Dromaius novaehollandiae

My hair goop is reacting badly to Bangalore’s climate. The heat and the dust do not agree with the goop and now my hair has the consistency of barbed wire. Barbed wire having a bad day. Barbed wire having a succession of bad days. (It started with someone stealing the Barbed Wire’s mail, and ended with the Barbed Wire’s spouse running away with the toaster and most of the couple’s liquid assets.
(Bear with me. I’m at a creative nadir over here. I originally was going to write about nudist colonies. I’ve this mental image of a nude colonist jumping off of a ship claiming this land for the Queen and the freedom to feel the wind against one’s um…Mahjong Areas. (Thankfully, that mental image is pixilated.)(Mahjong could be the name of a porno flick. Really. Mah-Jong. The mind boggles.)(Shouldn’t pixilated mean covered by pixies?)(That mental image is a little bit freaky now.) (I’ve lost track of all the brackets.)(Brackets for the sake of brackets.))
It is a combination of barbed wire and concrete. Concrete wire with a bad temper.

No. I am not obsessed with my hair.

Well…maybe just a little bit.

I’d like to write more, but there’s that whole (presumptuously termed) creative nadir over there. So I will not.
That there was the perfect excuse. I’d like to do something. But I can’t, so I won’t. Somebody should be taking notes down recording these words for posterity. For generations of slackers to learn from and emulate.

And that is the first time that I have ever used the word emulate. It is a good word. One that should be used more often. Emu-late: A perpetually tardy flightless bird.

I apologize.

I’ll stop typing right now.

A display from the depths of geekdom...

..that has me cheering.

The New Version of Blogger

The new version of Blogger in beta is dead!
Long live the new version of Blogger!
(P.S. The old version of Blogger is not dead, but it would like to retire for a little while... maybe go to Hawaii or play World of Warcraft all day? It begs you to let it play World of Warcraft all day.)

Vacation?

...Hachoo!

A stitch in time is better than two in the bush.

The creator of the phrase, “The birds and the bees" should be sued for false advertising. It is misleading. A speech about “the birds and the bees” to an audience of naïve linguistically challenged Ornithological Entomologists could have tragic consequences. The PowerPoint slides would cause considerable consternation. The audience members would be appalled and may shoot off angry missives to the organizing committee. They might even lynch the speaker (Ornithological Entomologists are notorious for taking the law into their own hands. The only thing scarier than a mob of angry Ornithological Entomologists is a herd of stampeding pachyderms. Unless the pachyderms are also Ornithological Entomologists. In which case you’re pretty much screwed. And not a ”the birds and the bees” screwing.).

How did the creator of that phrase come up with it anyway? What led him to make that logical connection?

“Look, there is an eagle, soaring majestically. That’s kinda’ like humping isn’t it?”

“Ouch! I got stung by a bee! It hurts. That’s kinda’ like humping isn’t it?”

“Oooh, Honey and Feathers. That’s kinda’ like humping isn’t it?”

…Well actually that last one…um never mind.

The inaccuracy, nay the sheer misleading nature of English phrases causes me a great deal of distress.

“Take it with a grain of salt,” is not a suggestion to improve the flavor of that rather bland soup. It has, and my chemistry is rusty here, so excuse any mistakes (That was meant for one very, very “special” person), nothing to do with sodium, potassium or chlorine. Apparently salt equates to skepticism. Why the fuck does salt make you to look at stuff with a jaundiced eye? “Ah just the right amount of salt, and I do not fucking believe a thing you say.”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Not just misleading but potentially fatal! The only way it can keep the doctor away is if you use the apple to bludgeon the doctor about the head and shoulders to knock him or her unconscious.

“A little knowledge is dangerous.” Really? I know very little about sharks and venomous snakes. The little bit of knowledge I do have involves me keeping a safe distance from them. Is that knowledge dangerous? No. It keeps me from becoming a nice little snack for a ravenous Great White.

“Fit as a fiddle”. I’ve never ever seen a fiddle do twenty push-ups or run a seven minute mile. Some poor soul may have strings attached from his nose to his toes and then have a burly assistant rub a stick across those ropes? That’s just…wrong. And probably would show up in the “the birds and the bees” PowerPoint presentation.

“Laughter is the best medicine.” Refer to section about apple.

“There's more than one way to skin a cat.” Why? Fur? Meat? Sadism? Why? How do people even know that? In the dim distant past, did some budding Proverb-ologist go out and rip the epidermis off of blameless felines and thus prove to the masses that yes, cats could be skinned in multiple ways, head first, tail first, belly up, belly down…

“Rats desert a sinking ship.” No, they were trying to get away from that Proverb-ologist who had run out of cats. The cats being dead had caused the rat population to explode. The circle of life yada, yada, yada.

So yeah. The English language. Good stuff.

68.0388555 kilograms

The British Airways website stated that my cabin luggage can measure 56 by 45 by 25 centimeters. It did not say how heavy it could be. So I called up the nice customer service folks.

“Pray tell me, how heavy can my cabin luggage be?” asked I, a gentle smile playing on my face. The person at the other end of the phone may not have been able to see my smile, but surely he could hear it. (It was a smile to behold. It was as smile much like the one that plays across the face of an intrepid Space Ninja Pirate when he is faced with a horde of green skinned aliens bearing down upon him. Bearing down upon him, armed with razor blades and superfluous ellipses, and with bloody murder on their minds (Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, I have had nightmares of that. Really. Okay maybe not. But It would be cool if I had had.) The smile isn’t a rueful smile. It is a smile of quiet confidence. One that may play across the face of a Space Ninja Pirate when a horde of green skinned aliens is bearing down upon him and he realizes that as a Space Ninja Pirate, it behooves him to kick ass).

I smiled. Not because I planned on kicking ass but because I’m a pleasant chap.

“Pray tell me, how heavy can my cabin luggage be?” asked I. Not for the second time, because I fear that you, vapid reader, might have lost the thread after that minor digression.

“Fifty Six by Forty Five by Twenty centimeters” said the Oracle of the fleet.

“Thank you”, said I, Pleasant chap that I am. “Now how heavy can it be?”

“Hmmm. Let me check.” Said the wise Oracle. ”Whither flyest thou? And fromest wherest? Foul Varlet.”

The “Foul varlet” was uncalled for, but I let it slide. “To Bangalore by way of Heathrow, o dispenser of weighty knowledge.”

“Forsooth, rejoice mortal, for thine trip hath no restrictions on the weight of thine cabin luggage.”

“Really?” That’s me doing my well known impression of an incredulous Space Ninja Pirate (Still facing the green skinned horde, still smiling, but now realizing that in addition to his Katana-cutlass, he has a load of tactical nuclear weapons. And a copy of Wren and Martin (To subdue the superfluous ellipsis).)

“Yep…Foul varlet.”

“So you mean to tell me that if I could take a hundred and fifty pounds of cabin luggage?”

“That is correct. As long as you do not need help to stow it in the overhead luggage compartment.”

“Ah. So if I could shoulder press a hundred and fifty pounds,”…I can’t…”I’m cool.”

“Yep…Foul varlet.”

“But if on the other hand I’m a nice ninety year old lady”…No, I do not have issues with my gender identity…”I’d be totally and utterly screwed?”

“Um, yeah I guess so.”

“Not keen on being brotherly and helping the old are we, here at British Airways, eh?”

“Yep…Foul varlet.”

“Excellent.”

What's this all about, eh?

Coming back to my apartment after being away for the better part of a week, I find that my mail box is stuffed with junk mail. Actual physical junk mail. Like spam but not an email. It’s like someone had shove cans of inedible meat into my mailbox. Meat that had lain there in the damp, overcrowded mailbox and had mutated into a coagulated mass that chased unwary travelers down unwary roads and…Okay I promised myself that I wouldn’t have any mutated creatures from the Pits of Doom in this post.

So…Spam. Most of it went directly into the trash can placed right next to the mailbox. Except for one which was addressed to “Our dear neighbours…”, that’s their “dear neighbours”, that’s me. I’m pretty sure that my neighbours did not go through the trouble of mailing me. My neighbours consist of a nice Chinese family and a lady who drives a blue beetle. Going up to the post office wouldn’t’ make sense. They could slip a note under my door or throw it at me or something. The whole ailing it routine made no sense.

There could be only one explanation. Evil space aliens had taken them captive and from their base of operations in the apartment were sending me cloying letters. Letters which promised me that I could cut my debt by refinancing my home mortgage. It seemed like a good offer. Except that I do not possess a home or a mortgage. But it was sure kind of my alien nieghbours to think about me. It just goes to show you that being scaly, green skinned and covered with poisonous barbs does not make you a bad human being…uh alien being.

The safety certificate for an elevator (A hotel elevator, the hotel I stayed in, in Ottawa. If you were interested. If you weren’t tough luck.) had its safety certificate issued my the Ottawa Elevating Device commission. Elevating Device. Does that include magic carpets, and witch’s broomsticks? They elevate. They are devices. Do they need the certificate to be displayed in a prominent position? Will it affect their aerodynamic nature? (Someone said that elevating device could refer to illegal narcotics. I’m not going to go there.)

Lessons from north of the border.

· You can bar hop alone only so much before you start worrying that you are an alcoholic.

· The restaurant with the prettiest waitresses has the lousiest food.

· A beaver tail is not in fact a tail from a beaver. And despite this, it is delicious.

· Canadians like their maple syrup.

· Montréalers like their strip clubs.

· Driving at a hundred miles an hour, rolling down your windows and blasting cold air at your innocent, sleeping passenger can be disconcerting.

· You will always be a quarter short of your cab fare.

· There will always be a bad American Sitcom on the television when you turn it on.

· Canadians have the least impressive money in the known universe. (It has ice hockey players on it! It looks like a ticket for a ice-hockey game!)

Solanum lycopersicum, formerly Lycopersicon lycopersicum

I was installing something on my laptop that promised to take a half hour to install. It was late and I needed to sleep. So I shoved the laptop under my bed, turned of the lights and tried to sleep. Except that now there was this eerie glow oozing out from under the bed. It looked like a scene from a horror movie, the unpleasant kind, where the monsters below the bed are not friendly but are intent upon eating you. Perhaps with a tasty garlic sauce.

But if there were monsters under the bed, I suppose that they would diverted by the wonder that is the internet. And by wonder I mean porn. And by diverted I mean…diverted. How would a monster find porn on the internet? Googling monster porn? Or would they go to monster.com? How would they handle that disappointment? No monsters. What about truth in advertising?

Monster.com? “I need a job. I should definitely go to Monster.com. Because jobs are monstrous, and monsters are hiring?”

I was sitting in a sweltering basement waiting (That would be not half bad start to a horror novel, “I was sitting in a sweltering basement. I could hear the creature’s foot steps on the floor above my head. The half audible snorts and growls as it looked for porn on Monster.com”) for my Canadian Visa. My slip said B124. I naively assumed that this meant that my turn would come after B123 and before B125.

I was wrong.

(At this juncture, I need to ask you if you expected me to say that I was right, that the process took me ten minutes and I rode happily away into the sunset. Or took the train happily away into the sunset. Why do people ride/drive/swim away into the sunset? The sun is setting. Pretty soon you cannot see a thing. You might run over an unwary monster hunting for a mate. (This is one of those primitive monsters that has not yet discovered the internet. It finds the mates the old fashioned way. By jumping unwary travelers and shaking them down for information.) We need more inspired imagery. People riding away into a brick wall. A short ride, and then the rest is rest.)

They started at B104 and crept steadily up to B116. Steady progress. I approved. And then it all came crumbling down. From B116, they jumped to B142 and then to B183. And then they came back to B117. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was but a temporary lapse into insanity. Normalcy had been restored. The barbarians had been beaten back from the gates. B120 was reached. Champagne bottles had their corks popped. There was wild cheering. The proletariat rejoiced in the streets. A national holiday was declared. Somebody important gave a speech. People were moved. Good resolutions were made. Rainbows were born. Rabbits and deer pranced blithely. The chicken crossed the road. Tom-ay-to, the committee decided. Tom-ay-to and not Tom-ah-to. The Tom-ay-to faction lost all credibility. It’s leaders retired to the countryside to grow Tomatoes. Bereft of the Tom-ay-to-Tom-ah-to analogy, people everywhere had to improvise. “Potato-Cranberry”, “Alligator-Crocodile” were proposed. The people who proposed it were banned to the countryside, where they moonlighted as manure for the Tom-ay-to faction and tried with notable success to avoid the single Monsters that now plagued the countryside; the ones that sidled up to them and offered to buy them drinks.

I had cheered too soon. B120 led to B126 and then B129. Loud booing. The wailing of teeth and the gnashing of women could be heard. The barbarians returned to the gates, and this time snuck in while pretending to be Used Encyclopedia Salespeople (They were not selling used Encyclopedias, as one may think. They were Encyclopedia Salespeople who had been used…for assorted purposes. Usually as props in Knock-Knock Jokes and as stepladders.). And then they went wild. A vowel was introduced. B129 became I301. In hot pursuit of I301 was J42. this was followed by YOUREFUCKED27 and UPYOURS43. I began to suspect that the consulate staff was mocking me. Just a suspicion, mind you, the hints were far too subtle and I wasn’t quite sure.

And the next number was B124.

(Actually it wasn’t. There also was a riot, a parade, a monster’s ball and a discussion about the merits of chicken soup over Tomahto soup. But I’m lazy and I do not feel like typing that all out.)

Go...

Read a book or something. I'm lazy and I have nothing to say.

Except that I am lazy. Which I just said. So I have nothing to say apart from the fact that I am lazy.

And sleepy.

I'm always sleepy. I think it has something to do with the fact that I rarely sleep more than four hours on a weeknight.

A couple of days ago, I saw a huge billboard, one covered with huge pictures of scantily clad models. And all I could think off was, “Why do they look so pissed off?” It was more than slightly unnerving.(Yes, it was. Even given my oft mentioned fantasy of two super models and butter. Lots of butter.) A horde of thirty foot tall women staring down balefully at me. Maybe they were hungry? They certainly looked hungry. Maybe, given their advanced state of starvation I looked like something that would be vaguely edible with a side of ketchup and a dash of pepper.
(If you now have an image of me covered in ketchup and pepper, I apologize. Or maybe you I should not? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink say no more?)

I get this strange urge to thank ATMs when they dispense money. It seems like the polite thing to do, and I’m a polite kind of guy.

Maybe I should thank the billboards.

Forbes.

I’ve never been a big fan of fortune cookies. They are barely edible and they taste like cardboard (No, I have not tasted cardboard. I’m used the analogy for dramatic impact. If I could have inserted a drum-roll and mood music at that point I would have. I’d have had the camera pan in to a close up of the cookie’s face, the cookie would then, in a suitably deep and heroic voice, say “Come and get it motherfuckers.”

It always is “Come and get it motherfuckers.” and not “Come and get it motherfuckers!”. You cannot be heroic with an exclamation mark. And cookies are notorious for being completely deadpan, even in the most adverse of circumstances. The cookies that went down with the Titanic went down calmly, smoking cigars and playing poker. (The chocolate-chip cookie won the last hand with an inside straight. It however was the dealer and the oatmeal cookie suspected that it (the chocolate chip cookie) had been dealing from the bottom of the deck. The oatmeal cookie had politely coughed to indicate that it thought that something suspicious was afoot. But before it could say anything more. The fucking ship sank...If you do not believe me, see any one of those fucking innumerable documentaries about the Titanic sinking. Try for one of those that tries to establish an atmosphere of suspense during the documentary. Every fucking person knows that the fucking ship sank. The efforts to build suspense could be better spent in a documentary about Paint Drying. (The Paint Drying documentary is very good! It follows the paint from early childhood to it’s last days, as it sits at the head of the dining table, the Patriach of a large colourful family. ))),and not even cardboard fresh from the oven, but cardboard that never turned out right. The kind of cardboard that did drugs in school, graduated to petty crime and spent most of its adult life in prison.

Not only do they taste bad, they also are a prime example of false advertising. You do sometimes get a fortune, “Business will prosper today” or “You will reap the benefits of an old friendship”. (I like that second one. I’m getting this incredible urge to say “Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, say no more”) Those are the fortune cookies that try to stick to the straight and narrow. And then those are those lazy bastards who come up with gems, gems such as “Hard work will help you succeed” or “Exercise is good for health.” That isn’t a fucking fortune cookie. That wasn’t a fucking fortune, it was a statement. Those should be called statement cookies. (Speaking of exercise, today at the gym I was subjected to a “documentary” showing people exercising. And one person exercised and then said that they felt empowered. I have no fucking clue what that meant. “Crunches have fucking empowered me.” Yeah? How? No, really. How? )

But today, the cookies sank to a lower level. I broke one open, and this is what the “fortune” said:

“Good bakers always make plenty of dough.” Yeah, that left me speechless…well it would have if had been talking to the cookie. Or if I had been giving a speech. What’s next?

Insult cookies?

“You are dumb. Fuck off.”

“Loser!”

News cookies?

“Bombs exploded somewhere.”

“Armies invaded that country.”

Small talk cookies?

“How ‘bout that weather, eh?”

“How ‘bout that game/match/show last night, eh?”

Creepy cookies?

“Oh yes, shake those buns baby.”

“Have I got something baking for you?”

(Nicely done baking references over there I do think)

I’d like a fortune cookie. One with an actual fortune. One that says, “Here’s a billion dollars” and actually comes with a billion dollars.

(I’m sleepy and I’m not going to proof read or spell check.)

Feline culinary delights

Read a sign at a restaurant that said, “The world’s best fries.” How does one judge what the world’s best fries are? There is no objective way of measuring it. you can say the fires are good, or that they suck. But best? I beg to disagree. There will always be one fry around the corner, the one which you have not tested which could be a better fry. It’s like Schrödinger’s cats, if the cats were made out of potatoes and deep fried.

Alternatively you could have the fried Olympics, where fries from all over the world competed to judge who was the best fry of them all. Fries in track and field events and in aquatics. Competing against each other, to judge the best fry of them all. And the winner of the main events, a triskadecathalon, would ascend the podium to receive his or her medal right after which he/she would be promptly eaten by one of the judges.

(As you may have guessed, these bracketed sentences are here for me to express my inability to write anything meaningful. I’m at a loss to even fill these brackets.)

You’d think a freak accident would involve mutated mushroom, a three headed antelope and Spiderman bumping into each other in a hallway and ending up in an ungainly pile. Freaks and an accident. A freak accident.

Sadly that isn’t the case. A freak accident is when a large spool of cable TV wire falls off a truck passing you in the opposite direction, and proceeds to completely mangle your front bumper. A mutant accident created in a secret laboratory by a mad scientist, a freak accident?

A brief study of space in more than four dimensions.

One of the lesser known laws of physics in the “Law of Wallet-detritus Attraction”. It isn’t a very catchy title but it works. Badly and creakily, but it works. It is the property by which a guy's wallet in a state of existence attracts objects that have no business existing. This leads to a the wallet expanding in every possible dimension and a couple of improbable ones. (Sockspace, where all missing socks go from the portal in the dryer. DiskSpace, which is a kind of negative space in that it never is enough. Mostly because, well, wallets are impinging upon its boundaries).

My wallet is no exception. It has stuff in it that clearly does not belong. Receipts for things I bought. Receipts for things I returned. Receipts for things I would never buy. Receipts so faded that I do cannot make out which of the previous three categories they belonged to.

ID cards of every possible variety and vintage. Driving licenses, one valid, some expired and one not quite expired but where I am eminently unqualified to drive. I really should get rid of most of those. They contain photographs that I would rather forget. The only ones I like are the ones in which I perfected my smirk and my hair is uncombed.

(That last bit may not quite make sense. But this is the way my hair works. If I try to subdue it, it will rise up in a state of rebellion and there will be hell to pay. Villages will be burnt and sheep will be stolen. Chaos will rule supreme. However, if I run my fingers through it in the morning and forget about it for a couple of hours it will generally behave.

My hair is much like a computer in that way. Apart from occasionally coming up with a blue screen of death, like a computer, it will behave itself if left well enough alone)

A ten rupee note and a ten euro note. (I’ve had those from before grad school. They’ve moved from one wallet to another. So I carry money in my wallet that I do not ever plan on spending. That’s normal)

Ticket stubs from movies I enjoyed, from movies I did not, from movies I never watched and will continue to deny that I ever watched.

A post-it note that has something possibly important written on it. Having lived in my wallet for a year now, all I can make out is it saying, “G__or 78_9823”. Or maybe Space Alien Pirate Ninja from Outer Space. It’s one of the two. I’ll figure it out eventually. Or maybe not.

Well…you get the point. Wallet filled with too much crap, roughly seven inches thick and completely spoiling the line of my trousers. And so I removed everything, trimmed the wallet down to a manageable three inches and left the damned thing alone for a while.

When I returned an hour later it was back to being seven inches thick and not content with doing that, it was now glowing faintly green and making hungry noises. And I need to put that down my front pant pocket. Joy.

Tum dee Dum

I’m annoyed at my parents for not being billionaires. That has forever cut me off from two career paths: “Gentleman of leisure” and “Wasted youth.” Both of these I could do very well. Sadly, this is not to be. Apparently I have to have a career and goals and stuff. Bah! The world does not know the treasure it lost when I realized that I could not be a Gentleman of leisure.

Apparently Disney has turned every one of their cartoon movies into a Broadway musical. I think that this is a capital idea, and only hope that this will not be restricted to movies like the Lion King. I’m looking forward to Terminator 2: Judgment Dance. The terminator goes back in time to stop the creation of boy bands and any show that has the word Idol in it. Robocop, the Musical won’t be half bad either. It’ll be a stretch, but the explosions will make it work. Explosions can be musical…right?

I’m too tired to sleep. That makes no fucking sense. It’s just that I put off going to sleep as long as possible and so when I stumble into my office I’m practically dead. A zombie one might say. I should roam the corridors going “Brains, brrrrains, brainssssss.” That would liven things up…Or considering that I’d be a zombie, deaden things up.

Sleep’s a funny thing for me. I like the middle parts of the sleep bit. The ends, not so much. I hate going to bed and getting out of it. The whole transition shit does not work for me. (That was today’s random fact about Rajneesh. An irregular feature of this blog.)

(I do fucking wish that Word would figure out that the word blog has entered the lexicon and stop doing the red squiggly line shit.)

I was going to write something about toothpaste. I can’t quite remember what. It was pretty good. And somewhere along the way I was going to segue into me dueling a tube of toothpaste with a sword. (Actually a light saber, but that is a bit too geeky).

(It seemed funny at the time. I’m glad I did not put it down on paper…um…screen.).

Robocop the musical. Part man, part machine, all music. I like Robocop. It is as guy a guy movie as a guy movie can be. Why did I share that with the world? Well, I've have railed before against needless explosions in movies. Not in Robocop. Each one of those explosions was crucial to the narrative flow of the movie. And that egregious body count added to the subtle subtext of death and decay in a hyper-capitalist world. Or something. But still cool.

Robocop should fight zombies in the musical.

Musical zombies.

Contestants from shows with words like “Idol” and “Next Superstar” in them could be the zombies. Robocop could use real bullets. Musical bullets.

(No, I am not drunk, merely spaced out.)

Facial Hair

Once upon a time, in ( a galaxy far, far away) the distant past, I would be content to do a trip in five hours if Mapquest told me that the estimated driving time for that trip was four and a half hours. Those days are no more. They have disappeared. Gone poof, like a magician's rabbit. These days, I set out on a trip with the express aim of beating Mapquest’s estimated time. And I usually do. Except when driving to Maryland from New Jersey. There I meet my bete noir, the Delaware Memorial Bridge

The Delaware Memorial Bridge hates me. Apparently it believes that I burnt down its farm and stole its sheep. Or maybe I stole its farm and burnt its sheep. You may think that this is an baseless anthropomorphization. If you do think so, hit yourself about the head and shoulders repeatedly. I have my reasons.

These then are my reasons. Tons of people, millions of them apparently, use the bridge to cross the Delaware. I know people who have used it on multiple occasions without any problems. I am not one of them. (It would be strange if at this point in the post I claimed to be one of them. There would be this lead up to the blood feud that I and the Bridge have and it would fizzle out with me saying, “But, I’ve never had a problem with that Bridge. That Bridge for all its faults has not pissed me off.” Anticlimactic!)

No, definitely not one of them. To our left we have the “Never had a problem with the Bridge” group. That group consists of most of humanity. To our right we have the “Hated by the Bridge” group. Me. Just me. All on my lonesome. Holding a sign saying, “I’ve been caught in a traffic jam whenever I’ve tried to cross that Bridge.”

And it’s true. A mile from the bridge everything is fine. Traffic flowing along at a steady clip, and the moment I get to the Bridge, traffic slows to a crawl. Three of the four lanes on the bridge will be shut down. And traffic volume multiplies just to fuck things up even more. And I’m sure that all that is a special production just for me. A few thousand cars and their android drivers stored away for them to spring on me at the right moment, and sensors to detect my arrival and shut the lanes of traffic down.

It is clear to me that the Bridge has a malevolent personality. It sits there twirling its mustache and evilly grinning at me as it plots to have me waste pointless eons crossing it at five miles an hour.

So yeah. I was late.

The Ides of March

I am a master of the raised eyebrow waggle. Some people use the waggle indiscriminately but the discerning waggler (me) waggles sparingly. Sparingly but effectively. I use it as a wordless greeting. Lesser mortals may go “Hi” or say “Hello, how’s it going?” I don’t. I waggle my eyebrows. A quick up and down motion to signify that I am aware of the other person’s existence and that I value them enough to twitch my eyebrows at them.

And it goes so much more than mere words. Words are easy to say. Say these words out aloud: Rhinoceros Animatronics Juggernaut Necromancer Enigmatic Elegiac Sphygmomanometer Haberdashery. That was easy wasn’t it?

Now try twitching your eyebrows. See, that took so much more effort. Quad Erat Demonstratum. (Pax Romana. Veni Vidi Vici. More Latin Words. Some classical Greek. A forrsooth and a thou. More random Latin words.) And people appreciate this effort. Well most people do. Some don’t. Sadly this is not a perfect world.

In most situations the waggle will suffice, but sometimes you may need to respond to a question. For instance, “How’s it going?” An eyebrow waggle at this juncture, while always a wonderful thing to behold, cannot quite get the job done. It does not quench your interrogators thirst for information. You need to verbalize an answer. Some people try to get away with a shrug.

Sometimes acceptable, but not something you can do more than once or twice a day. Shrug to every question and you will look like…um…a person with shruggy, twitchy shoulders? (Analogies are not my strongpoint, okay?) Or like a person who thinks that dancing like Michael Jackson is cool! (Answer the question by grabbing your crotch, giving out a high pitched yelp and mooonwalking out of the person’s line of sight. This is how the question should be answered. Trust me. I’m a doctor. I know these things. Well…I’m not really a doctor, but you can trust me. Really. Honest.)

It helps if you have actually heard the question. But, if you haven’t and you’re not quite sure if the query was, “How’s it going?”, or if it was, “What’s up with you”, or “Who let the dogs out”, or “Who the fuck is Alice”, the best response is to grunt. “Mrmgr”, “Byazh” or “Gahk” are all acceptable. But feel free to explore our artistic boundaries. A grunt should be something that you can cherish and an look back at with pride. It should be able to let the other person know that you were paying deep attention to them, that you reflected deeply upon their question, that you considered all things and that you have reached a measured conclusion. All this can be summed up with “Pzangkrut”.

Practice it. See how easy it is.

A note of caution. Inexperienced people caught on the wrong foot may try to grunt and waggle at the same time. Don’t do this. You just might sprain your face.

Part Man Part Machine All Cop

I like airports and railway stations and bus terminals. The crowds I ignore, but the spaces that they occupy appeal to me. High, high ceilings, large rooms, echoes, public address systems, bright lights, people hurrying to and fro.

Well, I like them in principle. I like them when I’m there for ten minutes, picking someone up or rapidly exiting the building.

Not when I’m there for four hours. Perhaps at three in the morning.

Apparently you can turn up a little too early for your flight. When the flight leaves at a quarter to seven, you do not need to turn up at the airport at a quarter to three, full of smug satisfaction that there will be no lines, you will breeze through security and can then nap for a couple of hours until your flight.

The first snag in that plan was the fact that the check-in personnel do not turn up until a half past four. Ergo no check in. Fine, I could snooze on the chairs in the cavernous waiting area.

Except that the chairs seemed to have been transplanted from some medieval torture chamber. One of the more unpleasant ones…where people would be subjected to hours and hours of home movies of the torturer and his family on vacation. The poor victims would be forced to flip through the torturer’s photo albums. Pictures of the torturer and his hideously ugly family besmirching the landscape, grinning up into the camera lens as they obscure the beautiful countryside behind them.

Except that video cameras hadn’t made their appearance until the Renaissance. So that wouldn’t be a medieval torture chamber. It would be a Renaissancical… Renaissancified… Renaissancificated…um post-medieval pre-industrial age torture chamber.

(Again, I have no fucking clue about where I’m going with this. When I set off to write this post, I was going to describe falling asleep on the chair in the reception area, waking up at five and being confronted by a huge line at the security checkpoint.

Right after that would be long rant about me having to dump a can of deodorant in the trash because of the new restrictions and then being pulled aside for extra screening because of my contact lens solution.

That was to be followed by me describing the long and arduous trek to my gate only to find that my flight was taking off from another gate, the one that I had passed by on my way to the gate I was currently at. The new gate was next to a Starbucks, one that had deliciously unhealthy espresso brownies that I just cannot resist.

And I would have wrapped up with a few well chosen swear words against the people who insist on sitting next to me at the waiting area (New waiting area next to the gate). I spread out for a reason. I need my space. When I sprawl it mean: Do not sit next to me. You will take up valuable armrest space.

That’s another thing that puzzles me. Armrest etiquette. Say at a movie theater. How do you decide who gets the shared armrest? Do you take turns? First come first serve. Possession is nine tenths of the law? Tactical nuclear weapons? Puppy dog eyes? A dance-off? Low intensity urban conflict? Televised debate?

Or we could all decide to give up the right one and use only the left one. Or vice versa. A wonderfully balanced socialist system. But then one person in the row will have twice the number of armrests as the rest of the proletariat? Does that make them a member of the politburo? Is Big Brother watching? Does non conformity to the established armrest line mean opposition to the Party? Is war peace? Is the Truth False?

(Again, I have no fucking clue where I’m going with this little sidebar. I’m guessing that today’s theme is incoherence. I do believe that every day should have a theme. And not easy themes like Casual Fridays, or Hung-over Mondays. We need greater challenges, Nihilistic Wednesdays. Split Infinitive Thursdays. Mild Discomfort Saturdays. Got Out Of Bed and Tripped Over a Laptop-Bag Tuesdays. Filibustering Second Sunday Of Any Month With The Letter S In It. Pretend That You Are a Large Head of Lettuce Mondays.))

I think I should stop now.

So I did.

Pretend That You Are Robocop Wednesdays.

Well I’m done.

Really.

Hop At Work Thursdays.

This post is a majestic eagle in flight.

One of the things I have learnt to dread since I’ve lived in the US is giving my name to people over the phone. Mine isn’t a particularly hard name. It’s a nice name. I like it. I’ve had since I was roughly three and a half minutes old. But it is quite possible that people here haven’t encountered that name before. Rajneesh has become Runjeesh, Rhaneesh, Runeesh, Rajeesh…ad nauseum.

Sometimes they ask me to spell it out. And some of the letters in my name are nasty, teisty letters. J can on a bad day sound like K. RA can for some reason sound like an RHA. E can nbe B, D, or P depending on how drunk/hard of hearing/high the person at the other end of the phone is. So I have to resort to substituting words for letters.

It would be cool if I could remember the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. I’d then shoot off Romeo-Alpha-Juliet-November-Echo Echo-Sierra-Hotel. But I can’t. So I need to dig for words. And my mind goes blank...blanker.

Anonymous Person On The Other End Of the Phone: Can I have your first name please, Sir.

Me: Sure. It’s Rajneesh. Do you need me to spell that out?

APOTOEOTP: Um…yes please.

Me: Sure. That’s R-A-J-N-E-E-S-H.

APOTOEOTP: Is that R-H-A-J-M-E-B-S-H?

Me. Um…you may have a few letters wrong. Let’s try this again.

APOTOEOTP: Sure!

Me: That’s R as in…as in…
(And at this point my mind blanks out. I cannot find an R word to save my life. Except for, well, naturally, rude words. The ones you say when you drop a laptop on your big toe. If my name were Fajneesh, I’d be a doomed man. There’s no way I’d be able to say anything other than F as in Fuck.
I start running through words. Boost, trump, delight, spawn…no nothing yet…computer, oligarchic (Oligarchic? What the fuck? I never use that word ever.)…trombone, rhinoceros. That’s it!)

Me: ...R as in Rhinoceros.
(Oh yeah! I Rock!)

APOTOEOTP: …

Me: A as in…
(Oh Fuck! Not again! It gets easier though. However the urge to start using rude words is now nearly overwhelming. Asinine…would work but it’s fraught with the possibility of comic/embarrassing misunderstanding. Comic/embarrassing depending on the person on the other end of the phone.)

Me: …A as in A
(Yeah. Fucking helpful.)

APOTOEOTP: …

Me: J as in…
(But now I’ve found my flow. The words come tripping out like…Well the words come tripping out, but the similes do not. The similes hide away like things that hide away when you need them. Socks and keys and tickets.)

Me: J as in Jackrabbit, N as in Nautical, E as in Echidna, E as is Egocentricity, S as in Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or Sphygmomanometer, H as in Haberdashery. So that’s’ Rhinoceros A Jackrabbit Nautical Echidna Egocentricity Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or Sphygmomanometer Haberdashery.

APOTOEOTP: …Okay… I think I got that. Now, can I have your last name please?

Fuck fuck fuck!

That would make an awesome movie. A Rhinoceros and a Jackrabbit take on an evil nautical Echidna (Like captain Nemo but megalomaniacal and completely not good) as he (the Echidna) blackmails the world leaders with his Sphygmomanometer. The final climax takes place in the Haberdashery department and our heroes are nearly doomed until the day is saved by Mary Poppins.

Yeah, I have no idea what that last paragraph was about.

Language Lesson

So, I went in late Wednesday evening to get an MRI scan done on my arm (Obvious ploy for sympathy here. Please do not ignore it. I have a Paypal account. Make large, generous donations. The larger the better. Amounts which end with million are particularly preferred, but those with end with a thousand are good too.). I braved the sprawl of Central New Jersey (And believe me, it sprawls. It sprawls like no sprawl has ever sprawled before. Strip malls (which aren’t what the name suggests, but are shopping complexes with huge-ass parking lots) line Route one like large parasites. Parasites with parking lots and fast food restaurants and supermarkets and… you get the idea.) Add to this rush hour traffic, buggy code and a mild headache and the end result is a bad tempered Rajneesh.

Well, I get here at seven thirty, because they told me to be there at seven thirty. That’s when my appointment was for. (Appointment: Ancient Sanskrit word meaning that the people in charge of getting insurance clearance failed to get it and that I will have to return again the next day)

Me : (All bright and chirpy). I’m here. (I lie…I was tired and pissed off)

MRIPerson : MumblemumblemumbleBlah.Forgot Insurance clearance. Come back tomorrow.

Me: Can I cover it and deal with my insurance personally?

MRIPerson: Sure. That’ll be a thousand dollars.

Me: Can I come back tomorrow?

MRIPerson: Sure. Come in at one. We’ll have you out in twenty minutes tops.

Me: (Back in my car) Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. (Pause for breath) Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

The next day.

(I just realized that I can get only the right side of my face to smirk. The left side refuses to cooperate. That becomes a very impressive grimace. That works for me too.)

I take off during lunch to get to the MRI center. The drive is even more depressing because the sprawl is uglier, the traffic is meaner and I’m starving. (A cereal bar does not lunch make.)

I get to the MRI place. The paperwork has been resolved. I can be MRI-fied. I do a little dance of joy. In my mind. The only outward sign I show is that I smirk a bit. They lead me to though hallways and corridors and caverns to the machine. The machine and the room it is in are like something out of a spaceship in a science fiction movie. A quiet background hum. Antiseptic plastic walls. Light flashing quietly, with elegant restraint. Muted beeps. Martians. Representatives of the galactic empire of Toasters. Over by the far table is a large anthropomorphic insect taking down readings.

They need to take readings of my left arm and so the have me lay down on my left side with my left arm out stretched and my right arm by my side. You know, a bit like superman as he flies. Except not super and not flying. (I did, however have my red cape). They instructed me to refrain from moving, twitching or starting suddenly at loud noises. And then they rolled me into the machine.

I fell asleep.

(I’ve been sleeping five hours a night for the last couple of weeks; I’ve been working fourteen hour days; I’m sure I can be excused.)

A half hour later I woke up.

The results of the MRI?

I haven’t a fucking clue. They’ll fax to my doctor and he’ll tell me. Those are the rules.

Gotta fucking love the bureaucracy.

Yellow Underwater Submersible

A Weighty Matter.

Ever said goodbye to someone, and then it turns out that heading out in the same direction as you are? So now you’ve said goodbye, but you’re still walking next to each other for what seems like and quite possibly is, an eternity.

I’m never quite sure about what to do in such a situation.

Do you erase the memory of that goodbye, pretend that it never happened and carry on with your conversation? Or maybe start an entirely new conversation? And at the end of that conversation do you say goodbye again and thus enter the risk of entering a vicious cycle?

Or do you treat the goodbye as a clear line in the sand. The conversation has ended and that’s the end of the matter. The person you just said goodbye may stand at your side unto eternity but you will not acknowledge their presence. Goodbyes are final. That is...until they leave and return. In which case the slate is wiped clean and you may start all over again.

A Weighty Matter worth pondering about.

Another Weighty Matter.

When a person holds a door open for you, you thank them. It is the polite thing to do. But what do you do if you are following them down a hallway with multiple doors, that they then hold open for you. Do you thank them repeatedly?

“Thank you.”

(Pause for Opening door)

“Thank you.”

(Pause for Opening door)

“Thank you.”

Go for a little variety.

“Thank You!”

“Mmm…thanks.”

“Much gratitude to you kind person.”

“Open Sesame!”

“Who let the dogs out?”

“Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well”

“Luke, I am your father.”

“Yooodleyhihoo!”

“My precioussss…”

“There are places I remember…”

“Quack quack quack.”

It does not necessarily need to be verbal. Pretend to lunge for the door in slow motion. Pretend that you are in a parade and wave to the imaginary crowds as you pass through the door. Alternatively moon the imaginary crowds as you pass through the door. Or goosestep through the door. Use your imagination. Make it a production!

This will certainly solve your repeated thanking problem. The person opening the door for you will at this point be either running or desperately calling for the cops on a cell phone. If, on the other hand, the door-opener is actively following your lead, running desperately might not be a half bad idea.

You could also thank them just once and then ride that thanks’ coat tails through each and every one of the doors held open for you. I’d recommend the earlier option, but that’s just me.

So yeah. Goodbye. Now stop following me!

Make up your own title.

This would be a perfect time for me to claim a writer’s block and take off on an extended hiatus. But I won’t. I will persevere. I will drag the words out of me using a pair of hot tongs, and put them down for you, my Loyal Audience.

(Peers out at the Loyal Audience from the middle of the stage. The Loyal Audience seems to consist of an elderly wino, a bedraggled puppy and a villainous boot of uncertain vintage. Not a very impressive Loyal Audience. More like an audience that came in to get out of the cold.)

Yeah, that is exactly how hard up I am for ideas right now. Not that I ever had any good ones, but nothing has pissed me off enough to rant about.

Actually scratch that last statement.

Last Sunday, the thirteenth of August, there was an Indian Independence Day parade in Edison. Something worth going to. And I would have gone.

Except, and you knew that that except was coming, except that the main draw of the parade was that Bipasha Basu would be the marshal. Yes, she’s smoking hot, but the fucking point of the parade should be the parade celebrating India’s independence, and not the fact that some hot-semi naked woman would be marching in it.

Gah! Arguing against the presence of hot, semi-naked women seems so..unnatural. It irks me.

As you may have realized, I am really bad at writing about things I care about. It’s fucking annoying. I can go on for pages about why I think my fucking toaster is plotting to do away with me and when it comes to more serious things, all I can talk about is how the villainous boot in my Loyal Audience booed me.

I should settle for just randomly throwing words on to the page and hoping that they stick together and work.

So here goes nothing.

Pancakes. Spears. Bags. Kittens. Robots.

Bags of Kitten Robots eating Pancakes while wielding spears?

Okay, that was just fucking sad. Even my villainous boot imagery was better than that.

Not only is writing hard, typing the words out, for a two finger typist like me, is fucking hard. Even after all these years I need to look at the keyboard as I type. (If I do not, I end up with something like this, “I end up eubt sinrutbi ldun tsis,”) Yeah now that’s a skill that scientists in the sixties predicted we’d all need to have. Fuck rocket cars and laser guns and spaceships and all that fancy shit. In the year 2000, you’d better know how to type or you’re screwed.

I probably should not post this piece of crap. But I will. Because I fucking typed it out. My fingers are fucking bleeding. My forearms are in agony. I have tears streaming down my cheeks (I’m watching ET in my mind). My shoulders are burning. My nose is twitching. My teeth are gnashing.

Yeah, let’s end this before this turns into a quite hideous description of every part of my anatomy.

So, yeah, stuff.

The guide to having a perfect Monday morning

A perfect Monday morning cannot be achieved without the Sunday Night Monday Morning Preparation.

First, return home tired and spaced out late on Sunday night. Next, fall asleep on the couch with the laptop precariously balanced on your stomach. Wake up an hour later to the smell of burning. The burning being you, since the laptop is back to doing its impression of a cheery furnace.

Curse for a while.

Divest yourself of the laptop and briefly consider getting of the couch, changing and heading to the bedroom. Reject the idea because you do not have the energy to get off of the couch. Stare idly at the ceiling for a while.

Continue the staring.

Realize that you still have your contacts on and that removing them is probably a good idea. Reject the idea because you do not have the energy to get off of the couch. Stare idly at the ceiling for a while.

Continue the staring.

Fall asleep in a little while.

Wake up. The cushion that you bought is fucking uncomfortable. Get rid of the cushion. Your head now feels like an overly enthusiastic bull elephant did the Mambo on it. Consider staring idly at the ceiling. Come to the conclusion that the ceiling is rather boring.

Continue the staring.

Fall asleep.

Wake up. At a half past nine. You are now really late for work. Consider your options. Briefly flirt with the idea of calling in sick. Reject it. Realize that it is now a quarter to ten and you haven’t gotten off of the couch. Also realize that your eyes are completely gummed up because you slept with your contacts on.

Get off of the couch.

Consider having breakfast. Reject the idea because it would make you even later for work. You are now so late that ten more minutes will not make a difference. The logical thing to do would be to have breakfast. Fortify yourself for the rest of the day.

Skip breakfast.

Lurch towards the bathroom. Make a small diversion to check your email. Reach the bathroom.

Start shaving. (Unless you have a beard. In which case, stop shaving!)

Finish shaving.

Brush your teeth. . (Unless you have a beard. In which case, stop brushing!)

Finish Brushing.

Step into the shower.

Realize that you missed a spot while shaving. Step out of the shower and finish shaving again.

Step back into the shower.

(Image of a ticking clock to show the passage of time. Restrained muzak plays in the background. Maybe Kenny G’s Songbird. A quiet voice says, “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. Your estimated wait time is fifteen minutes.”)

Step out of the shower. Since this is a family show, have a towel wrapped around you.

Grab the first pair of trousers that you find. Realize that all your shirts are at the dry cleaners. Also realize that you were supposed to pick them up the previous Thursday but had neglected to do so.

Curse for a while.

Hunt for a pair of socks. Find one sock each from four different pairs of socks. Continue to hunt.

Give up on the hunt and dig up a pair of new socks.

Comb your hair…Or at the very least make it less messy. The hair is in a state of active rebellion. Establish a “take no prisoner” policy and subdue the rebellion.

Look at your reflection.

• Bloodshot eyes. Check.
• Messy hair. Check.

Leave the apartment wearing formal pants and shoes and an old Virginia Beach T-shirt.

Drive to the dry-cleaners.

Fume silently in the line at the dry-cleaners. Finally it will be your turn. Pick up your clothes and exit.

Change in the parking lot. Put on the tie that you fortuitously left in the back seat on Friday.

Drive to work. Make sure that every single fucking traffic light between you and work is red. Also make sure that you get stuck behind someone doing thirty in a forty-five zone.

Curse for a while.

You’re at work. Hurrah! Do a little dance. Like the dance Snoopy does when the Round-Headed Kid brings him his dinner.

I should...

probably go to sleep sometime soon.

High finance

I was at the university book store over the weekend, and they had a huge banner put up. It said, “A gift card, the perfect gift for all occasions”.

No, it’s not. Giving a person a gift card is like telling them, “I don’t care enough about you to make the effort to get you a gift and so here is some money.”

Yes, that’s it. Giving someone a gift card is like giving them money. Except that it is worse. Not only are you giving them money, you are giving them money that you cannot use everywhere. Money, but without the freedom to spend it anywhere you may please.

“Here’s some money. But it is not really money. Because money you could use anywhere, but this you can’t. It is like made-up pretend money. You can spend it only at this one place. And you need to use it soon, because this money, unlike real money, has an expiry date. So...um enjoy! Happy Some Occasion to You! “

The supermarket I go to has gift cards. For the fucking supermarket. I wonder who at the supermarket came up with that idea and if anybody, anywhere, has ever bought one of those gift cards.

“Happy Some Event. Here’s a gift card from Super Fresh. You know… the supermarket. Enjoy!”

Bah!

This fills me with sadness and disgust. But mostly disgust. Lots of disgust.

How the fuck can that be the most read story? A person whose initial claim to fame was the fact that she got caught fucking on tape is now no longer going to . And people were interested enough in it to make it the most fucking popular story? That is fucking insane.

Yes, a short and sweet….Scratch that…A short and bitter post.

Repetition is easy

…"We want PCs to be objects of pure desire."…Microsoft’s Vista Industrial Design Toolkit.

The irony in Microsoft (We make butt ugly interfaces and we like it) giving design tips to PC makers makes my cup run over. Add to it the creepiness in calling a PC an object of pure desire. (Visions of people the world over humping their keyboards…with the Windows shutdown music playing in the background. Geekporn!

Um…those PC’s are probably objects of impure desire.)

I now know why I have cable. The SciFi Channel is playing a really bad movie. It involves, in no particular order:

• An isolated underwater sea laboratory. (All important experiments happen underwater in the sea. One of the laws of Physics. Right up there with the Law of Gravity and the Law of Being Too Tired To Sleep)
• An eleventh century sword
• A cute puppy
• A helicopter
• An unsanctioned cloning experiment involving large and quite possibly carnivorous beasties.
• An immoral scientist…with a badly put on German accent. (He has an accent, naturally he is bad. It is logical. If he were a good scientist, he would belong to a minority or would have a deep voice and no accent. The accent damned him.).
• Shotguns (Phallic symbols)
• Hot semi-naked women (Necessary accessories for phallic symbols)
• A rampaging dragon. With flame generating organs/apparatus.
• Nice guy with hidden past in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Disposable lab technicians.
  

(The pilot for The Amazing Screw-On Head comes on right after this movie and is fucking amazing. Watch it! )

Take those ingredients, toss them together, and add a touch of bad special effects, a pinch of bad production values, garnish with bad acting, add bad direction to taste, simmer over a low budget and voila, you have your average B movie…or a sequel to The DaVinci Crap.

What I’d like to see is a movie that dares to challenge the stereotypes.

• A bustling underwater sea laboratory, one where proper safety procedures are followed and Caution is a buzzword.
• An eleventh century spoon.
• An insane, blood crazed puppy. One who lurks beneath the desks and savagely mauls the hands of those who try to pet him.
• A helicopter. The minimum requirements for flying which are more than looking good in a tight t-shirt or short skirt.
• A sanctioned cloning experiment that goes completely right. Nothing goes wrong. The cells of the extinct beast that have been cloned do not rise up and resemble the creature from the Deepest Recesses of Hell. Or if they do rise up, they politely ask for a cup of tea and then politely discuss international politics.
• A moral scientist with a German accent. One who wrestles daily with the moral ramifications of his work and does not look upon other humans as expendable research material.
• No guns. Or bombs. Or stuff that goes boom. No sharp objects. No pistols with unlimited ammunition. No ostentatious reloading and flexing while firing.
• More hot semi-naked women. (Just to annoy certain people)
• A somewhat embarrassed dragon. Who wears glasses, says “Eh?” a lot and can’t hold his drink.
• Nice guy. No hidden past. No secret time in the Army as a commando. No freakish proficiency with weapons. No disconcerting familiarity with explosives. No ability to hack into computer networks using Notepad’s secret “Hack into super-secure network” menu option (Shortcut key: ctrl-alt-shift-num lock-0-delete)
• Lab technicians, appreciated for who they are. Ones that matter as individuals and who have families that love them and care for them.
  

So, yeah, PCs are going to be butt-uglier.

Fifteen billion degrees.

I’d like it if some company somewhere would invent a laptop that does not moonlight as an oven.

(I’m writing this in the customer lounge as I wait for my car’s serving to finish. Not a very private place, but I’d managed to snag an entire seat for myself and did not have to worry about anyone peeking at my machine. Until this lady sat down next to me and started peeking at my screen. She apparently is very interested in what I’m writing.

Well, she just read that last paragraph, and now for some reason she is staring glassily at the opposite wall. I suppose that there was a more diplomatic way of handling that, but I had to wake up at a half past six to get here on time and right now I’m not very well disposed towards the world. Also the laptop is reaching the temperature of a furnace, an enthusiastic furnace at the center of the sun.)

So yeah, hot laptops. Bad for the whole lap part of the body.

(And before I get yelled at, I give complete credit to someone else for first mentioning the hot laptop issue.)

Take me to your dealer

Today, in the gym I was forced to watch a ten minute interview with Miss Universe, Miss Puerto Rico. She had a freakish broad grin/smile/grimace on her face and she held it through the entire interview. It was frightening to behold. She was grinning and speaking simultaneously. On occasions she’d relax the grimace into some kind of a half smile before turning it right back on and giving the interviewers and the helpless audience (me) an unimpeded view of those choppers.

The title, Miss Universe is a bit strange don’t you think? I’m reasonably sure that there are billions of planets in the universe other than planet Earth. It is more than likely that a few of them harbour intelligent life. It is quite possible that the intelligent life may have two or more sexes. One of which could be given the title “Miss”.

But were any of these alien misses at the pageant?
No.

Were they afforded a chance to parade out in ball gowns or in swim suits and make up stories about how they’d like to help the orphans, eradicate poverty, eliminate hunger and do the rest of that good stuff?
No.

The really cannot call it Miss Universe if the rest of the Universe isn’t taking part? (That would be as silly as claiming to be world champions if you win a tournament in which the rest of the world does not take participate.) Heck, I’d be willing to allow it to stand if a couple more planets were involved. They needn’t be from this Solar System. (We all know that the Martians are a nasty bunch.). Send out a multi-directional radio signal letting the universe know about the idiocy…pageant. I’m certain that somewhere out there, there is a species, one that contains members who would enjoy being anorexic and half naked in front of an audience of…Two Hundred Thousand Million Billion Trillion semi-sentient beings (Too lazy to look up actual viewership numbers for the pageant.)

They could share with us touching stories about their childhood, which depending on the species might involve them exploding from the gestatory (not a real word) pod on the mother ship, or chasing down wild Helium Creatures on the sixth moon of their home planet. It will bring the species together. And maybe it will be interesting. Maybe one species is the other’s natural prey. Or maybe a couple of species may chemically interact with each other to create a large oddly coloured pile of goo.

I don’t know. The possibilities are fucking endless. Think of the ratings. A multi-species audience. Advertising revenues. Sure, it’s hard to sell dehydrated rocks to human, but on BetaBlugeNnosMosPoobah V they are a delicacy. Much like heroin right here on earth. Human censors would no longer be an issue. Wardrobe malfunctions do not matter if the part of the anatomy that was covered by that part of the wardrobe looks like a washing machine or a small tree. Or a small tree with Washing Machine Fruit…That last one could be freaky I suppose.

This is a sound business proposal. I hope that someone is reading and taking these ideas to heart.

And this is not an option. It needs to happen now. Because, I’m pretty sure that the television signals from the pageant have reached our alien neighbours. (Yes, they may be a billion light years away, but the laws of physics were torn asunder by the laws of people blogging at one in the night after three days of very, very little sleep. The signals used a convenient worm hole and hitched a ride on a passing space battle cruiser/GalactEX package delivery ship to get to the alien neighbours. Let’s call them the Shampoo. Because calling them the Butterscotch would be so inappropriate.)

The Shampoo are probably a proud, martial people. With vast fleets of faster than light battle ships capable of destroying the earth, in much the same way that I demolish a tub of ice cream. (Missiles, spoons. Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to).

They’d capture the signals, watch the pageant, figure out that Ms (Really M!szr#@*3) Shampoo ‘3790 wasn’t asked to participate and be fucking pissed off. Earth would be doomed. This cannot be allowed to happen. So invite Ms (Really M!szr#@*3) Shampoo ‘3790 to the pageant. It is a win-win situation for everyone. Hell, we might as well objectify alien females along with our own.

Yeah, so apparently she fainted. I’m not surprised. Maintaining that grimace probably burns a great deal of energy. Probably enough to fuel a fleet of faster than light battleships.

Happy Thoughts

Working late at the office isn’t all that bad. Until you actually need to leave. Now, before you start thinking that I have an unnatural and quite possibly twisted affinity for work allow me a moment to clarify. (Like you had a choice. It isn’t like you would have a chance to interrupt this post with your own typing. I do not expect the words, “You fucking workaholic” to rudely interject themselves between that last sentence and the one following it…Except that they did. Albeit in a twisty round about manner.)

Well, the problem is that the building has a very large parking lot. And late at night that very large parking lot, by day a large friendly parking lot (Like a friendly Golden Retriever, but with a lot more tar and more parking-lot-ier), by night is a large, lonely and very, very dark parking lot.

Very, very, very dark.

And lonely. There are maybe three cars parked in it. One of which is mine. Which one is mine, you may ask. Well the one that is fucking furthest away, at the far end of the lot. Even if I had parked in the first available spot when I came in, in the morning, by the time I leave at night, my car has telekinetically transported itself to the far end of the lot. And there it waits for me, softly sniggering and chortling, like a schoolboy who has pulled a particularly wicked prank. If my car had elbows, and if there was someone next to it to nudge, I’m sure that my car would be nudging it.

Did I mention that the lot is dark? Very, very dark? That’s because the powers that be have turned off the lights. The normal light producing lights, that is. And they’ve turned on the negative lights, the ones that suck in any ambient light that there may be. “No moonlight for you” is their motto. “Wade through the coagulating darkness” is their alternate motto. Neither of the two would make very good battle cries. (Unless the opposing host consisted solely of a poor, tired Rajneesh trying to make his way back to his car. In which case they would be moderately effective battle cries.)

The parking lot seems to stretch away to infinity…and beyond. My car is definitely in the beyond part of the Infinity. And as I make my way to it, all I can think of are Axe murderers that go “bump” in the night. I start whistling and then I stop. I do not want to annoy the axe murders. After what seems like an eternity I reach the car and then my nerve finally breaks. I dive in and screech out of the parking lot almost before my seat belt is on.

And then at the first stop sign, I remember that I haven’t checked my back seat for the psychopath who might be lurking there.

Gulp…

(Nothing in the back seat except for a T-shirt, a computer keyboard, a carton from Amazon.com and a spiked collar. That last would be worth remarking about, except that it belongs to me. If it wasn’t in the car I would be worried, because a spiked collar is a must for every well dressed Axe Murderer. Sadly, and I’m not kidding over here, I did check the back seat when I had stopped at that first stop sign.)

The game

The objective of "the Game" is to completely forget its existence. If you read this post, and then forget that "the Game" even exists, you’re off to a good start.

1) Knowledge that "the Game" exists is the only thing required to play.

2) Once you know "the Game" exists, you are automatically playing for the rest of your days. There’s no option, because you know it exists.

3) If you remember "the Game" exists for any reason, you lose "the game".

4) If a player loses "the Game", they must announce that they have lost "the Game" to everyone around them. If you’re talking to someone, and remember "the Game", you tell them you just lost, no questions asked.

5) Failure to announce a loss is considered cheating.

6) If you announce a loss to another person, who does not know what "the Game" is, you must explain its rules.

7) You cannot lose more than once every ten minutes, to allow you to forget its existence again.

8) Anything can trigger memory of the game, but any recollection of this specific "Game" is all that’s needed to lose. If another player tells you "I lost the Game", you lost as well, because that player just reminded you of its existence.

That was from a forum in which I lurk (That was from a forum I lurk in?).

The Game.

My Brain...

...is so fried right now.

Which of the ellipses should I get rid off? The ones in the title or the ones here? These are important questions. Questions that need to be asked. And I am fearlessly asking them.

I need to do some of that sleep junk. I’ve heard that it’s good stuff.

I keep having this recurring dream that I’m asleep. It is surreal because I know that it is a dream and that I am dreaming of being asleep. It would be nice if that counted as me being twice as asleep.

I am sound sound asleep asleep.

Do you realize that price and value are synonyms, but priceless and valueless are antonyms (Addendum: less and less are synonyms too!)?

My Hotmail inbox continues to be ravaged by spammers. Apparently they now believe that using the From and the Subject fields to form a complete sentence makes their case more persuasive.

From......................................Subject

Friendly HouseWife..................Looking to get laid

HubbyCan't.............................SatisfyMeAnymore

Or maybe I judge too harshly. Maybe Mrs. Friendly HouseWife is just being um friendly. But now I need to pity the guy married to Mrs. Friendly HouseWife, not because of her friendliness but because his last name is HouseWife. I bet he got beat up a lot at school.

The other person does not have a last name, but I’m sure her husband is either very trusting or very, very, very stupid. He married a person called HubbyCan’t for pity’s sake (And I do believe that that is the first time I have seen an apostrophe in anybody’s name).

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s spam sent out by spoofers and crooks and other all around bad people. Do people still open those emails? Somewhere is there some dumbass who sees “Friendly HouseWife looking to get laid“ and goes, “Holy fuck, I do believe there is a hidden message here. I have to open this email. The fate of humanity depends on it!” And then he jumps into a telephone booth and switches into his superhero costume. However since the phone booth has glass walls, he scandalizes the nice old lady behind him who was waiting to make a phone call and so he is promptly arrested for indecent exposure.

Is the opposite of “Indecent Exposure”, “Decent Exposure”? That was another question that needed to be asked. And I asked it. And now I shall jump into a telephone booth to change into my superhero cos…Never mind.

So, yeah, my brain is so fried right now.