Fuck you Facebook

Really.

Screw you Web Two Dot Oh.

Apparently I have an account on Twitter. I set it up a few months ago and promptly forgot about it. Disappeared from my mind like a beautiful dream, et, etc, etc. And as you may imagine it has seen as little, if not less activity than this blog has over that period of time. A week ago I received information that...fuck that…”received information that”…that phrase is pretty much emblematic of how fucking lame I am at writing.
“The information that I received is listed in the points below: ”…apparently the trauma of high school exams has not yet passed. (Never a pleasure to me unlike to other people I know. You know whom I’m talking about. You…yes you. Do not try hiding behind the toaster, I can still see you and I know where you live.)

Moving on, or moving back, a couple of weeks ago I received a helpful email informing me that somebody was following my feed on Twitter (Link redux, for those of you who didn’t click the first time. For shame!). That woke me up from my semi-doze. (Not my fault…my office faces west and in the late afternoon, a couple of hour before lunch the sun beats down upon the windows and fucks the climate control something mean. This makes the office cozily (read infernally) warm, and that makes me very, very drowsy. Nothing to do with the fact that I’m playing too much of this again.)

Somebody was following me on Twitter! Somebody thought my updates in the form of text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length were worth following. This had me all a-Twitter. “It is my duty to tweet,” I thought to myself. But then I lost interest.

Much like I lost interest in this blog post.

Snippet

Transcript

Me: Porn in unexpected places is always a joy.
Like finding a flower in the dead of winter
Or like a fleeting smile on a face.
Or a glimpse of sunshine on a dark cloudy day

Not Me: Oh god. You are comparing some of the most beautiful things to porn!

Me: Not porn.
Unexpected porn. Totally different.


Edited for grammar and content.

This blog rises from the dead...

...and is promptly decapitated by the anti zombie blog resistance force.

Into the silent dark, a smile on the face, a song in the heart, a large apple on the head.

A month ago, a sign went up in my gym.

And thusly spake the sign, “Verily, tis true that the dark days are upon us. The storms of misfortune have left us without a home, to roam forever in the outer darkness. We go without a shiver, without a quiver, with a firm step and a song in our hearts, marching into the silent dark knowing that tis our fate and tis our duty to abide. But you, you our gentle, sagacious patrons, fear not. Fear not for thine wellbeing has been insured. For thou, for thou art waiting two brave holds, waiting but for thee to accept one and to call it…home.”

In a little while the chemicals wore out. The words on the sign were now a shade more prosaic but the meaning was pretty much the same, “Our lease is up. The gym is closing. You can switch to one of two branches in the area. They’re both pretty good. Think of this not as an abrupt disruption of your daily routine but as a welcome change from the tedious pattern of your life.”

And then the chemicals wore out a little more and that last sentence was gone.

So I need to pick a new place to go work out in. One is in a shopping center strip mall and the other is in an anonymous block of office buildings. The one in the strip mall is slightly closer, but the one in the office block is slightly larger and is open later. These are some of the factors that I need to weigh and evaluate before picking one.

Of course this is all a load of bull crap. I’m going to go work out at the two of them and then pick the one with the better eye candy. Eye candy and gyms go together like supermodels, handcuffs and butter.

Um…well. Yeah. So yeah. I don’t actually pay any attention to eye candy during reps. One experience with smushing my fingers and then nearly pulping my head(As the smushed fingers signaled their displeasure with the smushing and struck work for the day, muttering darkly under their breaths about unionization, Das Kapital and the glorious revolution.) with a forty five pound weight were enough to convince me that that was a bad idea. Between reps is another matter altogether. By another matter I mean that discreet and polite eye candy observation is called for…Always keeping in mind that gym shorts are well…um…a little thin.

Damn butter, handcuffs, supermodels, eye candy and a veiled erection reference. I’m good.

So yeah. Um…Abide and go forth bravely into the cold night.

Funny Blog Post.

Really.

Supply side economic observations.

At the supermarket, the bottles of tomato ketchup have pictures of tomatoes on them.
The packs of detergent have pictures of babies and/or women on them.
Detergent is therefore made from distilled essence of babies and/or women?

Yes, I’m just trying to get out of doing my laundry.

I approve of Kingfisher's T&A policy.

A couple of weeks ago, rushing to make my connection at Bombay airport. (That’s my subtle way of setting the scene up. It is true. I am a master of tact and subtlety. In these two areas I stand alone, surveying my domain, master of all I see.)

During the rushing, rushing that was very, very painful because of the fucking large ass suitcase I was dragging behind me while futilely trying to get it to roll behind me on its “confused about their role in the universe” wheels. (Suitcase wheels: Those round anomalies in the fabric of reality that refuse to roll but instead find themselves a comfortable spot at the bar from which they refuse to budge thank you very much!)

But I digress. Rushing in process. Dodging of the hordes of people in the airport being done simultaneously. (Master of multi tasking. And Tact. And Subtlety.) And then, everything stops. By everything, I mean me. The rest of the universe trundles along. I stopped. My attention had been grabbed by the sign right out side the entrance to the terminal. The sign had a list of everything that a person was not allowed to bring on board a flight.

When I say everything, you surely think, “He exaggerates. He exaggerates for comic effect.” To that I reply, “No. I fucking do not. I am truly a reporter of sagacious disposition and of a nature that holds veracity and accuracy in the highest esteem.” And we speak this way because that’s the way we fucking roll.

Back to the list of everything. It contained the usual suspects. The pistols, the rifles, the knives, the explosives, the firecrackers, the gas cylinders, the cans of petrol, the flammable material, the compressed gas tanks etc. etc.. Things you expect on that sign. Things that make you think, “These people here clearly are on top of things.” But they just had to go and ruin it. The list they decided needed to be comprehensive. Everything was the philosophy they subscribed to. Everything. No coy minimalism here. None of that brevity that is so open to misinterpretation.

The usual suspects were followed by the less usual suspects. The Molotov Cocktails, the spears, the clubs…Well, not yet outlandish.

Not yet.

And halfway through the list, there emerged, that shining example of outlandishness.

“Throwing Stars.”

You know. Shurikens. The kind used by Ninjas and four mutant adolescent turtles. Throwing fucking stars. Seriously. Did they need to fucking put that down? Is Bombay a major hub for Ninja traffic? Are there hordes of men and women dressed all in black going through customs and security with nary a sound with one too many a throwing star? Is there a plague of throwing stars on passengers at the Bombay Airport? Are there other Ninja weapons that one should not carry? Nunchuks? Katanas? Do the Ninjas eschew the elevators and the escalators and instead do they choose to run up walls to the international departure lounge? Do they fling throwing stars at people working at concesion stands to get their attention? Do they try to pass the throwing stars off as dislodged suitcase wheels!

The list needs more.

• Lightsabers.
• Broadswords.
• Pikes.
• Tridents.
• Gandalf’s magic staff. (Insert penis joke here)
• Photon Torpedos.
• Rocket Launched Chainsaws.
• Robot Ninjas with throwing stars.

Damn...

This writing shit is hard.

Cheesecake, good cake or the best cake?

So I’m sharing my current digs with a cat. A very, very friendly cat. Also a very, very overweight cat. A very, very overweight cat with the body image of a wee little kitten. She firmly believes that she weighs as much as a feather and that the rest of world should see her the way she sees herself.

A wee little kitten.

Inside every fat cat is a thin cat trying to get out.

The cat has decided that my lap is the ideal place to take a little nap. Not liking the fact that this nearly crushes my thighs to a fine pulp I always protest. And then I try to push her off my lap.

In a movie there are usually bad guys and good guys. Well, in the interesting kind of movie. I’m sure that in movies where someone’s feeling are examined, and people discuss past traumas and the passing of childhood and the uncertainty of life and the transience of existence and the intangibility of material possessions and the transcendence of love, there are protagonists and there are antagonists.

“Memories of a friend drowning”: Antagonist.

“Memories of your sixth birthday”: Protagonist

“Memories of a friend drowning on your sixth birth day” : Protagonist. (What? There were cakes and presents. Too bad for the little tyke. If he had only learnt to float)…Fine…antagonist.

“Discussion about the transience of life”: Antagonist

“Discussion about the glory of cheesecake”: Protagonist.

So, scientifically, we have established that a protagonist and an antagonist do exist in every kind of movie. And their very nature dictates that there can be no peaceful coexistence. There has to be conflict and only one can win. At some point or the other during the narration they will duke it out. If you’re lucky, they will duke it out multiple times, sometimes face to face and sometime through proxies and sometimes the antagonist will wipe out the protagonist’s family with the aid of a well placed incendiary device. This unwise course of action almost always annoys the protagonist and causes him to go postal on the antagonist and his minions.

For the purposes of this discussion, the protagonist is “Memories of your sixth birthday” (henceforth abbreviated to MOYB) and the antagonist is the “Discussion about the transience of life” (who shall from this point on be referred to as DATTOL). The antagonist was deeply in love “Discussion about the glory of cheesecake” (we shall abbreviate this name to Mighty Lady Omegatron Six). MOYB and DATTOL used to be the best of friends but had had a falling out over whether it was “Paint your own pottery” studio or it was Paint your own “Pottery studio.” Now they were bitter enemies who fought each other at every opportunity.

Finally matters came to a head and after one particularly galling defeat, DATTOL acquired the incendiary device from a couple of paragraphs up and blew up Mighty Lady Omegatron Six, her family (mum, dad and uncle designated as comic relief), her pets (canary and tame toaster), a passing postman (Two days from retirement. Poor guy), three trees and a partridge in one of those trees. MOYB nearly went insane with grief. But as in all good stories the grief hardened into a fiery (Hardening into fire. No kidding.) desire for revenge.

And here we are now, three years later, after a quest that took MOYB across three continents he has tracked down DATTOL, and this is the time for their final confrontation. On this narrow windswept balcony, the two face each other, the only light that they have the blazing sun, three floodlights and a small emergency lamp. No words are exchanged. No words are necessary.

MOYB is unarmed. DATTOL is not. He has with him his trusty switchblade.

It makes a tiny “snick” sound when he extends the blade.

Kinda like the sound made by an irritated cat’s claws when you try to push her (the cat, not the claws) off your lap.