Saturday, April 26, 2003

I've done it at last!


The photos are up! My sister's wedding, which, if you know me, is also my best friend's wedding. Have fun! I love you, Jyothi, and I'm reaalllllly sorry this was so late.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Welcome back, Mr. Shenoy


It's been a while. Last entry on Thursday? Okay let me get to what I did again.

Friday was the first day I climbed the wall. Hoisting a 79 kg body up a partial overhang proved impairingly difficult. To top it all the ladies there seemed to be built of feathers or something - or, in my opinion, they're just being favoured by gravity. Anyways. Life's few uncertain moments. Climbing happened on Saturday too and a wonderful one on Sunday at Ramnagar. I don't know about this man and nature feels like one thing but you can say this - rocks don't like you climbing on them. Yep, they're around and it can be mighty scary a few dozen feet vertically up, but eventually you get the hang of it. Trust your feet, they say. Sounds easy, doesn't it? What you've been trusting all along, my dear friend, is gravity. Try trusting your feet when they're horizontal. They can take your weight, but you'll never know unless you let it go. The unsung heroes, to melodramatize the situation.

It's interesting to see discipline and arrogance in one sly shot. I don't know if I can stand arrogance in someone else - maybe there's too much in me to allow anyone else to flaunt theirs. I can't say who but it occured to me that I admire a little bit of arrogance, and *shrug* away excess amounts of it. But it rankles within to see unbridled superfluousness - the kind that some people have that somehow indicates innate superiority. Phooey I say.

Ghazals are back again.
shahar me.n sab ko kahaa.N milatii hai rone kii fursat
apanii izzat bhii yahaa.N ha.Nsane ha.Nsaane se rahii

Thursday, April 17, 2003

A full word's worth?

Each year the Washington Post's Style Invitational asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing only one letter and supply a new definition.

Here are the 2002 winners:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts
until you realize it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose
of getting laid.

Giraffiti: Vandalism painted very, very high.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running
late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra
credit).

Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all
these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth
explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

Dopeer Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter
when they come at you rapidly.

And, the winner of the Washington Post's Style Invitational:

Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

My blog has serious hipatitis, and if you're confused in sarchasm, you'd just be an ignoranus.

Monday, April 14, 2003

I'm not impressed by the Goddess. Varsha in her latest has turned out a damp squib. The article's interesting in that there's a tremendous amount of fighting spirit in there. But it falls short, severely short of making the Price of Robert lower. Don't get me wrong - I don't agree with Robert - I do believe Indians are good fighters, and we've kicked the Paki ass more than a few times. But the arguments she used were, subtly put, irrelevant. Hightlighting phrases such as " well-defended strong points and fortresses without a fight, desertion of his area... " are terribly inconclusive, since the context is not given and we have no idea if whoever wrote it is talking about India or Pakistan. And highlighting "Guard of honour" ?????? But if you want an argument about how we crushed, nah...destroyed, nah...annihilated the Pakis in the 1971 skirmish (I can't think of it as a war. That's for equals) look at this page. Sadly, the Surrender isn't written - but I'm sure we saw the tails between the legs.

Reliance is now declaring CDMA has won. We are getting phenomenally ridiculous here. Get this from moutshut.com - the actual price of the service is hidden.
a) You can only send SMSes to other Reliance users. Okay, that might go away.
b) The first 400 minutes are free. After 500 minutes of 40 p per minute (which again doesn't include interconnect charges) you pay a whopping Rs. 1.90 per minute surcharge.
c) Sehwag ki ma ka ad was the worst ad of the century.

The third is my opinion of course, but what the heck. CDMA has won? Tumhaari maa ka!

Later.

Friday, April 11, 2003

Main aur meri tanhai

Aksar ye baatein karte hain. Ki why the heck am I sitting on the net at 2 AM, watching pretty pictures of a pretty Zinta, wondering if I should, at some point, go to sleep.

Pray tell me why we give so much bhaav to family cand community. I've been reading Business Maharajas by Gita Piramal, where either one is a Marvadi, a Parsi, a Bania or an insignificant pain in the posterior. Or nearly so. Anyways, community seems to have a big time influence over these "150 billion" rupee companies. 150 billion? Excuse my sorry ass, but we don't talk in billions in this country, Mrs. Piramal. We say "Crores". And please roll the tongue properly, otherwise we'll send you straight to jail. Do not collect $200.

But, as usual, I've digressed. Community. This phenomenon that's supposed to bind these massive businesses together - Birla (the Aditya Types, and even GD) supposedly keeps his senior folks primarily Madu. And Tata, Parsi. Reasons? Whoever knows....maybe they like looking at each other and saying 'At least you can't call me Kanjoos Marvadi'. (In the interest of political correctness, kindly introduce something there for Parsi's too - Ed. Phooey - Deepak) I found phenomenon closer to home - There's this female in dancing class who we found was Madu. So I'm like Oh! And she's like so who else is, and I looked towards Mugs. (Really, really sorry for this, Mugs) And suddenly there was pyaar. There was suddenly nirvana, and extreme juxtaposition of the woman with Mugs, which led to Mugs looking so uncomfortable I nearly committed the proverbial hara-kiri for my sin. It was amazing though - the fact that one is a Madu is binding even though we've danced together for what 2 months now? We kokke's suck at this and I'm so so glad. Actually we don't - I've had enough kokke bull to last me a lifetime. Remember the next door neighbour who said "We should produce more kids because the non-brahmins are producing more and therefore we're going to get extinct". And the man who said marry someone who'll "preferably" not work, so she can take care of my mom. Ok, that's a personal piss-off thing that I put into the kokke bracket, but you get my drift.

Meri tanhai is telling me to get the heck out of here. Buh bye for now.

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Let's get to the point, let's roll another joint.

You don't know how it feels. If you want to know, and wouldn't mind reading the praise of a musician by a musician, read Suzie's Stoned by the stones - after which you might ask, "What's a telecaster?". The answer is no, it is NOT Mandira Bedi.

Speaking of Mandira Bedi, the Sikh community is enraged that she calls her dogs (beat this) "Sardar Ruginder Singh Bedi" and "Buster Upadhyay Kaushal". We are no longer interested in names such as "Tommy" and "Tiger" for our dogs. "Sardar Ruginder Singh Bedi, Fetch", we will say, making sure that "Buster" Upadhyay Kaushal, BUK in short, is tethered to Raghuvir Singh Khamba which is our light pole, using Rassinder Singh Jham which is our handsome restraining chain. And our fish, of course is called Jullunder Singh Gill. The gutter in front of the house is Saade Naala, and...(editor: we stopped him before he went to the mothers and sisters houses)

They say the "Police is yet to register the case". Largely because the policemen are rolling on the floor laughing so hard that tears are streaming from their eyes, so they can't see the sardars looking like life's a bitch. Doggone it. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, especially one with a turban reading the khalsa (or whatever it is that they read).

I now know why the Sardars are the butt of so many jokes.

Monday, April 07, 2003

Varsha rains on the war parade

The queen has sung again. Read all about her digressing tirade on the defence bureaucrats.

And someone at the AOL call center here got a call from the US saying "I want to cancel my account because you Indians aren't supporting the war against Iraq". Pronounced Eye-Rak. But I digress. This might sound like severely stupid, but think of it - an US AOL subscriber feels strongly enough about the war that he's going to cancel his account just because the (frikking) call center is in India which does not support the war. It may sound unhinged, but it's patriotism in an unhinged sort of way. I know you're thinking this is stupid, to boycott business in a political war. You're probably right.

Sunday, April 06, 2003

Body language, cancerians and other strange phenomena

Today was the day of the jackal. Let me begin at the beginning. Like there's anywhere else to start.

It began at lunch. The stones concert got me out too late. Lunch was with someone who looked like a goddess, but will not allow me to say it. Let's just say Suzie is one lucky bastard. Doesn't it always feel good when someone who's got an absolute lemon in life has one singular, no-frills, all thrills, happy go lucky sort of day? I don't know what it was, but someone was at the peak of dumb-smile-ness today. And it made me happy.

Oh yes, it started to rain. The weather was extravagantly romantic. And I was in the office, for heaven's sake. We just couldn't take it any more...life has got to have more meaning, dammit. So we played cluedo. Which was fun, even though it made me think. Gets you thinking though - I'm starting to enjoy playing cluedo on a breezy, windy, totally morantic day. I'm frikking growing old, dammit. But then, who the frik cares.

Evening was gym time - and boy have I got muscles or have I got muscles. The answer to both questions, as I found out, was a resounding NO. I prefer to say I'm proteinaciously challenged. That Mr. India guy was there, but he had to back off in the corner and do his 5000 kg bar dead lift with one hand while drinking water with his other, and probably simultaneously talking on the cell phone, which I didn't notice because I was too busy lifting my entire upper body for the (beat this, dude) SECOND situp.

Then I was supposed to have a couple drinks, which got vetoed by a call from Viren who said "Barista. Women.". Or something close. So I went. Met a guy who started analysing everyone's body language and saying "He's talking to his girlfriend on the phone. I know because he's pointing his LEFT toe 45 degrees away from Mecca, and his nose is aligned towards Timbuktoo, which gives you ample evidence that he's thinking of love". Duh. How could I be so stupid, I think. Anyways, the women were cute, so who cares. There was this I-was-born-learning-russian dudette, who knew her spasiba's and dosvidaniya's. And then this extremely giggly woman, who'd laugh if you said "bldfjslkdfjfdf". I know because I tried. So we went from body language to cancerian's and scorpio's and cusp's and how people who are cancerians will never propose unless you have a third party bring them together, which defeats the purpose according to me, because if you need a third party to help you propose, what are you going to do when you need to have kids, but the sun-sign crowd were lapping all this and asking surreally philosophical questions like "so what about taureans". To which I butt in "Some taureans are very beautiful. So are you a taurean? No? Ah, Cancerian. Okay, some cancerians are very beautiful" which wasn't as prophetic but I thought it was pretty much on the dot. I'm sure I scored some points there, but you never know. The women nowadays. Never know what will ever impress them. Whoever thought of woman's lib has got to have her brain up her posterior. Don't you see, if women were inferior, why would men be practically insulting themselves to get the slightest gleam of "I'm impressed" happen to a woman's eyes?????

So the next time you tap your foot incessantly, stop. That means you're gay, or that you're sexually deprived. Or both. Come to think of it, getting rejected by a gay person must be the absolute insult. First you give up on an entire sex and decide to go for your own kind, and then you get the big middle finger?

To set the record straight, I'm still on the straight path. Gay might be politically correct, but women have far better looking breasts.

Friday, April 04, 2003

We have a name!

My blog about arbitrary things that catch my attention. That's what I'm going to call this blog.

So. I'm not going to talk about the war, but Varsha (who's just divine) Bhosle has this to say, which I believe sums up most of my thoughts.

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

Why is this funny?

Just what is it about people and humour? What makes them feel that just because something is funny, it can no longer generate passion or emotion? Jeez. Why do I rant, you ask. Well, I've just found out Jyothi's performance was berated as a "comedy show" because it had undertones of the evil humour monster. As in, they were funny on stage, and somehow that's bad because it doesn't generate the kind of emotion that is required by playback, which is a form of un-scripted, impromptu theatre that requires an actor to regurgitate what she has heard in a highly emotional manner, which can't involve lots of humour even though the audience enjoys it because we say so, dammit, and you guys are new to this and you'll learn. This is not just unflattering, it's ridiculous. What gets me is the suggestion that there can be "too much" humour. Well, picture this: An audience that's just given you a fairly funny story to recide - and have laughed through the story teller's recital. Now, the actors are supposed to somehow mellow that down into a emotional goose pimple generating rendition which makes them cry? Hello? You already have the audience smiling, it's time to get them in splits!!! Sounds logical to me. I guess it isn't the story of everyone's life, but why we over-emphasize and under-laugh is beyond me.

Learn to smile a little more. And for heaven's sake, use your eyes.

Time to go back?

This guy deserves a medal for ingenuity, at least.