few years ago and boy did they pull off some stunt!Its as simple as it gets , you go to their site www.radiohead.com , where they say its upto you how much money you want to pay to download their album , and yes you can enter zero also. If you are a bit suspicious you can click at the "?" mark and then they'll say: "No Really. Its upto You."And obviously since its readily available on their site, its readily available on numerous other sites from which you can download ( if you don't even want to enter your credit card number).

No prize for guessing, who is pissing in their pants- the record labels.But rock bands have always had this burden to rebel against the authority, haven't they? Now you tell me who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize - Al Gore ( no disrespect to An Inconvenient Truth) or Radiohead for spreading peace and unity through their freely distributed music?
Not that Radiohead is very philanthropic or anything.They released their album on 10th October and more than 1.2 million people downloaded the album from their official website on the same day ( obviously they had pre-ordered the album).If this number is not mind-boggling enough, the average amount that their fans paid for their album was 4 pounds or $ 8.1 !! So that makes it an earnings of more than 9 million dollars on the first day itself! (and this time there is no fucking middleman.)
What the Fuck?
And this is not all, Radiohead will definitely sell a lot of their conventional CDs when they come out early next year.As Jonny Greenwood puts it very candidly - ".......people will listen to our new album and if they like they'll definitely buy the CDs where they'll get the better sound quality"
Maybe thats why they have kept the bitrate of mp3s to 160kbps.. (which infact has infuriated many of their fans....bloody people. what more do they want for free? Now even 160kbps is not good enough for you? what about iTunes?what about old Kazaa and Napster days where you could get only 128 kbps?).
So Radiohead might actually end up earning much more than what would they have done if they had released it conventionally, plus they have made millions of new fans. They have become the Robin Hood of music industry.Radiohead is not the first band to do something like this, but they definitely did it in style and obviously their already huge fanbase helped .
Many other bands will follow suit, but I am not sure how much money will a less famous band make out of this marketing scheme.
Whatever may happen in the future , most important thing is that I won't ever have to be shamefaced when I download music from the net . :)

Thailand

2007-10-04T16:53:00.000+05:30

Here's the account of my first overseas trip! Well sadly though,downside to such an amazing trip is the feeling of having wasted 25 years of my life.I ought to travel much more!

Nok Air is a low cost no frills airline from Thailand, and be warned, its much worse than the worst airline by which you have ever traveled in India.But I guess it doesn't matter when you just have to go there and sleep for 4 hours until you reach your destination.Its a different matter that we all were shit scared when we read the news of some low cost airplane crashing in Phuket and killing all passengers(most of which were tourists) just days before our travel.And Nok Air's funny looking orange,pink,red,green (supposedly cheerful )planes didn't help mitigate the fear.

Tip:All those planning to go to Thailand please go as soon as possible. Looking at the way number of Desi tourists are increasing, Thailand will stop treating you like foreigners soon.And believe me, you don't have much time left.If you want more proof,Nok Air operates on only one international route : Bangkok to Bangalore!

Anyway we reached Bangkok safely.First thing that you see is the grand, beautiful airport!The number of people might be same or even more than a Delhi or Bbay airport, but you don't feel it coz of the sheer size.We had planned to go directly to Pattaya from the airport ( almost a 2 hrs drive). We almost changed our itinerary when we came to know that last two days of Thai Open were in progress with likes of Nadal, Djokovic, Roddick and Ana Ivanovic taking part.Anyway we stuck to our plan because we were not sure of the availability of the tickets and more importantly because nobody could fucking understand English.

Second thing you notice about Thailand is that only females work there! Every showroom, fast food joint,restaurant, hotel, barbershop, medical shop , departmental store has only women employees!What the fuck!? Is it that male/female ratio is extremely skewed .If thats the case I wonder what could be the reason.Was Thailand extremely active in World War 2 , or they had some Pol Potic despot who killed only men or they practise Male infanticide.
Internet confirms that sex ratio is indeed 97/100 and it states the reason as higher life expectancy of females!But come on, even with 0.97 male for every female you gotto see some men working!I think all the men there either drive taxis , play adventure sports or sleep at home( what a life!).

Before I go further with the trip here are some widely held myths about Thailand :
Myth 1: Thailand is dirt cheap and your travelling cost is only the air ticket.
Truth: Thailand is as expensive( if not more) as India.Ok very high end hotels are cheaper in Thailand but you are anyway not going to stay in those.

Myth 2: You get all sorts of cockroaches, snakes, dogs,earthworms,butterflies and other exotic things to eat in every corner of Thailand.
Truth:We didn't see any snakes or dogs being served in any restaurant. Cockroaches were sold only on roadside shops, but they looked too .. ahem... unhygienic.But I did eat all possible seafood ...oysters,squids, shrimps and fishes!

Bangkok to Pattaya was a smooth 120-130 kmph Camry ride on awesome highway. Thailand has a potential to shock you in every conceivable way.Seriously.Believe me you'll get the feeling of having seen it all after a trip to Thailand.
You must have done this "Height thing" a lot when you were kid.
Much like:
Height of Coincidence: A husband and a wife were married on the same day!
or Height of Minuteness: A pimple on the dimple on the right cheek of an amoeba!
or Height of Heights: Shitting on Mt Everest to make it an inch higher!

Here are two more for you:
Height of Hypocrisy: Public display of affection and nudity is prohibited in Thailand.
Height of Irony: Bands like RHCP, Megadeth, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys,Metallica, Strokes, Placebo tour Thailand very regularly and nobody understands English there!! But then ,as they say Music has no language.

We had an amazing time visting beaches ,speed boating to Ko-Lan island ( where i ate the best/first fish of my life) and underwater diving- Walking on the ocean floor and feeling(ahem) various sea animals was a good experience.The bodyguards had developed a very efficient underwater sign language where they clearly instructed us as to poking which body part of a particular animal will result in being bitten and poking which other body part of the same animal will be a pleasurable experience for you and for it.
Then there was other stuff like Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum! And well obviously you must have heard a lot about the "night life" of Pattaya, but I'll keep the sleazy details out of the this blog(you can read it all over internet, if you are that curious).
The best thing about Pattaya was its Hard Rock Cafe.Ok, as far as ambience and acoustics go , they were pretty impressive, but then in Bangalore I have seen better.But its in-house band (from Phillipines) was simply awesome!They were basically 5 dudes and 1 dudette. And all ..yes all of them could sing..and sing well. AND PLAY WELL.So what happens when you have six different kinds of high quality singers , you get to listen to breathtaking variety of songs. They played everything from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry to RHCP and Nirvana.The girl even sang Shakira and well it was enjoyable especially with she and many other American females around us showing latino moves.Believe me I have never heard a band do a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody in its enirety and I have never EVER heard a better guitar solo live ( Freebird!!).
The disadvantage of such a good band playing infront of you is that you stay in the cafe from 9.30 P.M. to 2.30A.M. ( yes ! they played till 2.30!! ) and end up spending a bomb( No matter how sexy the waitresses were, they were still pain in the asses ...sir woood u like to eat something ..sir you woant anatha beeeaa...sir we have offa on Heineken... basically you have to order). However,they didn't disturb us much when we went there again next night(yes we went again!!) .
I donno why they opened Hard Rock Cafe in Bbay coz Bangalore is the perfect destination. But then Hard Rock Cafe Pattaya will still be different.Ok picture this:

Hard Rock Cafe Pattaya: Chilled out crowd, chilled out environment,chilled out band,chilled out waitresses and waiters, people dancing and enjoying themselves,everything chilled out..ok except that some transvestite might pester you to dance with her/him, music playing till 3-4 ..whole night.

Hard Rock Cafe Bangalore( which I believe will open by the end of this year): 1000 rupess cover charges,Saturday/Sunday Couple entry, no space to sit if you enter anytime after 7.30 P.M., no space to stand if you enter anytime after 9 P.M. , waiters with ridiculous attitude, band( not even half as talented) with ridiculous attitude,last order at 10.30 P.M., music off at 11 P.M., police entering and pushing people out at 11.20 P.M.

Oh shit, I forgot that this post is not about Hard Rock Cafe, nor its about Bangalore( India) bashing.
Bangkok is like Delhi with its amazing roads and infrastrucure(actually much better than delhi), its like Bombay with its traffic jams(actually even worse than Bbay), and its like Bangalore with its tuk-tuks or autos ( actually much much lesser in number than Bangalore).Oh yes there is skytrain which is much like Delhi's metro, only its over the ground.In Bangkok we behaved like regular tourists, visiting palaces and monasteries.We even took a boat ride in a river that went through the city( a poor man's version of Venice).

Fact 1: Toyota holds more than 90% of the Thai 4-wheeler market. This conculsion is based purely on observation and no secondary research was done.

The malls in Bangkok are MASSIVE...take Forum, which is the biggest mall in Bangalore , multiply it by 10 and you get Siam Paragon/Siam Centre.And they are really posh too.To give you an example a whole floor of Siam Paragon contained only cars..and what cars! We had our photo sessions with all the beauties -Porsche,Ferrari,Lamborghini, Masseratti,Jaguar,BMW, Bentley and what not!!
I wonder where Thai people get all that money. I see them involved in only two professions: Tourism or Idolizing their king.Many websites warned us not to utter a word about their king or else we might get severely beaten.But then Indians are Indians (sorry for generalising) ...we got our kicks by abusing the king in Hindi infront of Thai people(akin Raja C*****). Actually abusing the king in English also wouldn't have caused any problems... but there some amount of risk is involved ( Oh come on you know the general rule.. no matter how fucked up anybody's language vocabulary may be there is a high probability that he knows all the swear words. Take me for example... I can swear in Telugu,Tamil,Bengali,Spanish,French,German and probably Thai)

One of the best things to do in Siam Paragon is Karaoke..and its different than anything you have seen in India. You get a whole room fitted with amazing speakers, LCD T.V.,Karaoke software, amplifiers, microphones, a cool collection of songs and obviously beer. Then you don't have to worry about people booing you or laughing at you. You know that you are in the company of equally pathetic singers( i mean you friends) and you can let go.Well then there was nothing stopping us from singing Hey Jude or We didn't start the fire or Bohemian Rhapsody or even My Humps (:D).
We did some cheap T-shirt shopping after vehement bargaining(or so we think) and got good deals(or so we think).
Finally I can't stop myself from describing the incident which happened on my return flight( same old Nok air where all announcements were made in Thai and some announcements were made in English which was as good as Thai).Anyway my fellow Indian passenger was quite hungry and he called upon an air hostess :

Do you serve meals?
Yes saah we have beeaah ..we have singha beeaaa..we have heineken beeaah
@#$@, I want meal.
Yes saah we have.. we have singha beeaah.. we have heineken...
( I took pity on my fellow passenger . Since till now i was quite conversant with Thai English)
He wants to eat... eeeaat something.
ohh..yes saah... we have cakes, biscuits...
Do you have any meal ?
yes saah we have meaah.. wait.. 5 minutes i'll get you..
(after 5 minutes)
Sorry saah we have run outta meaah
ohh.. what do you have that i can eat
saah... we have cakes, biscuits and saah.. we have very good veg-non veg meaahss...
@#$@@#, what in non-veg meals?
yes sir we have non-veg meaah
what in non veg..? ok get me whatever you have.
ok saah. which beeaah you want?
is beer included in the meal charges.
sir we have singha beeah, heineken beeah...
is it included in the meal charges..?
Yes saah..
ok give me one Heineken
(here again I have to save my fellow passenger's ass. As I was more than aware of Thai English and Nok airways.I tell him it can't be included in meal charges)
Ok then give me only one meal.
ok saah..thank you.

(Now you know what you are up against when you travel to thailand.)

So this was our trip( ok atleast 50% of it ).
For pictures, you have to visit my orkut page :)

Viva America

2007-09-07T00:12:00.000+05:30

Anyone who might have seen "Beauty and the Geek" on Star World would definitely appreciate the ingenuity of the concept.Yeah really. When all the reality shows play on peoples' sentimental sides, this one makes you laugh your ass off!They basically team up a sexy babe with an ultimate geek from one of the MITs of USA.They might not be as geeky as they look, with all the weird hairdos and perennial Am I on planet Earth type of demeanour.I suspect they receive specific acting lessons and obviously some make-up before the show.I also suspect that "the beauties" receive an IQ test before the show with an upper cut-off limit of 50.
Well the point of the show is that all the geeks are made to do the sexy things and all the beauties are made to do the geeky things.
The question and answer round is interesting.The questions asked to the geeks aren't that tough till the point they start asking them the name of britney's ex husband and all that kind of stuff. Question asked to beauties are too damn easy. Anyway its somehwhat understandable when one of the girl is asked to recognize John Kerry from a picture and she says Al Gore after a lot of deliberation.That is OK; she was atleast close. Not everyone is interested in Dirty Politics.
But things get really amusing when the girls are asked to speak on certain topics.

Topic for Beauty # 1 :What are your views on Global Warming?
Beauty #1: huh..huh... smile..huh..giggle....shit..thank you.
And mind you its not that she had stage fright or anything( she would have undoubtedly performed a pole dance without blinking an eyelid had there been a pole present there).

This one is a classic:

Topic for Beauty # 2: What are your views on Pollution?
Beauty #2:All the things I use are recycled.( Oh my! what a beginning!!). My T-shirt is recycled, My belt is recycled , even my shoes are made from recycled material..they are made of recycled Cow Skin! giggle ..giggle..thank you.
Now tell me, won't this compare with the best episodes of Seinfeld!!And I swear, she wasn't a model and she wasn't a blonde.

There is a You-Tube video circulating heavily on internet. Its a video of Miss Teen USA pageant final round when Miss North Carolina(if I remember correctly)is asked this question : " According to a survey about a third of Americans canno't locate USA on a world map. What do you think of this?"
And what she replied will go down as a legend.She said something like this(shit I don't remember exactly): "...............gibberish........................Iraq and South Africa are very poor and they lack education. USA is helping them by providing them health and education .......... and teaching them to read maps......gibberish...."
Seriously,I have heard stories but its difficult to believe that Americans are really that dumb.
This reminds me of an anecdote that was published in some magazine many years ago. This man from Germany was travelling in a local bus in L.A. when the person sitting next to him started a conversation ,and asked him what does he do for living.German replied "I am into semiconductors" . The person replied : " Really, then you must be pretty used to the bus rides!"

It was fun to read the comments beneath the Miss Teen USA video on you tube( no i am not posting the link ,go search..it must be one of the most viewed of the month or somehting).
Some guy from IRAQ posted : " We are ruled by this country?"
And then some patriotic American came into defense :" You should not make generalisations about the IQ of all Americans after watching this video. If we were so dumb how would we make so many inventions and discoveries?" ( hehe..He himself was surprised wasn't he.)

But then exceptions are always there.. ( Eddie Vedder, Stanley Kubrick and Benjamin Franklin being three of them)

2007-08-21T01:06:00.000+05:30

I have been reading quite a lot these days ( ofcourse by my standards ) . 4 books in 3 months is quite a lot for me. I like to take a break when I have read a book ,to forget it or to absorb it or to garner courage to pick another one.This is unlike movies; if i don't see a movie or atleast half a movie anyday I am all panicky.Naturally ,when i am reading , my frequency of watching movies decreases (although it decreases only by an iota) and then those unpleasant withdrawl symptoms( just like the ones experienced by cocaine addicts). This explains why I don't read much.
Anyway the 4 books which I have read in last 3 months:
Fountainhead(Ayn Rand)...I have already written a post on it.

Inside Out:A personal history of Pink Floyd (Nick Mason) ..only for hard core Floyd fans.

Fever Pitch(Nick Hornby): ... 4.5/5 for hard core Arsenal fans(and here I am not talking about Henry era Arsenal fans ..I am talking about hard core fans ..who know history) ... 3.25/5 for football fans(I fall under this category)....others better skip it...

Haunted( Chuck Palahniuk)...well well .. the post was actually meant to be only about this... rest is all fillers.I had read only 1 book of Palahniuk before this and that was Fight Club (obviously after watching the movie). So i pretty much loved him and a horror book written by him seemed a very attractive proposition.And well Parental Advisory on the front cover and all the cautionary and colourful remarks by Guardian and Daily Telegraph and New York Times on the back cover sounded damn funny . Seriously, I have read all those eye bleeding , horrifying , stomach -churning type of remarks for all Stephen King novels and shockingly even for Charlie and the Chocolate factory.
I generally have great tolerance for gory, gross stuff.Its not that I like it but I won't run away when Saw 3 or Hostel is playing in front of me.And if I can watch, I can definitely read.And if I say something is outrageously disgusting , you better take notice.
Haunted has this Darna Mana Hai kind of setting with 23 short stories and 1 main plot running in parallel.The problem with Haunted is that Chuck Palahniuk starts with the story that is the MOST shocking one in the whole book. Bad idea I must say , because atleast 80% of the people who will start reading the book will feel too sick to continue.So if he had kept "Guts" ( yes thats the name of the 1st story... now you can imagine... NO YOU CAN'T IMAGINE)somehwere in the middle of the book, he would have sold atleast twice the number of books he has sold now. Chuck Palahniuk says in his afterword that in all 73 people fainted during the various" reading sessions" of Guts and I did check the validity of this on internet ( the figure might be exaggerated but its not far off the mark).Obviously "Guts" has become the most talked about thing from the book and in general a hell lot of talked about. And no wonder its easily available on internet and even on Chuck Palahniuk's site.
Not to belittle the rest of the book, the rest of Haunted is also extremely so to say repulsive.You might not get scared but you'll definitely get appalled.But then he indeed is an amazing writer, with awesome 1-liners(remember Fight Club?) ,totally different outlook on most of the things and the black humour(did I tell you many people find this book hilarious). And surely you'll increase great deal of your general knowledge about the topics that might not even cross your mind otherwise( mainly detailed explanations of various ways in which a man can die and human anatomy).
The book will make you wonder how deviant , how deranged a person can be to write a book like this.You might say how deviant someone can be to read this book.But then if you can somehow tolerate the grossness , this book has some really amazing stories.

PS: I know I may have made you curious(maybe that was the whole point) and some of you might even search for "Guts" on internet.I'll suggest not to, don't blame me later.

Music Recommendation

2007-08-17T23:59:00.000+05:30

All absolutely brilliant songs:

I never came : Queens of the Stone Age
Parting of the Sensory : Modest Mouse
Missed the Boat: Modest Mouse
The way we get by : Spoon
My Mathematical Mind: Spoon
The Underdog: Spoon
Don't you Evah: Spoon
Cripple Crow: Devendra Banhart
Little Yellow Spider: Devendra Banhart
Caring is Creepy: The Shins

and well ultraclear,amazingly crisp sound from my speakers
definitely helps. :)

Little yellow spider laughing at the snow
Well maybe that spider knows something that I don't know
Cuz I'm goddamn cold

Little white monkey staring at the sand
Maybe that monkey figured out something I couldn't understand
Who knows

Well I came upon a dancing crab and I stopped to watch it shake, I said,
'Dance for me just one more time before ya hibernate,
and ya come out a crab cake'

And hey there little snapping turtle, snapping at a shell
Oh there's mysteries inside I know
But what they are I just can't tell for sure

And hey there little baby crow, you're looking kind of mean
I think I oughta split before ya start letting off your steam
For sure

And hey there little sexy pig, you mated with a man
And now you've got a little kid
With hooves instead of hands

And oh all of the animals, all of the animals

And hey there little mockingbird, they sing about you in songs
'Oh where ya been? Have ya broke a wing?'
I haven't heard ya in so long

And hey there little albatross, swimming in the air
'Aw, come on you know I can't fly and I
Think we really oughta play fair'

And hey there mister happy squid, you move so psychedelically
You hypnotize with your magic dance all the animals in the sea
For sure

And oh all of the animals, all the animals

And hey there Mr. Morning Sun, what kind of creature are you
I can't stare, but I know you're there
Goddamn, how I wish I knew

And hey there Mrs. Lovely Moon, you're lonely and you're blue
It's kind of strange the way you change
But then again we all do, too.

What's a sport without the sporty rivalry ?

2007-08-02T00:46:00.000+05:30

The England-India test match that just got over was a classic! Seriously!! Where else will you find slip fielders throwing jelly-beans(now we know what English men steal from their children) on the wicket and then Zaheer Khan walking upto Kevin Pietersen and saying "(For the love of Fez)Mate , I am here to play cricket!(not eat candies)". And obviously our mallu hot headed stud boy taking more than a revenge in his 10 minute legendary over.Oh how much I owe Sreesanth for making cricket interesting to me;I still haven't forgotten the awesome kathakali he did a year ago. Shame that his target audience was only Andre Nel when he could have easily filled stadiums with his natural talent.Mind you, I am not being even a least bit sarcastic here, I seriously loved the dance.Anyway coming back to his legendary over, our dude bowled a deadly beamer.Sreesanth and Pietersen both almost lost their heads . Sreesanth figuratively, Pietersen literally.Ok that might be unintentional but the next 1 yard bouncer no ball wasn't for sure. And silly people , complaining, don't make cricket a rowdy game like football ...hehe are you kidding me.. only such incidents can make cricket following reach atleast a millionth of that of football.Who will sit and watch 22 people eating with knives and forks and saying" yes sir, no sir" for 5 days!!

But no matter what England and Indian cricket teams do, this rivalry is not even half as interesting as that of India -Pakistan. That Miandad six which made him a legend (very generously helped by Chetan Sharma's lolly) or that Eden Gardens 1999 Test match( oh how i love people invading the pitch or throwing bottles). This rivalry is so great that it even made Venkatesh Prasad ( yes Venkatesh Prasad) unforgettable when he clean bowled Aamir Sohail on the next ball to the ball on which Sohail hit a four and asked him to follow the trajectory.I suspect that wicket has definitely helped Venkatesh Prasad ( yes Venkatesh Prasad!!) to become Indian bowling coach(!!).

Well how can I leave football out of this post. Many would talk about Celtic-Rangers rivalry, but people there should be some qulaity to the rivalry. So I would say Real Madrid - Barcelona . This was around the time when I had just become a fan of Barcelona and Figo had just left Barcelona ( where he had almost achieved a God-like status). Leaving Barca is one thing , and joining Real Madrid after leaving Barcelona is a completely different thing. I have never seen such a hostile reception to a team ( specifically a player) in my whole football watching career as was when Figo's Real Madrid came to Nou Camp. Imagine 1 lakh people whistling and booing whenever Figo touched the ball ( and well Figo was quite a player at that time , so he touched the ball quite often). And I witnessed that moment live( I mean live on TV) when somebody from the spectators threw a real pig head on Figo!But sometimes the crowd has a capacity to amaze you. That happened in Madrid last to last season when Ronaldinho was at his peak. When he scored his second against Real and all seventy-eighty thousand spectators rose and clapped for him( I don't know whether it was brilliance of Ronaldinho or frustration from pathetic performance by Real Madrid).

Oh there are other sports too. Remember Tyson and Holyfield and right ear and biting.Exciting stuff it was(however gross it might have looked)!
Oh and yes obviously glamorous WWF/WWE rivalries : Bret Hitman Vs Undertaker .... Triple H Vs Stone Cold Steve Austin ...... and well now Batista Vs Reincarnated Undertaker ( I am a little embarrassed to say that I still watch it).

I didn't even have to go that far to enjoy sport rivalries, I have witnessed it live in Kharagpur's inter-hall sports events. I have seen people abusing, people crying, people having nervous breakdowns, people bunking classes,people flunking courses,people getting beaten,people getting hospitalized in the name of sports and hostels.

Btw when is the next test match at Oval?? !!!!!!!

Graffiti

2007-07-10T02:41:00.000+05:30

They fools ( read NASA scientists) look for drops of water in search of life.. Look at me, I am an extraterrestrial...I eat uranium and I DONT breathe.

What!!!!!!!!?? Sensex dropped .01765432% ... and what !!!!!!!!!!!! Lewis Hamilton is again on podium ... Holy Fuck!! I am just an average Indian who hasnt invested a single fucking paisa in any stock and haven't watched a single fucking race in my whole life and still my heart beats like a woofer!...i am just an average Indian and I am everywhere (inspired by 85.6% people surrounding me and their two hottest topics of discussion)

What better way to say -
"It is for Rijkaard to do the maths of four great forwards into three positions. It is for us to sit back and enjoy a festival of football." : Jonathan Stevenson ( BBC News )

The Best Zombie Movie 1-liner ever :
I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge.
Courtesy : Planet Terror ( Grindhouse)

From Radiohead.com :

dented ego he go she go

we're in this together
sorry am i boring?

we are the pixels on the screen, we feel nothing. we feel hypnotised by your eyes.

From a Radiohead song :

It barks at no one else but me
Like it's seen a ghost
I guess it's seen the sparks a-flowing
No one else would know
Hey man slow, down, slow down
Idiot, slow down, slow down

(Oh you figured out the meaning..plz mail me or call me)

Finally something sensible , JOKE of the month !!!!!! :

A little girl walks into a pet shop and asks in the sweetest little lisp, "Excuthe me, mithter, do you keep wittle wabbits?"
And the shopkeeper gets down on his knees, so that he's on her level, and asks, "Do you want a wittle white wabby or a soft and fuwwyblack wabby or maybe one like that cute wittle brown wabby over there?"
She in turn puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and says in a quiet, sweet voice, "I don't fink my pyfon weally gives a phuck!"

Drool

2007-07-02T00:22:00.000+05:30

Now that you have started breathing again , this is not one of those futuristic gizmos that they show on Discovery. These stunning Harman Kardon ( JBL) SoundSticks 2 sit on a cheap wooden cot in my cheap,dirty room almost accusing me ,why can't I buy a new house for them.
Although I would have paid extra cash just for the looks , but they have the sound that is as much SEXY.
And yeah , I did my research.
This is how you(or atleast I) buy speakers :
1)Read approximately 1.5 million reviews on CNet , Znet and PC Mag

2)Listen to Another Brick in the Wall /With or Without You on full bass and zero bass on Altec Lansing, Bose and JBL

3)Shortlist three speakers based on the research done in the 1st two steps.

Harman Kardon SoundSticks
Logitech Z 2300
Altec Lansing MX 5021

(Mind you they are in no particular priority).Somebody might ask how can I shortlist Logitech when I haven't listened to them in step 2. Well the answer to that is you don't get Logitech 2.1 very easily in India(atleast in Bangalore). Getting a demonstration is a far fetched idea; its simple, if you order they'll get you one.So Logitech was shortlisted purely based on secondary research.

4) Go to a Computer peripherals shop at 5.30 P.M. which will close at 7 P.M. ( God knows why!).

5)Beg the manager for the demonstration of the JBL and Altec Lansing( which is supposedly against the showroom policy). ( I had heard those speakers in a different shop earlier). When the manager refuses , beg some more. When he still refuses try to stop those ungainly doubts from creeping into your head. When you can't, get out of the showroom and catch an autorickshaw to the nearest cybercafe which is 3 kms far. Again compare the reviews which you already have. After you feel somewhat satisfied catch an autorickshaw back to the shop.

6)Its 6.35 now.Tell the manager that you would like to buy JBL soundsticks. Ask him for the final price quote( which is 10.4 K including taxes).Beg him for a discount.When he refuses beg him some more.When he still refuses , take out your card and then listen the manager reminding you that paying by debit card will cost 2% more. Abuse him ( inside your head obviously).Get out of the shop and run to the nearest ATM. Come back with the cash. Its 6.55 now.

7)Pay him. The manager obliges you by giving you the shittiest headphones in the world - ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!

8)Install those beauties in your dirty room and worry about the acoustics.

9)If anybody says some other speakers are better , or there is a place in Bbay or Bangalore where you can get the same speakers for 8.5 k , ask them to go and f*** themselves.

Of Football ,Floyd and other kickass Fs

2007-06-22T01:39:00.000+05:30

Yesterday i was shocked when this thought appeared in my mind : I am addicted to Football ( how many addictions do i have to deal with for god sake!) .. seriously.. and the prospect of spending 1.5 months without watching any football action seems scary.
Reflecting on the amazing season that just got over.... Yeah Barca didn't win anything.And while watching the last game of La Liga i surprised myself when i actually didn't feel THAT bad when I saw Real winning the game and therafter going into frenzy of celebrations. In fact I felt happy for the ecstatic Raul and Company. Believe me, last year I would have cried ( well almost) if something like this had happened. Now don't get me wrong , I am still the staunchest of the supporters of Barca.It still has so much quality , that if all the players play and play with full commitment, it can embarass any other team in the world.Its just that this season Barca wasn't a team ,it was just 11 separate individuals who all believed that they were the best players in the world and were indispensable.Thats why it was so refreshing to see Real Madrid and the commitment that all players brought to the field ( wanting them to win came naturally to me)
Talking about Barca , let me tell you Ronaldinho and Messi are just untouchables when they are playing at their peak. I mean they are a different class and NO other player in any league even comes close to them.Arrogance and ego comes naturally to you when you are that good.But exactly that led to the downfall of their club. I was watching this game and I just couldn't believe when I saw a wry utterly disdainful smile on Messi's face when he passed on the ball beautifully ( after doing some breathtaking trickery)to Ronaldinho right infront of the goal and Ronaldinho missed the sitter. Its ok dude you might be as good as Ronaldinho but you still have a lot to prove!
Ronaldinho himself was pretty disappointing this season. Why does he have to go down on a slightest of the touches.Its football not figure skating boss! Have you lost all your confidence on the ball or you think you'll score from every free kick you get?Whatever might be the reason , its extremely irritating to watch. You are Ronaldinho!! not Christiano Ronaldo for heaven's sake!I think Eto'o should leave the club(however good he might be), that will help bring some peace back.And please Henry go anywhere , don't come to Barca .. they already have too much ego to handle.I want Deco to stay in any case. Although he is not as effective as he used to be and is always more than ready to exchange punches with other team's players or sometimes even with refree( seriously you should see him salivating at the prospect of getting a Red Card) but he somehow holds the team well.
Once again La Liga proved to be much more enjoyable to watch than Premiership.When was the last time it happened in premiership ( or for that matter any league) that you don't know who among the top 3 teams will win the league till the very last match.Awesome stuff! Imagine what an ideal football league would be like : All teams are equally good , and which club wins the league depends purely on the consistency factor.Ok even La Liga is zillion miles away from being ideal , but it does happen in La liga..any club can defeat any club anyday.In fact Real Madrid was trailing Mallorca 1-0 till almost 70 minutes in the last match when the much ignored humble player from Arsenal saved their asses.Premiership defenders talk about the pace and all that crap.. I can't see it anywhere.If thats the case the best teams should set an example isn't it?On the contrary,its a well proven rule in premiership..bigger the game..more boring it is.Oh ..watch the games when ManU , Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool play each other and then watch the games when Real,Barca,Sevilla and Valencia play each other..you'll come to know of the difference.
Milan thoroughly deserved to win the Champion's league. In fact the way they played their 2nd leg against Bayern in quarters , it was pretty evident that no other team had balls to stop them.And the 2nd leg they played against ManU was probably the best performance by a team I have ever seen! It was way way better than ManU drubbing of Roma ( scoreline is not the only indicator of performance you see).
Oh about the title of the post.... it just sounded cool... I'll write about Floyd once i finish reading "Inside Out : A personal history of Pink Floyd" by Nick Mason.

The Fountainhead

2007-06-08T00:47:00.000+05:30

Spoiler Warning : While this post might not reveal the story but it might reveal some other stuff about the characters in the story that might ruin your fun of reading( if you haven't already read) one of the greatest fiction books*** ever written .

I'll start with : Whats the big deal?! .... oh so now you didnt get my point ... there is always the handy fuck .... Whats the big fucking deal!!??.. yeah thats much better..I sometimes wonder why there aren't many spoofs of books just like movies...because this one is the perfect raw material for one. Or still better make a movie spoof of this and cast hmm... YES! cast Leslie Nielsen ( yeah the smooth talking brilliant lieutenant from Naked Gun) as the-most-intelligent-creature- on- earth-the-mister-can-never-go-wrong-the-God Howard Roark.I am already chuckling...imagine Nielsen giving that last courtroom speech in his usual style ;talking about fire and wheels and humanity and people sitting there, listening intently and taking notes. And seriously what was that business of Gail Wynand telling Roark he loves him in every second statement..ok all you people may call me a shallow pervert but it was sort of irritating..in my spoof they'll definitely have sex.
What happened to Mr. manipulator Ellsworth Toohey.. with all those grandiose plans and theories.. in the end he was working as a newspaperman only, isnt it??and that too in a smaller newspaper. Finally somebody please explain me the character of the-second-most-intelligent-creature-on-earth-the-miss-can-never-go-wrong-the-goddess Dominique Francon ( or may I take the liberty to call her the Slut). She has a very simple rule : I hate this world and I hate all the people in this world so i will sleep with all the people in this world so that i won't hate myself ?? huh huh ????huh?
I am not yet finished..oh!that revered love making( or the rape) scene involving Mr. Roark and Ms. Francon...i swear to god i thought i was reading a B-grade novel when i was reading that part... Direct excerpt from the book " she fought like an animal but she made no sound........." ok i'll stop( this blog is not for such explicit material).But seriously Khushwant Singh would have done a better job at that.
And by the way when did architects become so important that people stopped sleeping and eating and started killing over them... weren't there any filmstars in 1920s and 30s..?? What happened to Katherine Hepburn? she didn't get enough publicity or what?

Yes, Miss Rand I somewhat agree with your philosophical ideas about Altruism and Collectivism but you could have explained those in 200 pages less.. you didn't have to hammer them again and again into our heads...ok we might not be as intelligent as Mr. Howard Roark or Miss Dominique Francon but we are not dumbfucks either!

DISCLAIMER : I didn't hate this book, infact it was a decent timepass.Atleast last 100 pages were interesting. I just felt like ridiculing something and this was the easiest target.. yeah I have several other targets but I can't ridicule them in a public place like this.

PS:
1) I never thought I would write about a book on my blog!
2) The best three pages of the Fountainhead were the speech(or whatever) that Ellsworth gave to Keating. For me that was probably the saving grace of the novel.
3)*** : my ass

I am sci-phil again!

2007-05-20T02:30:00.000+05:30

There was a time when I absolutely loved sci-fi movies no matter how crappy they were. All those space,gravity, aliens and obviously extinction of life on earth thrilled me . Sci-fi movies haven't changed much ; they can be broadly classified into two categories : 1) Dudes come to us 2) We go to the dudes ( replace dudes by Aliens or meteors and you get any goddam sci-fi movie ever released).I am a fan (rather was a fan) of the 2nd category.All that space travel, zero gravity, mainframes excited me. Today I watched "Sunshine" on big screen.I know none of you have heard of the movie . I also came to know about it on wednesday only when I saw its PVR release ad in TOI. I casually checked it on IMDB and whoa! I decided to watch it this weekend no matter what.There are few reasons for that : First of all its been a while since I watched a sci-fi flick in cinema hall( last one was MIB 2 i think).Secondly it is directed by Danny Boyle( Trainspotting(!!), 28 days later) and thirdly it belongs to the 2nd category and has one of the most interesting plots i have heard in a sci-fi film ( well many people would have a different "i" word for the plot : idiotic). Well I'll come to the story a little bit later , first let me tell you what pains I had to go through to watch the movie. I am not normally ( or never) a watch-a-movie-alone-in-the-theater kind of person.So I had to literally drag a friend of mine to come along with me.Oh come on!.. who would be crazy like me to watch a totally unknown movie after paying 200 bucks in PVR.. that too a sci-fi movie ... that too a sci-fi movie with idiotic plot..
and that too on SATURDAY. Oh yes its a well known fact here : YOU DON'T GET MOVIE TICKETS ON WEEKENDS. And mind you when it comes to weekends Bangalore ppl are like mosquitoes who'll buzz over any corpse no matter how rotten it is ( or how less rotten it is).Yes in heights of desperation I have even tried to get gult or tam movie tickets but failed miserably at that too.But somehow my sixth sense hinted that there are not "crazy" enough people in Bangalore. And boy was I right! There were only two movies(out of probably 20-25) whose tickets were available "Sunshine" and "Breaking and Entering". Well i didn't have much clue about the latter one except for that it had Jude Law and well we did ask about it from the ticket counter guy ( my friend's last desperate attempt to avoid Sunshine). When he said B&E is a romantic movie it wasnt difficult to convince my friend to watch Sunshine.I can safely say that all the other people there in the queue were those who didn't get tickets for other movies.But there sure were some funny scenes . For example a couple who were undecided what movie to watch decided upon Sunshine because its name has "romance" plastered over it and well breaking and entering sounded more like a gangster flick .Or this other one which entered the hall when Pirates of the Caribbean trailer was being played and the girl said "Oh there is Johnny Depp in this movie!!!" Or this irritating one sitting right next to us where girl had questions on almost everything ...who are they? what are they doing?Are they in space?( No ma'am that is Titanic and that is black sea and those which look like planets and asteroids are actually jelly fishes). Nevertheless our Audi was HOUSE-FULL!!
Talking about the movie itself . Its plot( which you have been waiting for so long) in 1 line (copied from IMDB ) is : " A team of astronauts are sent to re-ignite the dying sun 50 years into the future." And they plan to do this by detonating a Manhattan sized nuclear bomb in the sun... basically creating a star inside the star.!!Now its up to you to label it interesting or idiotic. But to all you scientists and physicists who think of this plot as impossible to even a 2nd class student here is some more trivia for you :
"The plot does not revolve around the sun dying in the normal sense: this is not due for around five billion years based on our understanding of nuclear fusion. It has instead been "infected" with a "Q-ball" - a supersymmetric nucleus, left over from the big bang - that is disrupting the normal matter. This is a theoretical particle that scientists at CERN are currently trying to confirm, and was one of the many contributions of the science advisor. The film's bomb is meant to blast the Q-ball to its constituent parts which will then naturally decay, allowing the sun to return to normal."

Well I would be lying if i say I loved the movie.If only they had not brought in something in the middle of second half this movie would have been a sci-fi classic for me!(Me and my optimism which thinks that some of you are crazy enough to watch the movie so I am not disclosing that something).This movie had that 2001:A Space Odyssey feel to it ( don't worry it wasn't even half as slow!!)Incidentally it was my only 2nd post fully dedicated to a single movie and the first one was also Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. That was Trainspotting!!!!, this is Sunshine . Sunshine probably doesn't even deserve this post but somehow it rekindled that sci-fi love in me!

PS: I saw two amazing movies last weekend. This year's Best foreign film Oscar winner The lives of others and probably the BEST Hollywood masala movie ever True Romance ( btw it was written by Tarantino).
PPS: If there is God,Milan will win the UCL.Liverpool doesn't deserve it 2 times in 3 years. Milan doesn't deserve it 2 times in 3 years.

B.A.N.G.A.L.O.R.E ( no its not an acronym...its the name of a city...dots were just to confuse you)

2007-04-30T23:24:00.000+05:30

My first two weeks in Bangalore have been quite eventful...and well most of it was occupied by the search..search for a home.... a decent affordable place not so far away from civilization but as far as possible from the landlord/owner ( in fact we were forthright enough to ask the owners , " sir will you or your kids have any problems if we drink beer sitting outside in the balcony on a breezy saturday night(or for that matter any night) ?"So finally we got a decent flat in NGV ( National Games Village) . Its an apartment complex with all those perks ... gardens,swimming pool, tennis courts ,indoor baddy courts,basketball courts, and good looking females ( although you have to pay extra for all of them.. no i didnt mean them you cheap fuckers). And finally .. finally i can play TENNIS!!!!!!!!
NGV , especially our block has one major drawback.Its proximity to the airport. Every 10 minutes or so we have a big Boeing screaming 10 inches above our head ( and mind you I have exaggerated only exactly 10 times). People here say you'll get used to it but i swear to you.. its not safe.. ITS NOT SAFE. In fact you can die in 4 different and equally chilling ways :

First one is obviously a crash right through our building. ( you can do the math and find out the probability .. i am telling you it will come out to be a pretty neat number)
NGV is a pretty old complex and is not exactly known for its architectural brilliance. So anyday when a plane passes on top of our building in its full glory , our house can shake and tumble down like a pack of cards.(.. but then i take solace in Howrah Bridge which has withstood 100 times the traffic( and weight) which it was meant for , for years and still not given up!)
This one seems to be the most likely . Imagine you are having a nightmare where you are on an unstable plane that is about to crash.. and all those oxygen masks, people screaming and puking and fainting ...and suddenly you wake up to a thunderous noise of an airplane above your head ..you'll sure get a heart-attack.
How can we forget our Al-Qaeda friends who might just one day decide to choose not Empire State Building, not Petronas Towers, not BSE but our very own NGV for their next mission.One might ask why NGV?? Well there can be several reasons... one that it is near to the airport so not much trouble holding up the hijacked passengers or they might want to surprise the world or just a foolish step ( I am not sure if Al Qaeda ppl are known for their high IQ ....and there one more reason.. i just pissed Osama Bin Laden)

..and now that I am talking about my stay in Bangalore I have to mention the PUBS.... yeah i've been to the new Purple Haze in Koramangla.Its good.. its 4 times more spacious than the old one.. but that doesn't mean that I'll stop going to the Residency Road.Last Saturday I went to some other rock Pub and when I heard huge roars for Where did you sleep last night ( Nirvana)
and Otherside( RHCP ) but not even a whimper for Black(Pearl Jam) I thought that I have to go to US or Europe soon to fulfill my dream of watching Pearl Jam live before all of them turn 60.
And did i forget to tell you the best "original" CD/DVD rental shop of India is right next to my house .. it has a huge collection sorted by genres..sorted by directors.. sorted by language!! and i'll soon watch the two Kubrick movies which I havent seen ( The Killing and Barry Lyndon ).

PS : I go for work too.Everyday.
PPS : All autorickshaw drivers in Bangalore are *BEEP* ( i'll maintain the sanctity of the blog)

What a shame!

2007-04-07T14:45:00.000+05:30

With players like

<------this and this ----->
in the midfield

and players like this ----->
on the BENCH (!!!)

can somebody please explain me how the fuck can a team struggle to even qualify for Euro 2008 ( and I thought they wouldn't have any problems winning it !!!)

Let me clarify here ,these are not just few extremely talented and "potentially" dangerous paper tigers (somewhat like Indian cricket team although I seriously believe talent quotient there is questionable). These players actually perform breathtakingly well for their respective clubs.
Clockwise from the top : David Silva , Andres Iniesta , Cesc Fabregas
And players like Joaquin and Vicente don't even get a place on the bench!
Although I have talked only about Spanish midfield , we'll get the same story in forward as well as defense lineup. David Villa, Morientes, Torres , Raul .... doesn't it look good?
People who might have some doubts on how good David Silva is ,look at this goal he scored in Champions League match against Chelsea

David Silva Goal for Valencia

and mind you this is not just once in a blue moon chancy shot on goal ( which Bayern Munich and Liverpool players keep on doing) . Silva has been amazing throughout the year.
I so want Valencia to win it this time ... they deserve it - come on poor guys were finalists for two consecutive years (2000 & 2001).

The Trip

2007-03-29T21:41:00.000+05:30

[Bangalore {Getting drunk ,shitty Apocalypto.. shittier 300... Purple Haze..Getting drunk... iron maiden concert (The ultimate mistake of reaching there sober except for the headache and dizzines from the last night's drinking , 30k-40k crowd making it the largest ticketed concert ever in India ,ppl trying to smuggle vodka in their underwears,pathetic opening acts :Parikrama ditto,Lauren Harris- ruining her father's reputation,someone on the stage announcing "You can tell your fucking kids someday that you were there in the fucking Bangalore to watch the fucking Iron Maiden concert. Yeah!",tall long haired goateed black Teed dudes, dude here, dude there , dude everywhere , dudes unnecessarily pushing and shoving, Copious amounts of Ganja in the air already devoid of Oxygen,1 water/watery pepsi outlet with 100 ppl in a sort-of-queue , 1 loo with 100 ppl in a sort-of-queue, Rs 900 barricade brought down by the crowd,a short stampede, very energetic and enthusiastic Maiden ,Number of the beast, Run to the hills, we losers complaining and complaining instead of enjoying , we losers shamelessly leaving the ground while the show was still in progress)Hypnos, getting drunk},Teen patti in the train , Goa ( Beer ,south goa,Palolem,sea, beach,huts, beer,babes, bikini babes, "non-bikini" babes , beer, fishes,prawns,lobsters,lying down on the beach,beer ,sunset,kicking someone's ass at pool,tattoo,fox teeth necklace, north goa ,Honda activa, getting lost at 2 A.M., beach , beer ), Zillion photos]

PS : GOA is Awesome!
PPS: Bands from Assam, Sikkim and Calcutta doing Iron Maiden covers at IIT Kgp OAT was a much better experience than the real deal.
PPPS : Download Pentagram's new song Voice from here: Voice.One of the best songs I have heard from an Indian band

(Haphazardly )^ 3 : Just to keep the blog running

2007-03-07T16:41:00.000+05:30

I have completed yet another stint of my educational life and yes it had all the excitement that a college life could provide.Although for once I wanted to get out, I know it won't be long before I start longing for college life. I don't know what it is - My unbelievable thirst for education ( !!! ) or my ultimate passion of getting bored of almost anything in an unbelievably short span of time but I guess no one( obviously not me) will be surprised if they find me doing some PhD or something 2-3 years later.And obviously college has its own perks : you live in a hostel with your friends, you dont have to worry about your daily requirements( that includes food) , you wouldn't have to think how will you reach office if you miss the morning bus coz u overslept , you don't have to be answerable to anyone , you don't have to look forward to the weekend to watch movies ,your neighbours don't complain if you listen to the music at loud volume ( even if they do you don't care), you can have rave parties all night long without worrying about the police ( i can't help it , these news channels continue to brainwash me.. now i don't want to start .. i am already sick of all the coverage on Umaid Bhavan Palace and Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar .. who the fuck gives a fuck if some random actress is marrying in India), you have complete freedom to do whatever you want and you don't have to WORK.

And sitting at home , the biggest bad news for me is that I am already bored of TV ( its been barely 3 days!) and i have ended up watching disproportionate amounts of football and basketball and utterly useless shows on VH1 ( which I thought only losers watch) where they show huge bungalows of ultra rich basketball players or singers.Coming back to football, Barcelona was knocked out of Champions league yesterday (although they won yesterday 1-0 and were 2-2 aggregate but Liverpool went through on more away goals).But Barcelona didn't exactly disappoint yesterday , they tried hard and showed that they still are too classy for liverpool or any other team in Europe in whatever few chances they created ..if only Eto'o was in his best form they wouldn't have had so much of problem penetrating the defense. Anyway its not easy to win 2-0 at Anfield and full marks to Liverpool too. In fact Barca were knocked out in the first leg itself where they lacked any commitment whatsoever and gave away the match by making stupid mistakes.Now I hope Valencia or Roma wins the Champions League ( not because they are underdogs..but Valencia because it is playng amazing football and Roma because Totti ( I mean " THE Totti ") is back!But match of the season was surely Spurs vs West Ham ( 4-3).. what a pulsating game ! and i havent felt so bad for any losing team for a long time as I felt for West Ham.When Tevez scored the 2nd goal making it 2-0 in the first half ( the best first half scoreline West Ham has seen this season) and he took off his T-shirt(not caring for yellow card) and jumped into the crowd you could feel the excitement ,the desperation. I have never seen such spectator frenzy the whole year. But what happened in the 2nd half ( Spurs scored two in last 4 mins) was nothing short of a tragedy.

We have planned a Bangalore- Goa trip after some days.Now that I am placed in Bangalore, the charm of going for a Bangalore trip has reduced a bit but still I am pretty much excited. We have the Iron Maiden show ( yeah yeah i know they are old and they are no Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin ) but they still kick ass. And whenever i see the crowd humming the "Fear of the Dark" tune in Rock in Rio live set I get all pumped up.And obviously there is this much awaited visit to Purple Haze with friends who'll be going to Bombay or Gurgaon for their jobs.We didn't want to ,but we Bangaloreans or Hazians have implicitly created so much hype about Purple Haze that I am afraid that to other ppl it might not look like a paradise which they were expecting it to be.After all whats the big deal ,just some above average ambience... and music..even after 2 years I can still tell the exact list of songs and the order in which our beloved DJ will play them( because he doesnt believe in experimenting).But its still the best pub in the country even if thats not saying too much! And when one pitcher goes in ppl will believe whatever you want them to believe in :)

A big fat depressing post

2007-02-22T04:19:00.000+05:30

I just came across this amazing video

Amazing Video

The animation is absorbing and it hypnotises you.If the song is not depressing enough for you ( Radiohead - Creep) the video will surely get on to your nerves.
One thing is clear : I don't want to be the guy in the video 1 yr down the line( you'll understand once you watch it)

Binge drinking can cause sudden strokes ...well..

Barcelona lost 1-2 at home to Liverpool.Not that Liverpool deserved to win , with both goals coming from Barca's defensive blunders.Somehow I have stopped feeling bad for them ( quite an irony considering that their defeat was the trigger for this post).But nowdays whenever I see any Barca match I get the feeling that I am the only one who gives a fuck( not players, not the coach).

Music = Bliss

2007-02-01T20:01:00.000+05:30

When I get bored I write arbit stuff about music.

Foo Fighters' song Come Back ( Last track on the album One by One) is a good song. Nothing great...well almost. Its a long 8 minute song and it starts off with some heavy guitaring ... but in the middle it slows down and at around 3 minute 35 second mark you are greeted with a soothing acoustic guitar sound which gradually blows your mind away.You have to listen to it to believe how awesome it is! In a way Come Back has an uncanny resemblance to Baba O' Riley. Remove the end violin/Harmonica solo and the classic Who song reduces to an average one time listen forme.

Metallica's Battery never ceases to surprise me! It begins with a soft likeable guitar riff..pretty amazing and you expect a little romantic song ..but then suddenly the guitar roughens up, pace changes and when you were expecting something like " Oh baby..... " you hear " Lashing out the action, returning the reaction Weak are ripped and torn away Hypnotizing power, crushing all that cower Battery is here to stay ". I don't know why but it always cracks me up. No that I am complaining, I love the raw power and speed of the song just like all others in Master of Puppets Only complaint is that throughout the song they never return back to the awesome riff with which they started it.

Nine Inch Nails Hurt is one of my favourite sad songs. Perfect lyrics,perfect vocals , perfect bass and drums but the point is not that.Hurt ends abruptly with a loud unpleasant noise ( its especially unpleasant 'coz I generally listen to the song at very high volume ). And everytime I know its about to come and I won't like it still for some weird reasons I don't stop the song. Its like some masochistic tendencies or as they say pain for pleasure.

Territorial Pissings is an amazing song just like any other song on Nevermind. And its difficult for me to accept that the best part I like is towards the end when Kurt Cobain is screaming his lungs out. He just keeps on repeating the line "Gotta find a way to find a way when I'm there" , just as his intensity keeps on increasing , the comprehensibility of words keeps on decreasing. Actually the last 2-3 times he doesn't even try to articulate anything... he just screams something like what a mental retard/or a 1 year old infant would do.But I really admire him, that kind of rhythmic screaming needs some skills.. if you don't believe me try doing it yourself.

How can anybody sing a complete 6 minute song in a high pitch! And it doesn't irritate you , it gets you high. I am talking about Soundgarden - Hands All Over . Chris Cornell is a God.

Pull Me Under ( Dream Theater) and Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) have the best intros/build ups ever.

If I have to live with just one CD (10 songs ) on a remote island for the rest of my life ( what a cliche!) Fake Plastic Trees and Street Spirit( Fade out) will be the first two songs I'll put on that CD. If you are wondering both are Radiohead songs from the same album.

To the spirit of Entrepr...blah( spellcheck: who the fuck coined this idiotic word)

2007-01-26T15:30:00.000+05:30

We have a course here called ENVCF( Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Finance) . Although I haven't taken it , but I get to hear lots of stories about (not so) ingenious business plans presented by budding managers to somehow pass the last term course.So much I would like to mention some of those business plans but I am afraid that somebody might sue me for infringement of IPRs.
But Misra surely won't sue me for that. First let me introduce Misra. Misra is(or atleast was) not exactly wordly smart, he was a wingie of mine at kgp and we used to call him Hallu. Hallu was not a specific nick given to Misra only but it was a part of general lingo there.It derives from the word "hallucination"and is applicable to all those persons who are absent minded,who day dream arbitrarily, shift their energy states within a matter of seconds, may react to things in a totally unbelievable and absurd manner or may not react at all. So this was the time when I was on hospital bed fighting death(ok not exactly) and harbouring my broken leg. And my leg was broken after being ruthlessly thrown off my cycle( BSA Photon) by Madhav aka Bada Ladka( Oh how i love to make him feel guilty!). BTW if you are at Stanford and ask about Bada Ladka this is what people will tell you : He is the cruel bastard who destroyed the exciting career of a budding Tennis/Football star( if you Hallu people are still wondering ,I am talking about me). Not to mention that everybody there maintain safe distance from Madhav.Oh I forgot to mention the ulterior motive of Madhav behind breaking my leg. He wanted to be on Nehru Hall's Tennis team( which obviously in my absence didn't win a single medal for 3 years).
Coming back to the original story -so here i was fighting death and there Misra was- my sweet and caring neighbour putting a notice outside my room- " Manan's recovery fund. Write a well wishing message on room walls and donate 10 bucks."
And when I came back to my room after nearly 2.5 months I was shocked to see the amount of graffiti on my room walls ,not an inch of free space left!( obviously you are not thinking that the graffiti was restricted to Get Well Soon messages). And there was Misra standing, grinning and telling me the number of Beers he drank out of the booty he made!
No wonder when a Prof(!!) came for the general inspection few days later and saw my room this is first thing he said to me - "You know all the rooms were whitewashed only 6 months back. Government money is not your personal piggy bank." I took the safe passage and showed my crutches to him and said i wasn't there in the hostel for last 3 months. I don't know what exactly happened but my neighbour Misra would surely know!! Thank god the prof didn't bother to read those messages.... or maybe he read and was too embarrassed to show that!
Misra is getting married to his kgp sweetheart next month ( and well we attributed most of the haluness of Misra to his romantic endeavors)
Even Borad ( Boraaaa was another wingie) demonstrated his entrepreneurial spirit when he proposed the idea of brewing a new revolutionary kind of beer in the campus itself and the amazing thing is that the great Biotech department was ready to fund it!If only the Electrical department was so open minded I would have invented a time machine!
This is the testimonials season at IIM indore and it was only after i read my Nehru hall testimonials(yet again) that I felt like writing this post. We called them Pink Pages , one obvious reason was that they were printed on Pink coloured pages. But the term Pink Pages is generally associated with ahem homosexual communities.I guess once upon a time some of our seniors during their intimate moments( due to lack of girls, open society back then or whatever) named it Pink Pages and tradition has continued.

Interview with the Vampire

2007-01-06T00:44:00.000+05:30

The most fascinating aspect of the placements are the HR interviews. This post is dedicated to them. These are some of the typical questions that are generally asked and in this order only:

Why engineering ? ( yup they still ask this...)

The truth : I don't know.
What I want to say : Oh I forgot. You see I have a short term memory. For you it might be only yesterday, for me it was 7 years back!
What I say : I was born to be an engineer! When my chips are down I use nuts and bolts to fix them!!

Why IT ?

The truth : I don't know
What I want to say( to a non IT firm HR manager) : Have you ever worked in an IT firm ? How would you understand what you are missing!
What I want to say( to an IT firm HR manager) : Hey come on!! you should know!
What I say : Look at the growth of Indian IT sector. The sector grows .. the economy grows... the nation prospers. And as they always say engineers should contribute towards the nation, I thought this was my chance which I had been waiting for since I learnt to walk! Here I would like to quote Neil Armstrong , One small step for a man , one giant leap for mankind.

Why MBA?

The truth: I don't know
What I want to say: You tell me.. now that you have come to hire me.And you have to agree the name itself sounds so snazzy.. come on don't be shy say it ... say it with me... MmmmmBA!
What I say: Red Bull doesn't give you wings... MBA actually does!

Why do you want to join this company?

The truth: I don't know
What I want to say: You get paid for asking all this crap!Why wouldn't I like to join?
What I say( relatively big company, a global giant) :I can cut throats to enter your company. Your company is like the sun, showering light all over.
What I say( relatively small company, a supposedly high growth company) :I can cut throats to enter your company. Your company is like the bulb when there is a solar eclipse!

What are your strengths?

The truth : I am too lazy to type that much!
What I want to say: I can lie without blinking an eyelid!Do i need anything else??
What I say: Well where do I begin.. I am the epitome of honesty and integrity , I like the smell of other human beings even when they haven't taken bath for ages and that makes me an excellent team player, I get nervous breakdowns if I am not MADE to work under tremendous pressure and deadlines, and the enthusiasm and confidence that i ooze out might make you blind.

What are your weaknesses?

The truth : You wish!
What I want to say: I can't conceal my hatred towards stupid people. Hey cheer up! you just need some meditation and yoga to improve.
What I say: I am toooo hardworking, I am tooooo brilliant, I am toooo honest, I am toooo ambitious, I am toooo confident, I am toooo enthusiastic.

What do you do in your leisure time / what are your interests?

The truth : I write blogs lambasting these type of interviews.
What I want to say: Stop flirting with me. Your husband/wife is waiting for you back home!
What I say :Oh you should appreciate me how I take out time from my busy schedule to pursue my interests and hobbies. I read everything ,from Tunisian mythology to space time curvatures , I listen to everything ..from Beethoven to modern Jazz , as far as sports are concerned i am more of a outdoor guy but you can quite often catch me indoors playing bridge.

PS: I really love my engineering quote which I wrote above
When my chips are down I use nuts and bolts to fix them!!
I am proud of it!

Almost Famous!

2006-12-24T01:51:00.000+05:30

4 extremely bad things that an extremely good movie can do to you :

It can make you love songs sung by sad ugly Gay people ( Elton John - Tiny Dancer)
It can convince you that you are not high enough until you jump into a swimming pool from a 3 storeyed building.
It can make you hate everything that is "present".
It can make you rebellious

Just why can't I get enough of this movie?

In eleven years its going to be 1984,man. Think about that!
Wanna see me feed a mouse to my snake?
Yes!

Story 2

2006-12-18T21:59:00.000+05:30

I woke up and she died. It always happens: whenever I “do” something someone else gets hurt. Waking up is a big enough thing to kill a person. Well to make it clear to you I am living in a world of “attitude extremism”. While some people are extremely selfish, others are extreme hedonists or extremely jealous or depressed or shy or salacious or complacent etc etc. This attitude extremism occurs at 3 levels. First is the basic level when your attitude can affect your lifestyle or thought process or your health in a drastic way. Second level is more dangerous when you can go to the extent of torturing or even killing yourself or others in order to fulfill your attitudinal desire. Third level is something paranormal when your attitude or thoughts can dangerously affect others without you being directly involved physically or mentally. There are very few cases of the third level. I am one of them. I am an extreme sadist.

I don’t know how or when this behavioral distortion set in the mankind. Some say you get a particular attitude from your genes but nothing has been proved.
Coming back to me; I sleep every night and wake up every morning so you can say I am on a murder spree: my killing rate being 365 per year. And to tell you the truth I can’t help it. Even if I don’t want anybody to get killed when I wake up…it will happen …I have no control over it. And I like it. Remember I am a sadist. And as you might expect it’s always some clean-handed happy person who dies. Either somebody who has won a lottery or got a promotion or got married or just woke up feeling satisfied with his life .If there were more 3^rd level people with same attitude as mine there wouldn’t be any single happy soul left on the earth. But that’s not the case .So I guess there aren’t many or maybe I am the only privileged one. It’s not like I target anybody before I go to sleep. It happens automatically. When I wake up and come to know of a death in our neighborhood or read about a death in the newspaper, my sixth sense tells me that it is because of me. Sometimes when there is no one that I come to know who has died I assume that someone has died far away in Africa or Mars and become very happy at the thought of it. And all the deaths look natural , normally accidents …so nobody can charge me of committing murders ……however people do have some idea that people like me exist in this world. Well you must be thinking that if I am such a sadist what about my conscious attempts to hurt others. I am little afraid to get directly involved in the acts of harming other people because of police and all. However sometimes I have desperately tried to make people miserable and have been fairly successful too! And anyway my sub-conscious efforts give me enough pleasure.

One day she came into my life .She was very beautiful and intelligent. When I asked her what was her attitude disorder she didn’t tell me …and I didn’t tell her…it was forbidden to do so. Nevertheless I loved her very much .The only problem was she also loved me very much. For some months our love story went flawless..like a fairy tale. And then my bloody instincts started taking over me. How could she be so happy with me? For once I could not forget my sadism. There had been cases or at least rumors where people had overcome their attitude disorder or still better carried on with “dual instincts.” That in my case could be my usual sadist attitude and my extremes love for her both residing side by side in my brain in a mutually exclusive fashion. But that was not to be. I no longer could tolerate her smiling face. That day I had decided that I would tell her to leave me. But something shocking was about to happen. When I was about to open my mouth to give her the bad news she said that she was leaving me forever and she couldn’t tell why. She couldn’t ,huh.. as if I was a dimwit. She was also one fucking sadist and she wanted to hurt me but alas, she was not aware of my true self! And why should I allow her to have all the fun. So I told her that I was a sadist and that sure must have diluted her fun. She left without a word. But there was no denying the fact that we both truly loved each other.

Days passed. Then I came to know that she was having an affair with some other guy. I spied on them. They both looked happy. I can’t describe how wretched and destroyed I felt. How could she be so happy? But then I thought this was also a temporary phase….she would leave that poor guy too as soon as his happiness went beyond her tolerance level. But what if she had overcome her basic instincts..or what if she had established dual attitudes…No!I couldn’t leave her so happy and satisfied…I would kill that bitch.

This was the first time I was going to murder someone consciously…but I didn’t give a damn. After a little planning I found her alone at night while she was retuning from her work. I caught her by surprise.. grabbed her neck and pressed it so hard …until she choked.

And here I am telling you the story of my life. There’s one more thing that I would like to tell you. That night when I looked at her dead face she was smiling…as if she had died a very contented death. My brain always tells me this...but I don’t want to believe..my mind tells me that she left me because she liked being with me….and maybe ,maybe she liked being killed .My brain always tells me that she was Masochist level 2. And now that I have started believing my brain, my health is deteriorating. How could I hurt someone who liked being hurt! I had never done that. My aim is to make people sad……

Wait a second……you people are taking pleasure reading my sad story….aren’t you…. I’ll stop.

MACR song

2006-12-03T19:53:00.000+05:30

I share, you share, we both share
Ooooh , that tender love and care,
In the process we'll make one , or even a pair.

I pay, you pay , we all pay tax
Our life has all that jazz, a little bit of guitar, a little bit of sax,
A little bit of fast food , a little bit of lax.

I tookover , you tookover, we all tookover something
"Everybody wants to rule the world" , we heard them sing,
So we did takeover the world, oh its nothing.

PS: MACR = Mergers, Acquisitions and Corporate Restructuring.

The Adventure theory of Human Actions : A case for Antisocial behaviour

2006-12-01T00:53:00.001+05:30

Well if you think carefully almost all the things that people do is governed by the want of some sort of adventure.The things that vary are the definition of adventure, risk taking abilities and extent of moral binding. People who earn money,people who beg,people who work hard,people who don't work hard, people who want to be famous,people who want to be oblivious,people who want to live long,people who want to die soon are all seeking some kind of adventure.The sole reason even for serial killers to commit those heinous crimes is that they want some adventure in life.We loathe them because their adventure curves and their victims' adventure curves don't intersect. Also our extent of moral binding is somewhat more than those of serial killers.Even the people( earliest homo sapiens or some paranormal power) who propagated these morals were seeking some adventure.
I seriously get worked up by the thought of waking up one day in a different country or even a different planet and starting my life from scratch there. Or abruptly disappearing from the job ( after I get one) , wandering around the world for 3-4 months and then returning back and claiming that I was kidnapped by terrorists.Ok these look far fetched but there are several adventures you can look forward to in your day to day life : shoplifting, dine and dash , ticketless train travel ,ticketless movie watching,trespassing, unnecessary badmouthing,eating at some stranger's marriage party etc etc ! Ok all these are illegal but thats not a necessary condition but in most of the cases thats a sufficient condition indeed :) . Also monetary gain is never the motive of these adventures, its just a collateral.I have indulged in some advetures myself , been successful sometimes and chickened out at other instances.
My life hasn't performed badly on the adventure quotient.Some of the adventures were not my willing like breaking a leg after falling down from a cycle! ( that too pretty recently) or almost getting run over by a train while trying to act cool by pissing in the middle of the tunnel . There are others when I inflicted adventure upon myself like suddenly deciding to leave a job ( not due to any major happening but just because I got bored) and that too when I didn't have any other job offer or MBA call with me ; and then enjoying some days of freedom by watching lots of movies before applying to other companies.
I watched The Big Lebowski yesterday. It was my 2nd time. I remember liking it as an entertaining timepass when I watched it for the first time. But yesterday it was nothing short of classic for me. Definitely the best from Coen brothers.And the movie goes well with the adventure theme of the post , quite an adventure for Lebowski that started as a consequence of not that much of an ugly act : (somebody peed on his rug ).Watch it for the acting of John Goodman , watch it for awesome one liners , watch it for mesmerizing visuals or watch it for the DUDE , dude.

Homage

2006-11-24T18:55:00.000+05:30

I can't refrain myself from posting on music.Its the only obsession i have got ( not movies, not football , not boozing :D ) . And I noticed that I haven't posted anything about The Gods themselves so this is dedicated to all my favourite bands!
And obviously everything starts with Pink Floyd. You don't get bored of eating, you don't get bored of sleeping,you don't get bored of waking up and you don't get bored of listening to Pink Floyd.Period.If people who have only heard Another Brick in the Wall 2 , Comfortably Numb and Coming Back to Life don't get bored of Pink Floyd why would I?And there is much more ,no much much more to PF than these three songs. Hell I like 4 songs from the same album ( Division Bell) better than Coming back to life.With Roger Waters they were divine , without him they are pretty much more than human beings. And why not? I always thought that David Gilmour had more influence on PF's music than Waters (many people will think the other way).And some brainless punks of punk rock movement accused them of being too pretentious. I think they were not sure what pretentious means , there's difference in being pretentious and being audacious , being ahead of your time. Who else will even think of spending millions on a single concert where a real wall is built live on stage and then brought down just because they wanted people to empathize with the concept of "The Wall". Who else will make a song of length 24 minutes which contains music which can't be by any definition called mainstream ( I am talking about "echoes") and believe me if you watch the final scene of "2001: a space odyssey" with echoes playing in background , you don't need any cocaine . That Dark Side of the Moon is the 3rd largest selling album in the world ever makes me happy ( not that I give a shit about commercial success but it feels good to know that theres some sanity left in the world).
There's a cliche that goes " you grow up with Led Zeppelin". It took me a little time to understand the meaning of it.If I say that Pink Floyd is the greatest band ever to have graced the earth many eyebrows will be raised but if i replace Pink Floyd by Led Zeppelin not many people will object. To make it more clear if you ask all the people in the world( who listen to English music) which is the greatest band ever the statistics would look something like this : 40% Led Zeppelin , 30% Beatles , 30% Others. Its actually not hard to believe this.All 4 of the band members were geniuses Page , Bonham are among the best ( if not the best) and when you start appreciating Plant you'll have the same opinion for him too.From the brilliance of Stairway to Heaven , to the trip of No Quarter and the rock of Whole lotta love these guys did everything possible. Led Zepp defined Rock and Roll ... from filling up huge stadiums in a matter of seconds to excessive debaucheries. Their on stage and off stage theatrics , some of them extremely notorious and infamous (what more even Bonham the drummer died by choking on his puke)made them sort of immortal . Not that I am great fan of all these "Activities" ...even Tommy Lee( drummer of Motely Crue) has the largest circulated porn tape ever to his credit ( if you are wondering who was the female, it was none other than Miss Pamela Anderson) but here lies the difference ; for tommy this was his biggest and probably only achievement , for zepp it was part of the arrogance that arose from the brilliant music they made. It was the same arrogance which made them release an album( led zepp 4) without the band name or album name anywhere to be seen on the cover or the back. I started liking Led Zeppelin pretty late(i kick myself for that) . Now I have heard almost each and every song ever released or bootlegged , but still if I happen to find some song which I havent heard I am inundated with huge anticipation.
If you divide all the songs in 4 categories : Hard , Not so Hard , Not so Soft, Soft and select top 10 songs in each of them there will atleast be one Pearl Jam song in each category.That's the variety Pearl Jam plays. How many bands can boast of 6 Top Class albums( i love Binaural too). Its there last two albums only which I think are not as good.And if somebody does not like " No Code" he is not even a Pearl Jam fan or a music fan in general.Yes I think they never topped "Ten" but who can?What a god Eddie Vedder is! As if he has some cubic polynomial equation inserted in his throat and he can vary every variable precisely to produce the desired effect. Change the value of variable y to 3.67 to produce the exact cracking effect.Take an average PJ song and make Eddie sing ooooh....or Mmmm in between and it becomes a classic.But PJ is far from a one man army. Listen to the breathtaking guitar solos if you don't believe me. Eddie, Gossard, McCready all are so good that if tomorrow Pearl Jam decides to breakup we'll have 3 world class bands! Saying Pearl Jam is the best band of the last decade is like insulting them. Blood,Go, Animal, Rear View Mirror, Garden, Not For You, Evenflow,Alive, Immortality, Black,Release,YellowLed Better, Nothing Man, Off He goes, Parting Ways ,Present Tense : yeah these are awesome songs in the order of categories mentioned above and there are 100 more. Go listen , adore , i bet you'll find your own favourites for every mood.
When somebody says that Radiohead is a one song wonder I feel like chopping off his ears and feeding him those for lunch.But that will be a rare comment now.Now, take any poll published anywhere in the world for the best album ever " OK Computer" will most probably be on the top.And "OK computer" is not even my favourite Radiohead album!( The Bends is). Some people might complain that Radiohead is depressing and thats true but when you listen to their beautiful and profound lyrics you'll doubt yourself " Am I right in being happy? " Ok thats not exactly a very positive and enthusiastic way to praise a band but I would say Radiohead is more about introspection than depression. And even if you choose to ignore the lyrics completely( which I strongly advise not to) still the melody and the voice will haunt you for hours. If Pink Floyd was audacious they are more so. Listen to " Kid A" and you'll come to know why. I read some comment somewhere ( probably Amazon reviews) that even if Thom Yorke utters gibberish like " blahblehblehbluh" it becomes the most fascinating statement in Rock and Roll that year. I totally agree!
When people say Seattle people think Nirvana or Pearl Jam. There was another band which was not as "Grunge" and was much darker : Alice in Chains. AIC is more metal than grunge and they are awesome. The album"Dirt" immediately comes to mind when you think of AIC . If I am given an option to listen to three songs before I die "Rooster" will definitely be among those three.There are other great albums like Jar of Flies , SAP but I would like to mentioned their acoustic live " MTV Unplugged" . That is without any doubt the best acoustic, in fact the best live recorded album ever!yeah it is better than Nirvana's version.Who would imagine a metal band who are so used to relentlessness of electric guitar would produce such a wonderful acoustic set. But there are reasons for that. If you look at the video of the recording Layne Staley looks as if he has been brought in right from his death bed to sing ( and he probably was!). Although the sight of sick-appearing Layne is disturbing but that brings so much of pain in his voice, that no singer faking the pain can compare.Secondly Jerry Cantrell is a God and is one of the best guitarist ever!The result is breathtaking and some songs like "Would" in this album sound even better than their original versions.Even without Layne AIC rocks and they have started playing again. How I wish they'll release another album.

Any music post is not complete without the mention of Thrash Metal. There was a period when I worshipped Metallica. I still love their first 4 albums. That was Metal in its purest form, that was Metal as it should be , that was attitude , that was I don't give a fuck music which inspired so many people.After they released "Black Album" they changed ( Black incidentally is their largest selling album and it is the album which I absolutely hate). It is sad that all people have heard Nothing else matters ,Unforgiven( which I think is the worst song ever for any metal band) but not many people have heard Fade to Black and One. And when Metallica started sucking I found the purity in Megadeth. Although I am not huge fan of the singing ability of Dave Mustaine but him and Marty Friedman make what is probably the best Guitar duo in any band ever. "Rust in Peace" is such an amazing album , that even a Britney Spears listening guy would love it! " Holy Wars... the punishment due" is the best metal song. Period.
There are several other excellent bands like Nirvana,Soundgarden,The Who, The Doors,Iron Maiden,Dream Theater, Black Sabbath, Pantera,Travis, RHCP,Tool etc but they lack something which separates them from the Great bands.

And who needs them anyway ,didn't i start with " you don't get bored of Pink Floyd."
This is my longest post till date , and I knew it as soon as i began writing.

Lack of ideas

2006-11-16T05:37:00.001+05:30

Since I am not feeling sleepy and I want to post something and I don't want to post again on music or movies and I have no better idea, I'll post one of the 9-10 stories which i wrote long time back. I have only 3 of them on my laptop , and if this enthusiasm towards regular blog posting lives on,all 3 of them will be here in some days.Some people here and earlier have already read these stories and their comments necessitate this disclaimer.

Disclaimer : All the stories are in first person but that is because I couldn't think of any good name; Ram,Shyam,Rahul,Gaurav, Tom,Harry,Leonard, Albert, all sound so cheesy.These stories have nothing to do with my personal life experiences or my personal thought processes. And if you think I am being defensive ... Fuck I Care.

STORY 1 :

Once upon a time I and my friends went trekking.
Everybody thought that it was some hot air balloon. I kept screaming that it was a UFO. When nobody listened to me I alone started running for my life. And so the aliens abducted me. They must have thought that I was playing some cheap trick.
Their spaceship was a big let-down …no air conditioner .. sloppy interiors….no modern computer panels… “How are you mister ?” the alien said to me….

*Wow they are technologically so advanced …they can speak English ..must be using some hi-tech chip in his throat with language manipulation program (LMP) fed in it.*

“Well mister human you getting some wrong ideas ,we aren’t using any technique its just the case that I know English. And now please don’t think that I was mind reading you. It was just a guess.” “Actually some humans taught me English.”

*Humans!!! Shit! Did they abduct anybody before me?? I am not the first one. So I wont be in the limelight.i wont be the centre of attraction when I get back.*

“ Don’t worry Mr. human you are the first one we are abducting.”
“ How did you know what I was thinking ..you surely can read minds!”
“ No.we cant. Actually…..hmmm…Mr. human you might not like it..i feel really bad to say this..but u have a habit of muttering while you think.So I come to know whatever you think.”

*Oh no! I always had this habit! And I didn’t have the faintest idea.Now I know why Mary ran away when she was asking for a date and I was thinking that her breasts had grown really big in the last one year.Then I had thought that she had gone crazy.*

“So if u didn’t abduct anyone how did you come in contact with the humans?”
“ Well you remember the spaceship you sent from earth for Mars mission. You could not get any pictures of us coz we kept hiding from your cameras. We cant show our ugly faces to the whole universe . well that’s a different story but the interesting part is that your spaceship was supposed to be unmanned but these two girls Josie and Frosie sneaked into the rocket due to security lapse and reached mars.”

*Oh! Josie and Frosie…Man!! I had real crushes on both of ‘em…coz both were identical twins. I didn’t eat for 4 days when they suddenly went missing on 14th February. Everybody thought that sharks got them while they were trying to learn swimming in their bikinis…Bloody Greedy sharks.*

“ Don’t mind but your spaceship sucks!”
“Well mr. human we are technologically very backward.This spaceship was also presented by our Jupiter friends. You might not be knowing that people on Jupiter are very simple and not at all fashion conscious..They really don’t know what luxury means and that’s what is reflected in this spaceship.”
“We are so dumb that we couldn't even fly a rocket, but they made it extremely easy for us..look I’ll show you”

“Push button A to take off”
“There's this knob for speed control”
“ There’s this steering wheel just like your cars”
“Push button B for landing”

“So where are Josie Frosie???”
“Well You might not like this…..as you can see that basically we are ugly creatures….when our people saw josie frosie they were fascinated. They couldn’t believe that something in this universe could be so beauitful. We got this museum of natural sciences.We have kept them there as exhibits where people pay and watch them. If anybody wants to fiddle with them he has to pay some extra bucks…”
“ Oh! You buggers molest those poor girls…you bastards…”
“whats with this Sexual Molestation Josie Frosie also keep on cribbing about that…. I don’t know whats so immoral about sexual molestation….we are proud of our body parts and definitely would love if somebody wants to touch them..or feel them .”

*Ewwww… who would want to touch you slimy filthy creatures.*

“And Mr. Human if I am not wrong Sex is related to reproduction..so whats immoral about it..we consider reproduction sacred..and every martian will do anything to have Sex…its just the case we don’t need two people to reproduce…there is no concept of male or female …We just grow naturally….you know like your concept of fruits growing on trees ..the same way… “

“ So why the hell did you abduct me??”
“ Well…..we came to know from josie frosie that average human life span is 75 earth years….that means they’ll die in about 50 years. We don’t want our children to miss the nature’s ultimate creations . We don’t want to show them only the photographs of these two girls and say that this kind of beauty do exist in universe but we are unable to show it to you….I hope by now you understand what we want you to do….If not then I’ll tell you- we want you to copulate with josie and frosie and produce many more like them.”

* NOW THIS IS CALLED - A DREAM COME TRUE.*

Obligatory movie post

2006-11-13T17:22:00.000+05:30

Casino Royale is releasing in some days and I have to admit that I am really excited. This excitement amazes me too coz i am not even a big Bond fan! What more, I have only seen 11-12 bond movies till date.I find old Bond movies funny and forgettable( which probably was the purpose) . New ones are not funny but they are forgettable indeed .They lack the basic smartness in the script and the expected breathtaking stunts ( which you might find in an Arnie movie like True Lies).I didn't like Brosnan much either, ok he was suave but thats about it... he lacked the attitude which a person who has got the licence to kill, paranormal gadgets and supermanly powers should possess.Bond is not supposed to be human , isn't that the whole point?I say Batman is much more human than James Bond.
So why am I excited? There are several reasons :

1)Daniel Craig : Whatever people say I think he is very well suited for the role.And those of you who have seen Layer Cake can't deny the fact that he'll bring the attitude, that menacing charm to Bond which was severely lacking all these years.He can act brilliantly in a dark , edgier Bond film. He can be mean and merciless and when he kills someone without blinking an eye you won't gasp with disbelief (which was the case with Pierce Brosnan). Ok Craig doesn't exactly have the most photogenic face, but he can be very stylish and his heavy voice and british accent just adds to the charm.
And if not Craig who could it have been? First name that comes to my mind is Clive Owen! Maybe he would have been a better choice but I would like him to act in more Sin Citys and Closers and Gosford Parks than Bond movies.Ewan Mcgregor... ok at the first instance his name sounds to be too frivolous and too boyish for the role , but the kind of actor he is he can send chills up your spine whenever he wants.But again I didn't want him to waste away his talent in Bond movies.Jude Law.. he would have handled ladies department perfectly but i am not sure about the action sequences.Personally I don't give much of shit about Hugh Jackman.

2) Eva Green : Go watch The Dreamers and then you'll also say Who the fuck is Halle Berry.. who the fuck is Denise Richards..who the fuck is Izabella Scorupco ( ok I love her too..)

3)Martin Campbell- He also directed Golden Eye which will definitely be among top 3 Bond movies for me.

4) Movie trailers look very good!

I hope Casino Royale is not a let down.

After so many years I watched Airplane again yesterday and I still can't stop myself from smiling when I just think of those scenes. Ok some jokes might seem dated and cliched but this movie started it all in 1980 and believe me all hot shots and naked guns easily pale in comparison.And there are innumerable legendary one liners and dialogues!

Elaine Dickinson: There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?

Ted Striker: Surely you can't be serious.
Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

Elaine Dickinson: You got a letter from headquarters this morning.
Ted Striker: What is it?
Elaine Dickinson: It's a big building where generals meet, but that's not important.

Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?
Captain Oveur: I can't tell.
Rumack: You can tell me. I'm a doctor.
Captain Oveur: No. I mean I'm just not sure.
Rumack: Well, can't you take a guess?
Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.
Rumack: You can't take a guess for another two hours?

Hanging Lady: Nervous?
Ted Striker: Yes.
Hanging Lady: First time?
Ted Striker: No, I've been nervous lots of times.

There are many others but they sound much better in the movie!

The artist in me

2006-10-27T02:09:00.000+05:30

I have drawn some sketches in last three months or so. Yeah I know if I put them here it might lead to some large scale plagiarism but I am willing to take that risk.. after all art is there for everyone to see and admire.And these are only the paintbrush replicas of the original masterpieces, so their value is anyway greatly diminished. I have chosen six of those sketches. Reason for choosing these:they are less abstract hence more accessible to novices like you.

Glory Days

2006-10-20T02:58:00.000+05:30

Some days I'll never forget :)

1) The day when I saw ET and T-2 on VCR back to back.Both the movies were highly recommended by my friends.We decided to watch ET first. I slept in the middle of ET( which I did during most of the movies).After the movie my friends woke me up and I wondered what the hell was that..i mean whats the big deal..this supposedly cute dude drops from outer space and then they keep talking some boring crap throughout the movie .
AND then we watched T2. That movie changed my life. Arnold became my God( as he was for atleast 90% of other kids then).I was awestruck by the action sequences and special effects( I still am!)

2)When I played Scotland Yard for the first time.And that superiority complex we had over other kids who hadn't played/or didnt like it! They must have low IQs we would think and glow with contemptuous pride.

3)When I discovered the The 30 Chances Funda in Contra. 'Discovered' is a wrong word to use actually. I had known "the funda" for some days.. you had to press some weird combination of keys on the remote to get it , and you had to be quick and flawless.We spent hours waiting to watch the screen where it will show 30 instead of the measley "3". Finally there it was shining like a halo .What an unbelievable orgasmic feeling it was!!!

4)When I read the first "play" of my life in the English class.I don't remember the name of the play or the author but what I do remember is that it was a romantic comedy with a little twist in the end.And what racket we created in the class because the heroine turned out to be the stepsister of the hero.We converted the cute little play into one monster of a literature piece infusing wicked thoughts in the minds of young innocent minds. The teacher(lady) was embarrassed to the core!

5)When I lit the "atom bomb" without a timer for the first time. If you are wondering whats the timer it was just a mechanism whereby you would peel off little flash powder(or whatever) from the string (or whatever) so that it burnt slowly and you had enough time to run far beyond the unsafe limit. After incessant bantering from my cousins I decided it was TIME .Although the bloody bomb exploded even faster than the usual time and I had the bloody shriek in my ears for 2 hours I still was king of the world.

6) My first taste of a mass bunk : Sankranti was( atleast till 12th standard) the biggest day of the year for me. Diwali was big , but Sankranti was bigger.And then imagine after waiting for the whole year , when the D-Day finally arrived there was absolutely no wind( No don't give me that "you don't know how to fly kites" crap. I can do it better than you can wash your you know what )throughout the day.The wave of disappointment and shock that swept the city was comparable to what happenend when Rajkumar died in Bangalore.But we had a better, more constructive solution than burning buses and creating traffic jams.Our whole class decided to bunk the school next day and celebrate Sankranti on 15th! And not a single soul from our class went to school next morning.

7) When we saw the last episode of "Kile Ka Rahasya". I have rarely felt that excitement and anticipation.

8)How can I leave music? This was the day when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. That was the time when Bryan Adams was the best singer in the world and Another Day in Paradise was the best song ever.Oh yes there was some vague band called Pink Floyd(???) who had only one good song called Another Brick in the Wall which had some catchy lyrics.. We don't need any education( it sounded like we don't need No education...buggers didn't even know how to sing)
Smells like was the first song I had heard where a person was screaming as if he was having labour pains and to my own surprise I liked it!