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.”