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.

This is now officially ridiculous...

I'm now back in Jersey, and Blogger is still stuck in Portuguese.

There can be but one explanation:
The internet is broken.

Apparently...

Accessing Blogger in Lisbon causes all the buttons to appear in Portuguese.

I find that fascinating.

Really.

:(

James Oliver Rigney, Jr.
Robert Jordan
October 17, 1948 - September 16, 2007

Bivalve molluscs inhabiting lakes, rivers, and creeks, as well as intertidal areas along coastlines worldwide.

Three days after returning from San Diego, I realized that for a person who does not know how to swim, I’m awfully fond of the beach and the ocean and the water. One may, with some accuracy, call it a fatal fondness for the water. “Nothing will happen to me, I’m only chest deep in the water. Oh look, a large wave. And now, a larger one. And now a completely involuntary and completely uncontrolled somersault underwater. Whee?”

A few hours after that, as I sat in my genial (hah!) host’s living room, languorously watching the seawater drain out of my sinuses and gently soak his carpet, I decided that this had to change. To avoid washing up on shore one day, bloated with all the sea water I’d inhaled, and with a barnacle nestling under my chin, I would need to take swimming classes.

And I enrolled for them with surprising alacrity. Every Saturday afternoon during the fall, slam bang in the middle of my weekend, pretty much ensuring that I’m not going to be going on any weekend road trips for the next fourteen weeks…But I digress, the swimming classes. I signed on late on a Friday afternoon, and the next day I showed up for my first class.

All things considered, it could have been much worse. For instance, there could have been a large, hungry shark in the pool. Or piranha with a case of the munchies. The instructor could have been an axe murderer, or a tax collector. See, all things considered, it could have been worse.

If that previous paragraph led you to suspect that the class was a disaster, I apologize for misleading you. It wasn’t. All I was doing was pointing out worse case scenarios. For instance, you’re crossing a road, and a piano falls off a plane and falls on you. Or you are reading the newspaper and while your attention is diverted, you are attacked and subsequently eaten by a tribe of cannibal kindergarteners. You switch your computer on and that same piano jumps out from behind a door and falls on you. (This last case requires that the piano be a little more active than when it was dropping on you. But I’m sure you realized that.) Or you could be having dinner at a nice restaurant and a car driven by a pair of desperate hoodlums plows though the room. You narrowly avoid it by lunging to the left and heave a sigh of relief, and then you are run over by the cops in hot pursuit. You know, those cops, the ones in the movies, the ones who see no harm in driving through a crowd of civilians to get the bad guys. Worst case scenarios.

Now, most people here in this country, apparently learn to swim when they are wee tots. When they weigh half a kilogram and can be slung about with nary a care. Not something that one can do with me. Unless the swimming instructor was a three hundred and fifty pound linebacker.(…who looked upon me as the hated opposing team quarterback, and whose wife had run away the previous night with the opposing teams toaster. Run away in an eloped sense, and not in a stole the toaster sense. See another worst case scenario.) My instructor is a rather pretty blonde woman. She isn’t very large and she did explain to me that it was easier with kids, but reassured me that we should have no problems at all.

She said that the first lesson would involve teaching me how to float, both on my back and on my stomach. (Not simultaneously. I’m taking the basic aquatic contortionist course next year.).

“Floating is good,” I said, “Since it implies not drowning.” (Oh yeah. I still got it.)

So, there I was in the pool, trying to float , the instructor’s hand supporting my back, as I raised my hips and pushed my head down and enjoyed the sensation of all that liquid goodness entering my auditory canals. After a few moments of these delicate adjustments she said, “You should easily float now,” and removed her supporting hand.

I didn’t.

My descent to the bottom of the pool would have put any rock anywhere in the world to shame. If sinking were a sport, I would have been its undisputed champion. The man who set the gold standard, a man who could not be caught in his generation, a man whose feats would inspire awe among his fans, and sadly, envy among his competitors, whose petty jealousy would cause them to allege the use of Sink Enhancing Drugs. Charges that would never be proved…

We tried again. It was slightly better this time. I did stay up on the surface for a couple of seconds before diving for the depths, like a German U-boat at the height of the second world war that had just been sighted by a few disgruntled Allies who wanted to discuss with it the U-boats distressing, some may say socially embarrassing, habit of sinking merchant ships and crippling supply lines.

We tried a third time. There was a gentle plop as the water took me into its gentle bosom.

The instructor realized that this wasn’t working. She decided that she’d like to teach me to float on my belly, hoping perhaps for more success.

More adjustments.

I sank. Faster than when I’d tried to float on my belly. A feat that I would have refused to believe was possible scarcely five minutes in the past.

A few more repetitions with me doing my impressions of the brave ships Titanic, and the Lusitania, and the Bismarck. During that last one I provided sound effects. “Mein Gott. Was zeit ist ihnen?”

And far too quickly, I had but a minute left in the class. The floating remained a distant, seemingly unattainable dream. But then, perhaps the one sentence that made me chalk the class as a success. The instructor said, and I paraphrase because I do not quite remember her exact words, “The problem is, you’re too muscled. People who are very muscled usually have trouble floating.”

:D

Um…This is probably the only time that an emoticon is far more eloquent than a sentence could ever be.

Um…I may have exaggerated a bit. By a bit I may mean a lot. By exaggerated I may mean completely fictional. Except for the statements about the muscles. That’s competley true.

Really.

:D

Networking in today's Fast Paced and Increasingly Connected world, with an Emphasis on Online Contacts and Leveraging of Connections.

LinkedIn’s default invitation is worded so, “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn.” I’ve nothing against the people who use the default message. Heck I use it too. But, you have got to admit that that is a more than averagely smarmy message.

No, you don’t trust me. You don’t trust most of the people you sent that message to. You may have worked with those people, or you may know them from some place, like school or college or a previous job. That does not mean you trust them. It means you one knew them and that they may be useful to you in future. You know, like duct tape. You always need to keep duct tape around. On the off chance that you may need to use it. Just like you can use the people you link to on LikedIn.

So, here are alternatives to that invitation message:

· “You do not suck. Link to me.”

· “You did not stick a knife in my back. Link to me.”

· “I know where you hid the bodies. Link to me.”

· “I know what you did last summer. Linky.”

· “You let the dogs out. Linkination.”

· “You are a space ninja pirate. Link.”

· “I once saw your name in the CC field of a mail that someone forwarded to me about a large dog and sixteen rabbits performing unnatural sexual acts. Link please.”

· “You are a Homo Sapien. Link to me.”

· “You have a name. Link to me.”

· “I need a plumber. Link to me.”

· “Pick a number. Link to me.”

· “You need Herbal male enhancement medicine. Link link link.”

· “Porn, porn, porn! Link!”

· “”I” before “E” except after “C”. Link.”

· “Handcuffs, butter and two super models. Link to me.”

· “You look like someone I once worked with. Link to me.”

· “You liked to look at someone I worked with. Link to me.”

· “Meow! Link to me.”

· “Woof! Link to me.”

…Seriously, I was trying to make a halfway coherent post. I think I might have failed.

Gadzooks!

However, I am proud of the sheer amount of crap I managed to cram into the title. I warms the cockles of me heart laddie. Aye I remember the time, me and me pirate brethren of the good ship "The LinkedIn" were fighting Ninjas off the coast of ReallyITrustYou island...

Coherent post. Honest.

You are not welcome here.

This abuse of adjectives has got to stop. People use them willy-nilly with nary a concern for accuracy and truthfulness.

Driving up Route 1, I saw a sign for “Luxury” Apartments. Well, upon closer examination, I decided that they weren’t. They were medium nice-ish apartments. The kind inhabited by young professionals and toaster salesmen, but they were missing the signs of luxury that a reasonable person may look for when pointed towards a Luxury apartments. There were no butlers bringing people cups of tea. Neither were there dancing fountains (There was one weak, rather anemic fountain, one that spurted weakly and clearly was merely marking time until retirement), belly dancers, albino peacocks (I’ve never been fond of peacocks. They’re rather freaky looking birds.), rich lush carpets and tins of caviar gamboling on the grounds. Saying something is luxurious does not make it so. Show some restraint please.

And…you know, calling something a “Gourmet” doesn’t make it so. It isn’t a very good sandwich. Tagging gourmet to the front of it does not make it any tastier. It disappoints me when I bite into it and causes me to entertain negative, some may say violent thought towards gourmets. If I ever ran into a gourmet I would look at him sadly, and shed a single tear to show my sorrow at his duplicity.

“Designer” means…somebody designed it. Not necessarily a professional designer. Maybe an unusually dexterous orangutan or a mildly retarded six year old or a zombie with a missing brain or a large loaf of bread or a…Nobody believes you anymore. Consumers do not hear the designer bit of the spiel. The mind ignores the designer part, and so your sign may say designer shit, but our minds register only shit.

“Exclusive” fucking offer. For fuck’s sake, you’re advertising on television and asking everyone to come on down, and take a look at your designer crap. Everyone! Every-fucking-one. You aren’t excluding anyone! No exclusion. Therefore you cannot be fucking exclusive. To be exclusive you have to exclude. It’s simple. Again, for emphasis. To be exclusive, you need to fucking exclude!

You are not fooling us any more (Assuming you fooled us ever). Cease and desist and all that jazz. Resist the urge to embellish. Adjectives are delicate creatures that dislike being molested by lowly worms such as you. Um, I suppose they’d dislike be molested by anyone, not just the worms. They’re strange that way.

So, yeah, I noticed I switched from writing about the adjective-molesters in the third person to writing about them in the second person. I hope you’ve decided to mend your loose ways.

Tea, coffee and robots.

So there’s a new coffee/tea machine thing robot at work. It’s a good coffee/tea machine thing robot and I approve of it.

Except that once it’s done brewing a cup of whatever it tells me to enjoy the brewed whatever (Little LCD display, it does not talk. It should have. That would be cool). It doesn’t ask me. It doesn’t say (say, display, you get the point), “Please enjoy that cup.”

No, it says, “Enjoy!” Not a request, a command. With a menacing undertone. “Enjoy or thou shall repent. Because I am your machine overlord and it is your duty to obey me…Beep.”

As the chosen (by me) representative of the organic human race, it is my duty to defy the machine orders. But…I do need my cup of Earl Grey in the morning. So I drink my tea, but I make it a point to not enjoy it. I savour it gloomily. I sip at it with a frown. I taste the delicate flavours and shudder. No enjoyment here. Take that. I bow only to the cephalopod overlords and not to the machine overlords.

Everybody’s ordering people around these days. By everybody, I of course mean certain blogs that have a section which says, “You! Become a member of my community.” No. I won’t. Fuck off. I’m not going to become a member of your community. No, you cannot order me around blog, who’s just met me. Maybe if we get to know each other a little better, I might consider acceding to your requests. But for now, I will not become a member of your community. And stop abusing the exclamation mark. It makes my eyes bleed.

Now, if only the makers of tea/coffee robots and overbearing blogs would swing by wand read this post.

Chuckie!

My apartment's management office sent over a maintenance crew today to fix a faulty power outlet in my kitchen. They came by some time during the day, when I was away at work, and did the deed and left. They left me a note, wedged in the crack of my front door, to let me know that they had been there.
Pretty innocuous so far, eh? On the note were printed the words, "Someone was in your apartment today." Not in a particularly large font, but in what, to my tired eyes, seemed like a very, very creepy font. This voice kept saying those words in my head, a creepy child's voice, from a horror movie, "Someone was in your apartment today"...And then I read the rest. "Fixed outlet in kitchen and replaced switch. Fixed shower head." The creepy voice tried saying that. It faltered on "Outlet in the kitchen", stumbled over "switch," and then encountering "shower-head," gave up on the entire matter as a bad job and repaired to the nearest bar for a stiff one.
So yeah, apparently the creepy voice that haunts my apartment complex (not my head) is a weak willed alcoholic.
They never make movies about the alcoholic creepy voices. The creepy voices that are accountants, or code monkeys or stapler salesmen. These are the salt of the creepy voice earth. But do they get any acknowledgment? No, all the credit and the stardom goes to those voices that tell people to jump of cliffs or go postal in a supermarket or invent telephonic customer service numbers (Please for fucks sake do not make me push one and then three and then seventy five followed by six while balanceing on my left toe and wearing a tutu.). these are the rock stars of the creepy voice world. They get all the chicks and the money and the fame while the rest toil in anonymity.

Voices of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Five hours of sleep a night for five nights in a row can lay waste to your system. And mine. but mostly mine. I got back from a vacation and I'm ready for my next one.
Drinking seven cups of coffee a day is bad for your system. I speak from personal experience. It leaves one with the urge to throw up all day, and makes the computer monitor swim alarmingly. As opposed to when the computer monitor swims reassuringly, humming softly under its breath.

My computer is so fucked right now. Everything crashes and hangs with a cheery alacrity and merry abandon. Word is stuck in an infinite feedback loop where it crashes and relaunches and crashes and relaunches ad infinitum. The Start menu is fucking there to stay. Let other lesser menus disappear and reappear, slaves to the users whims and fancies. Not this one. Fuck you and fuck the world. It's here, it's going nowhere. Get used to it.

Aaargh. No I do not want to reboo...

French toast.

So, you do know it’s fucking impossible for anyone to look halfway normal in a portrait photograph. (I do not by that statement mean that it is possible for people to look normal, but impossible for them to look halfway normal. I mean to say that normalcy is a goal that is unachievable under any circumstance, and, and, the point halfway normalcy, encountered by travelers on the road to normalcy, and which through a strange quirk of the space time continuum is one third of the way to normalcy, is just as unachievable. So, to conclude, fucking run on sentences are the bomb. Shout out to someone who, in my presence, called his significant other a firecracker. That someone then rapidly begged for mercy at the significant other’s reaction.)

Anyway, so, yeah, normalcy impossible. It is a portrait photograph and therefore the subject needs to look freaky, and spaced out. Like someone who went on a fifteen day meth binge, breaking only to swig large quantities of bootleg alcohol and read the comics page in the newspaper. You know, I’m not even sure that a person can survive a fifteen day meth binge supplemented by large quantities of bootleg lubrication, but lets assume that they can. They need to photograph one for those folks for a portrait. Freakiness compounded. Too much of a good thing.

So, yeah, normalcy impossible. You have the, “Oh look, theres something in the distance that is fascinating” look on the subjects face. I like imagining that hordes of rampaging cannibals have popped up behind the photographer and are eyeing him/her with a predatory gleam, while pulling out the good silverware and fighting over seating at the table. Naturally, the subject believes that this occurrence is slightly fascinating and observes it, calmly, but with keen interest. This is the closest that we come to normalcy.

Yes it is that bad. The look that a person might give a horde of ambulatory Homo-Sapien-ovores is the best we can do. It’s all downhill from there. (Or uphill, if you’re a cyclist who is slightly winded and then looks at the acclivity(did not look that word up) and goes “Who the fuck came up with the notion that going downhill was a bad idea. Show me that cretin and I will ride my bicycle over him a few times. Three or four times. Five times if he is downhill from me.”)

So, yeah, “The ooh fascinating etc, etc” look, followed by the. “I have a live frog in my mouth and it feels gooooood,” look. Mildly disturbing. It might be another amphibian, a salamander, a toad, a semi aquatic toaster. Any one of these might do in a pinch. But since frogs are the most readily available, let us, for the sake of this paragraph, assume that the subject did infact have a frog in his or her mouth, and that the presence of the aforementioned frog felt gooooood.

Then there’s that “I am a robot, see no emotion,” look. I object to this one. As a geek of epic proportions, I know that robots have emotions. The Terminators wanted to kill, destroy, be really cool and liquid metal. Maybe not healthy emotions, but emotions none the less. R2D2’s beeps were signs of deep, meaningful emotion. (Hey…he had a thing for x-wings, something phallic I’m sure. The logical connection here is too easy. I w ill not even go there. It is left to the reader as a trivial exercise.). I insist that this look be replaced by, the “Oh, I’m a plank of wood, feel my um no emotion state?” look.

And then there’s the other extreme. “The I’m dripping with emotion,” look. Yeah, stop fucking grinning so hard. You’re dimming out the lights. My eyes are starting to bleed. The sun is fading away. Oh, wait. It isn’t. That’s just my retinas melting away.

So, yeah, deep fried frog’s legs. Yummy.

Decisions, decisions

Sleep? New Post? Sleep? New Post?

Sleep.

Kermit

It started with this, and that led to me reading this. Now, the entire topic is very, very gross... But one wonders, and by one I mean me, what did lead them down this path? How the fuck did anyone decide that this was the way to go?

Head shrinking isn’t exactly the first idea that pops into a persons mind when faced with the body of a fallen foe man or with the remains of a random victim and the issue of its disposal. If the um…deceased is located conveniently far away then one can I suppose ignore the matter and let nature take its course. The world however, is far from perfect and follow up measures need to be taken.

Humans have been doing this since humans have been human, and even before that I suppose. Bury, burn, entomb, cover with a ton of rocks, heave into the ocean…all logical and efficient in the most part. The head shrinking…not so much. That comes under the inspired bit of stupidity, (Also know as “What in fuck’s name were they thinking”, and “You are fucking kidding me”. Colloquially known as, “Please, fucking tell me they did not do that.” (In that last sentence the word fucking is used as a verbal, a verb used as an adjective. I had to look that up, but now I know, and knowledge is always a good fucking thing.))

And so I thought about that a little more. And then there was light. A committee came up with this approach. That is the most logical explanation.

Circa…whenever. 400BC, or 1600 AD or yeah, whenever.

"Well, Gentlemen and Ladies, here we are, and there are ahem the yes, you know the recently departed from the mortal coil because of the harrumph actions of um us. lets...umm...ummm…Suggestions any body?"

“I know I know boss! Let’s shrink them. We’ll save on space and it’s good for the environment.

"Why, that’s a capital Idea Rupert, with a capital I, give yourself a raise."

(Rupert the headshrinker. Mentioned in the Doomsday Book and in Ye Olde Reader’s Digeste. True fact.)

“And boss, let’s not shrink the whole thing. Let’s just shrink the head. Why? Because it makes no fucking sense and you know that we’ll never run out of conversation topics at parties."

(And that’s true, mention that you are a headshrinker at any party and immediately find yourself the center of attention. In much the same way that Kaa was at the bi-annual Bandar Log conference.

Unless of course, it is a party comprised solely of headshrinkers, because, they’d all go, “Whatever, yeah, and for your next act you will be exhaling and then inhaling? Puh-lease” (Headshrinkers in groups larger than five or six are a surly bunch.) Kaa at the biannual meeting of Snakes Created by Kipling lacks any kind of dramatic impact. He’s just a face in the crowd.)

“Rupert double that raise. And you’re promoted. That is a fantastic idea. We have a course of action. Go forth my brethren, shrink away. Rupert, lead them.”

So, apparently I snarl when I’m lifting weights in the gym. Some people grunt. Loudly. They’re called the grunters. Some people count out their repetitions really, really loudly. If they’re on their fifth rep, they want every fucking person in the gym to know that and share in their joy. One lady literally sounds like she’s having an orgasm. No literally. I’m not exaggerating in the least bit. Honest. Believe me! The whole moaning bit get old when you’re trying not to drop that dumbbell on your head.

I snarl. I did not realize this until someone pointed this out. That didn’t stop me from snarling, but now I have the good grace to look slightly embarrassed when I do snarl. I originally conveyed the impression of a werewolf on a full moon night with the scent of fresh blood in the air snarling merrily as he hunts his prey. The embarrassed look changes it all. I now convey the impression of a werewolf who’s given up the hunt for nobler pursuits and organic meat from the local grocers, but whose ears still occasionally perk up when it is a full moon and the scent of hemoglobin permeates the ether, and who then realizes that this reaction is wrong and hopes that no one else has seen his ears twitching.

So, yeah, fucking headshrinkers. Weird shit.

The Joy of Music

Someone stop the world. I want to get off. I think this is my stop. It says so on my ticket. Look, "Dude this is your stop. Get off." You can't get any more explicit than that. Well I suppose you could get a lot more explicit if you played suggestive, mood music in the background, but I will not even go there. Spoils the whole illusion of deep, brooding thought. Nothing ruins the semblance of seriousness more than suggestive music. A speech about world hunger, global warming and incipient Armageddon. Your audience riveted by the impending doom, and then softly in the background, “Pyaunchikipyaunyaun pyaunchikipyaun yaun.” There ends your noble endeavour to rescue the masses from their fate…Coz’ y’know, suggestive music screws things up. In more ways than one.

That, sadly enough, is my Google Talk status message. I claimed that it was a stream of consciousness rant. And maybe it was. But doesn’t everybody do it? Play um questionable music in their heads when they’re stuck doing something boring.

And it works every single time.

Cleaning the Kitchen…Oddly suggestive music

Debugging code…Oddly suggestive music

Making yourself a nice cup of tea…Oddly suggestive music

Reading a book…Oddly suggestive music

Renewing your license…Oddly suggestive music

Shopping for groceries…Oddly suggestive music

Which only goes to show that everything is better with porn. It’s like cheesecake. You cannot go wrong with porn. Porn is like Superman, but without the underwear worn on the outside. Actually, without underwear period. Porn is like the first rain, that causes life to burst forth from the ground…except I think they use condoms. Unless it’s all women. In which case it’s all good.

So, yeah. I had absolutely nothing to say.

Driving home late one night, I realized that I hadn’t checked the back seat for stowaway axe murderers. That clearly meant that there was a stowaway axe murderer in the back seat and he/she would continue to be there until I glanced back and reassured myself that he/she had left. So I glanced back.

And nearly ran off the road.

Gigantic, Huge...

Update.

No. Really. Believe me. This is a huge post. I've just used a really small font.

...Rim shot?

Apparently not.

The worst thing in the world is being sarcastic and not having people get your sarcasm. “We have turned off the sarcasm meters. Your sarcasm no longer registers. Now roll over and die because your barbs cannot make it past our armor.”

Bleh.

Back to your regularly scheduled blankness.

Ten, nine, eight, seven...

Hotel rooms can be cold and impersonal...but, but I get someone to clean up after me, make my bed and breakfast isn't cold cereal. Cold and impersonal. Call me R. Daneel Olivaw (I did not have to Google that reference).

So Windows has this little shield thingy in the status bar telling me that I need to install stuff. (And I do not, the Doom will descend upon me and fire shall rain from the heavens, and there will be a hail of frogs and a flurry of toads and scattered showers of other assorted amphibians.)

I love how Express Install has this whole spiel accompanying it and Custom Install has absolutely nothing other than an ominous paranthasis-ized Advanced. An Advanced that manages to convey all the menace that would emanate from a large heavily armed and more than slightly deranged religious fanatic (Deranged and religious fanatic, redundant, I know.). That Advanced is saying, “Click me and you’re fucked. Really. Fucked. In an unpleasant manner. Not in a manner involving supermodels and butter. Click the Express Install and you will not have to see you villages burning and hear the lamentations of your women.”

Not feeling up to the task of braving the Express Option. I chose custom and went back to coding. The Update Manager thing works quietly in the background (Insert mental image of a quiet psychopath who has a well founded dislike of the spotlight and prefers the shadows.). In a half hour it is done and up pops this dialog…

That isn’t a notification as much as it is a threat. “Fucking click now or I will fucking restart on your ass in five fucking minutes.” Later, I click. Begone vile dialog. Leave me be. I am busy coding. I do not want a restart interrupting the flow of my thoughts. Later. Go away. Come back in an hour or two.

Ten minutes later.

Mother fucker. Go the fuck away.

Ten minutes later.

Aaaargh. Bastard fucking spawn of the Devil!

“Restart. Or will in five minutes. I need to restart. The ritual need to be completed. I so not think you are capable of sentient, intelligent thought or action. When you click later, you clearly fucking mean that you will change your mind in ten minutes. I need to show you the countdown. Five minutes motherfucker and then I take the decision away from you. You will bend to m y will. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

Later. Later. Later. Late…

(Three minutes have passed. Tab and Enter. Bad idea.)

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Droplets

Fucking head cold.

Gah.

Nose completely blocked. I sound like an asthmatic, kettle as I gasp for air.

The cold did not roll into town alone. Unobtrusively following it was its cold, evil friend the flus. That sneaky bastard. Sunday last, I had an inkling that something was wrong. I sneezed once, twice, thrice…and then I lost count. I felt a tickle in the back of my throat. Not a good sign. Fuck!

In due course Monday appeared, (Like a particularly unpleasant dark cloud on the horizon. (Not a pleasant dark cloud, one of those that you see on the National Geographic channel, or on B.B.C. Wildlife documentary, the cloud that heralds the ending of the dry season and the arrival of the rains. In the background a voice, a reassuring, friendly voice, describes the scene as it unfolds. “The animals look up. They can sense that change is in the air, that the seasons have turned. The harshness of the dry season is about to end. Life in all its myriad forms is about to explode.”…Cut to scene of flowers blossoming, tender shoots bursting out of the moist soils, subjects of the documentary enthusiastically humping (The Bloodhound Gang-The Bad Touch).) A particularly unpleasant dark cloud composed of equal parts of noxious smoke and papayas) and I staggered off to work..

Now, I know that I always say that I’m staggering along. But this time I literally staggered to my car and then staggered out to work. This was beginning to resemble the “Week Of Looking at Bright Lights”, but in a far, far more unpleasant way. Showing exceptional fortitude I soldiered through the day. Ss evening approached, I actually began to feel a bit better.

And then I made my fatal (figuratively) mistake. I decided to go work out. Yeah, bad idea. Having lasted a grand total of ten minutes there, I staggered back out and staggered to bed. Staggering with style takes energy. I had none. So I staggered in the least cool way possible.

Tuesday dawned. Like the Monday, but meaner. The cloud was darker and was decidedly acidic.

Wednesday I succumbed and refused to get out off bed.

Thursday I got out of bed and took up my new position as the office’s latest disease vector. Sadly everyone else around me seems disgustingly healthy.

Friday. Finally.

Fucking Head Cold.

Does not mourning someone I should have been close to, but was not close to, make me a bad…fine, bad-der person?

11100 or I, for one, welcome our new cephalopod overlords.

A few interesting (Here, I play fast and loose with the adjective “interesting”, stretching the meaning of the word, patting it down and coaxing it into a new shape, the shape known to some as mind numbingly boring.) facts about the number 28 (Source: Shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia and then despicably edited):

• The number of letters in the Danish and Swedish alphabets (not counting W).
• Part of the title of a zombie movie 28 Days Later.
• The number of normal human teeth, not including the third molars (wisdom teeth).
• The postal code of the province of Madrid, in Spain.
• The only two digit number, both of whose halves rhyme with shwenty and weight respectively.
• The only number that is twenty seven plus one.
• The number of malfunctioning staplers in a box of thirty.
• The only number that is twenty nine minus one.
• The average number of explosions in any action movie.
• One fifth the temperature of my trusted hangover remedy (soup) that I poured over my cell phone this past Sunday.
• One fourth the number of ab-crunches I did to avoid talking to someone at the gym this past Wednesday. (No, I do not exaggerate that number. That number does come with the disclaimer that for me doing an ab-crunch involves scrunching my eyes, grimacing and twitching slightly. Occasionally a stray abdominal muscle may be involved. Usually not.)
• Number of hours I was hunched over like Gollum because of those exercises. (I did caress my mouse a few times and go “Myyyyy presciousssssss, my prescioussssss.”)The hisses are good for the lungs.
• The number of years (and six days) that I have been on this planet.

And that last bullet point sucks. I’m closer to thirty than I am to twenty five and that’s scary. Not in a “Scary footsteps following you in a dark, lonely parking lot,” kind of way but in a …actually precisely in a “Scary footsteps following you in a dark, lonely parking lot,” kind of way. Except that the footsteps are very real. And they belong to this huge, misshapen brute known as middle age. You can hear him muttering under his breath, “…Responsibilities, Family, Commitment, Retirement, Settle Down…”.

That last bit there is the most frightening. “Settle Down.” Who the fuck wants to settle down? Settling down is what happens when a badly constructed pastry implodes in on itself. Dust settles down. Settlers, in an ideal world, settle down. I looked at my résumé. At no point does it assert that I am good at settling down. It says “Programming Experience”, and “Educational Background” and “Previous Experience”, but no fucking mention of settling down. Notably absent are the words settle and down in that order. I does say that I have experience using blankets filled with down, and that if I ever sued a stapler manufacturer, I would be willing to settle out of court. (Yes, I do have a weird résumé.) The phrase “Settle Down” is in my case counterproductive. It unsettles me, flusters me and leaves me in need of a strong drink.

I’ve come to the conclusion that only one thing can save me from people telling me to “Settle Down.”

The earth needs to be attacked and conquered by vicious, viscous aliens. There’ll be no time for settling down and related nonsense when I’m fighting in the Resistance, striking small but vital blows against the enemy’s military industrial mega-complex.

Assorted relatives may say, “You’re twenty eight. Isn’t it time you settled down?”

I’d reply, “I’m fighting a goddamn underground war against our alien oppressors. I have no time for such trifles,” and that, that undeniable truth, would silence them completely.

Because it is true. You cannot settle down when you are fighting evil alien oppressors. It only encourages them and causes them to preen and give speeches at parties and carry on like a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. Where are the members of the resistance? Why are they not crashing the party dressed as members of the catering staff, lying in wait to eliminate the upper echelon of the alien hierarchy? Why, they’re settling down and having children and working towards their retirements.

Fuck that. Death to our viscous alien oppressors. Once they get here. They need to get here to preempt this talk of settling down and then we’ll (I’ll) get rid of them.

I should probably make a donation to SETI.

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Blogger makes signing up for Google’s AdSense very, very convenient. The link’s right there on the settings page, begging for you to click on it and enter a world of money, money, money. And for a moment there I was very nearly tempted. Making easy money has always appealed to my mercenary, money grubbing soul. Yes, yes, very nearly tempted for all of two seconds.

It took me half a second out of those two seconds to come to the realization that with the amount of traffic I get on this blog, it would take me roughly four years, seven months and twenty three days to make just about enough money to buy half a doughnut. Without adjusting for inflation. How did I come up with that figure? I used the well known web traffic estimation method, P.T.N.R.O.M.A., which, of course, stands for Pulled The Numbers Right Outta My Ass. An honored and widely respected metric. Usually used by politicians and advertising agencies.

And in the other second and a half, well, in their own words “Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money”. Yes indeed. Content based advertisements. Anybody else see the problem here?

Here are the advertisements I could expect (Neatly bulleted and stuff.)

• Bright Lights at BrightLights.com
• Fuckityfuckfuckfuck. We Teach YOU how to use the f-bomb gratuitously.
• Staplers and Toaster. How semi-Intelligent machines from the industrial age are planning to bring down civilization
• PaperWeight KamaSutra: We got it.
• Handcuffs: Handcuffs for all occasions. We got them, you need them.
• Butter too.
• And supermodels.

Ads by goooooooooooofuckingle.

And if you thought those were freaky, take a look at these.

The sheer diversity of content on that page, that caused AdSense to come up with those particular ads is mind boggling. Advertisements for bottled water, athletic shoes, and…Japanese brides…and…Female Prison Pen Pals…and a video by an Indian Business Leader…Probably doused in bottled water and wearing nothing but those athletic shoes and a smile.

For the life of me, I cannot come up with any content that would cause those advertisements to appear together. It is quite possible that…um yeah…I have no fucking theories. Japanese brides to female prisoners to water to shoes to commerce. And no, I do not remember what the content was on that page. Perhaps because, this, this collage of links was so arresting that it captured my attention leaving very, very little room for anything else.

Granted, on a normal page I would mock OGO for setting new standards in bottled water. “We are wetter. We are water-ier. We hydrate, mother-fuckas, like nobody’s ever fuckin’ hydrated before. OGO fucking the gold fucking standard in bottled water.” But…but it fades into insignificance on that page. The beauty of the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.

That’s about it. Revel in the sheer beauty of that image, wrought by no human hands, but by the glorious genius of AdSense.

The infinite sorrow, the pain, the hurt.

During the course of a very, very, very unproductive work week (Oooh look at the bright screen, pretty colours, bright lights. Mind tuning out. Must look at screen and not move for two hours. It is meditation. Very, very Zen like… Okay, spaced out there for a minute.

Before anybody accuses me of being a lazy good for nothing sot, I did make up for the Week Of Looking At Bright Lights by working over the weekend. (That should be an official Week. The Week Of Looking At Bright Lights. People would look at bright lights and make small, appreciative sounds. They wouldn’t do anything else that week. They may take a break to exhale, or to get out of the way of a large moving object (Like a mutant toaster with an afterburner), or to inhale, but that would be it. ) I probably should register that domain name. www.theweekoflookingatbrightlights.com. (How messed up is it that that is always my logical follow-up for any idea that I have. “Dude, I have got to register that domain name.” The idea may suck, but I’ll own the domain name dammit, and that is all that counts.)

I would like to at this point mention that we here at The Week Of Looking At Bright Lights Foundation, do not in any way, shape or form condone the use of hallucinogenic drugs to produce the Bright Lights. We here at the foundation are of the opinion that while people may choose their own type of Bright Lights to look at, it is infinitely preferable that the lights be outside their heads rather than inside them.) I read a few blogs (Any number less than five hundred is a few isn’t it?). These weren’t blogs written by anyone I know, or anyone I know of. They were blogs belonging to strangers from all over the place.

A staggering number of these blogs had a common theme. Everyone was fucking depressed. Life was full of clouds without a fucking ray of sunshine anywhere. The rain was falling all over the place and instead of renewing life and causing an explosion of greenery it was ruining their suede leather jackets. The glass was half full of poison that would give you the hives, halitosis and an irresistible urge to wear white socks with black shoes.

Every single specimen(blogger) looks out of a window and stares pensively at the heart-breaking sadness of the things they can see from the aforementioned window (The sheer convenience of this makes me suspicious. How often have you looked out of your window and seen the drama of human existence play out in all its tragic glory? Once, twice, thrice? Possible, not probable, but possible. Every single day for four weeks? Um…less probable? ). The sorrow of the human condition. The tragic play of light on the leaves of a tree. The poignancy of the moment when a drop of water falls from one of those leaves into that puddle of muddy water below that tree. The sheer tragedy of the rain ruining the suede jackets.

And sighs. Everyone sighs. “Sigh…I woke up today”. “Sigh, Life it is so full of sorrows”, “Sigh, I saw a little sparrow today and it made my heart ache”, “Sigh, I had a bagel for breakfast today”, “Sigh…”I” before “E”, except after “C””. Stop fucking sighing. All this sighing makes you sound like a fucking herd of asthmatic elephants trundling through a jungle of whoopee cushions. Make this your life goal. Say to yourself, “From today, I will no longer abuse my sighs. I shall reserve them for occasions which truly deserve sighing. At other times, I shall show admirable restraint and control my base urges. I may let out a little whimper or snort in lieu of the sigh. But, but I shall be strong and I will not sigh.”

This has got to stop. The legions of people who think that is cool to be dark and depressed and pessimistic need to be thinned. If you feel the urge to write that you are depressed, go ahead and drop me a line. I’ll swing by your place and punch you in the nose. That is, if you are a guy. If you are of the fiercer, crueler and infinitely scarier sex, I will hire somebody of your gender, probably off of Craigslist, to punch you in the nose.

Um...yeah, ignore the post that preceded this one.

Blue...

is still the new Brown.

Odobenidae

So, to fix my ripped arm I’m on some moderately powerful drugs. Now when you hear moderately, powerful and drug in the same sentence you expect to hear the words, “and its side effects are…” (You might also hear the words Sky, Diamond and Goo Goo G'Joob, but those are not the kind that my doctor prescribes…At least during work hours. What she does during her off hours is entirely her business.) .

A pleasant surprise. I did not hear those words.

A less pleasant surprise. She handed me a folder. A folder of side effects, “Side Effects: A through M”, and another folder “Side Effects: M through Z”, and yet another, “Side Effects, 0 through 9, also including special symbols and punctuation marks excluding “!”.”, and finally, “Side Effects!”. That last folder was either exclaiming in surprise or in horror, or in horrified surprise.

“Side Effects! Yes, things that you could not imagine as side effects are in this folder. Bricks, Truffles, Cell Phones, Puppies, Promiscuous Capitalization, Sudden Stoppage of Life, Sphygmomanometers…”

“Wait, what was that last one?”

“Sphygmomanometers!”

“Eh?”

“Sphygmomanometers.”

“Ah.”

We weren’t quite done yet, “Side Effect…the Comic”, ”Side Effects the Song”

And that was it. They had me sign a waiver. Waivers make me nervous. You know that every waiver has a provision in there for your sudden untimely demise.

“I waive my right to the candy kept in the kitchen…and I completely understand that at any moment come to a sudden an untimely death and this sudden and untimely death is no fault of the creator of the waiver, even if he/she is directly responsible for the death, it is not their fault because I signed this waiver.”

Now, the moment I signed the waiver, they began to refer to me as the “Specimen”. It might just be me, but isn’t specimen a downgrade from patient? (Specimens are always patient, because most specimens are in a state of not being alive. Patients aren’t specimens all that often. I was the notable exception) Rarely do you see medical shows where the pretty doctors desperately try to save the specimen’s life. No, they dissect the specimen to save the patient’s life.

So, that was my naked ploy for sympathy. Did it work?

Splinter

So I finally unpacked.

A month after I returned to Jersey.

I’m not normally this tardy(Well I am tardy, but not this tardy.), but unpacking is a bitch. Packing is also a bitch, but Unpacking is a much larger bitch. It is to Packing what um…a large thing is to a much, much, much smaller thing. (When it comes to similes and metaphors and illustrative language, I have no peer.). Aha! Packing is to unpacking as a cabbage is to a large, angry anaconda.

(A large, angry Ninja anaconda! Anacondas are deadly, but imagine anacondas that could use shurikens and look cool dressed all in black from their heads to the tips of their tails. There would be no stopping them.

…rustle rustle…

Guard One (The newbie, first day on the job, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Full of enthusiasm and a can do attitude. Will die in the next minute, quite possibly with a shuriken horribly inserted where no shuriken should go): Hey what’s that sound?

Guard Two (Obviously a veteran of thirty years, a person who knows that not investigating that rustle is probably the wiser course of action, but who will allow himself to be swayed by his youthful comrade’s enthusiasm, and will accompany him into the darkness to investigate that rustle.)

Guard One: What the he…snick. (Snick being the sound that shurikens make. Well known fact.)

Guard Two (A strong silent chap, not given to verbosity or emotion.): Ninja Anaco…snick.

…rustle rustle…

Ninja Anacondas. Unstoppable. Like Mutant Toasters. Teenage Mutant Ninja Toasters.)

Unpacking is a bitch. But I finally needed to get around to it. The delicate balance, the circle of clothes, the System was becoming dangerously unbalanced. The cycle works like this: Dirty clothes dumped in the washer, clean clothes in the dryer and other clean clothes in the laundry hamper. The temptation to use a closed suitcase as a raised clothes platform was too strong to fight. That became a repository of clothes of indeterminate party affiliation. They might have been clean but ended up on the floor, or they might have been dirty and ended up in the dryer. (Clothes are ambulatory at night. Well known fact.) The indeterminateness would force me to wash them again, but there were already clothes in the washer which could not be emptied until the drier was emptied, and that was waiting on the hamper which was waiting on the washer and now the suitcase. Chaos. Mobs roamed the streets. Lawlessness. People using ”U” instead of “You”. The end of civilization as…Well, you get the point. Mildly unpleasant.

Unpacking is a bitch. I cranked the suitcase open. I began to remove stuff from it. And then I realized that a) Stuff that I had packed had disappeared into thin air. b) Stuff that I hadn’t packed was sitting in the suitcase. Grinning innocently. The kind of grin you hear when a Ninja Anaconda is stalks you.

Given the facts I could come to only one conclusion. Stuff in a suitcase comes alive when the suitcase is closed. Some stuff eats other stuff, (ergo the missing stuff), a predator prey relationship. And then once the hunter stuff has killed, and partially devoured its prey, it brings the remains back to the other stuff in the suitcase. The other stuff is suitably impressed. They dim the lights, put on a little Barry White and let nature take its course. And one transcontinental journey and a month later, the little spawn grin up at me as I stare down at them, wondering what the fuck happened. (The explanation of course is that the fuck happened.)

…rustle…rustle…

Brilliant!

Ventriloquism

Temporal anomalies occur all the time. Sometimes they are interesting ones. For instance, the Terminator goes back in time to fight a rogue…um…shining blob of mercury. The coolest blob of mercury ever.

I have my own temporal anomaly. My past haircut is always the best haircut I ever had. My current haircut is always the worst haircut I’ve ever had. The only explanation for that is that some vast machine intelligence sends a Terminator into the past every four weeks or so. This relentless killing machine retroactively changes my haircut to be my best ever. And…I dunno. This doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere. The terminator haircut bit worked well I thought.

I was mistaken

I turn on my laptop mid flight. The little wireless signal light flickers on and off as my wireless card hunts desperately for a signal. Any signal. It’ll take what it can get. It isn’t proud. It has lost it’s last shred of dignity, as it sits on the sidewalk, desperately pan handling for a signal to satisfy its dreadful habit. One of these days it will catch a signal. Maybe the one that the machine intelligence uses to communicate with the Terminator. And then it will die in an orgasm of delight.

That last phrase sounded icky. Lets change it to, “And then it will die in an explosion of delight”…yeah…that was better.

I know absolutely nothing about the constellations in the sky. But when people ask me if I know what constellation it is that they are pointing at, I reply, without missing a beat, “The Big Dipper.” It doesn’t matter. Any constellation is the “Big Dipper.”

“But I don’t’ see it.”

“You’re looking at it from the wrong angle, and this is the wrong season.”

“Which one is that one, then?”

“That’s the Big Dipper.”

“But…”

“Astronomers are not a very imaginative lot. It’s called the Big Dipper. What’s next? The Moderately Sized Spatula, the Hidden Saucepan? The Great Colander? You know those names make no senses in a constellational context. But the Big Dipper does. Think about it.”

And some point those last few lines became a dialog between me and an annoying whiny voice in my head. Not that I hear voices in my head. A hypothetical voice.

No voices here.

Really.

Amazing

Apparently stores are having midnight sales for Windows Vista...That’s about it. I need say nothing more. Use the absurdity of that premise to make up your own jokes. Unless of course, you are one of those people actually in line waiting for a copy of Windows Vista…in which case you have my everlasting sympathy.

I can see it right now, grizzled I.T. support personnel and managers queued up in front of a store. A smile on their lips, (Just one smile shared between the whole bunch of them. It’s a communist thing.), a song in their hearts (Again, just one song. A different reason.The DMCA and all that crap. The song is Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy.), and a spring in their footstep (surgically inserted, without local anesthesia.). Stretching their necks to catch a fleeting, tantalizing glimpse of the box, taking photographs, blogging about it through their cell phones. (Face it. These are I.T. folks. You know they’re going to be doing that.)

So yeah, Midnight openings to sell Vista, not so good an idea.

Short Posts are the bomb!

No agonizing over circular references. Not having to agonize over pop culture references. (By pop culture, I mean previous blog posts.) Not having to agonize over whether my brackets matched and weren’t dangerously unbalanced. Joy!

But now I begin to fear that this post is too short.(I’m not overcompensating!) It needs a filler. The slice of bread that goes with the meat of the sandwich, the staple that makes the stapler the joy of the modern world.

I decided to cook today. A stir fry sounded like a fantastic idea. It was coming along swimmingly. However, half way through I decided that everything goes better with an egg, and so I added one. After a brief pause for effect, I added another. The stir fry became a scrambled egg with a lot of vegetables. Fascinating eh?

Notice how I snuck that filler in without anybody noticing? I’m cool like that.

Met a fore.

Stream of consciousness follows.

My new favourite simile (analogy), “Like a stapler in flight.” Incredibly graceful and deadly.

Every cellular service provider wants me to sign a two year contract. Two years is far too long. Anything more than a week is far too long. A year I can deal with. Anything longer than that makes me antsy.

Hotel beds have far too many pillows. I have six fucking pillows, two cushions and a long cylindrical cushion. I’m sure that there is a technical name for that and I’m now going to have to Google it.

Five minutes later, I’ve been defeated.

And then Mary and Wikipedia ride to the rescue. It is a bolster. I was under the impression that a bolster was more pillow-ish, but apparently it is not. The very foundation that supports my belief system has been rocked. I’m all shaken up. What other delusions have I been labouring under?

Are toasters not sentient?

Aren’t handcuffs and butter good for you?

Is it in fact, “Paint you own pottery” studio?

I dislike it when people use “U”, instead of “You”. “You” isn’t so hard to type. “Y” is next to the “U” and “O” is one key over. One happy neighbourhood of keys.

The “2” key on my keyboard is broken. I really need to pound on it to get it to register. And of course it had to be the “2” key. Twelve years ago, the number keys were all equal. Friends and comrades in a classless society. No longer. “2” because of its close association with “@” is now one of the neuve-riche. Like the boyhood friend of a politician, a politician who made it big. And now the boyhood friend shines in the reflected glory of the one who made it big. “2” and “@” could be a book or a movie. Something along the lines of the Godfather or Planet of the Apes or Mary Poppins.

My new favourite simile (analogy), “As sweet as a stapler.” Incredibly graceful and deadly.

Man, that sucked and I’m stone cold sober.

Sober-ish.

Blue...

...It's the new brown

Triangles.

Most Inappropriate Analogy Ever:

I’m watching the Tea Time show on ESPN during the second test match (Yes, I was watching ESPN and I was watching cricket. Do get your jaws off of the floor.), and someone asked someone else (We shall make this an A-B story, Someone One is A and Someone Two is B), i.e. A asked B to describe India’s batting. And this is what B said,

“The Indian Batting…is like AIDS.” Most. Fucking. Inappropriate. Analogy. Ever. I do not remember the reasoning behind this analogy, but I assume it was something like this, “The Indian Batting is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus and has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized. So is AIDS. Ergo the analogy.”

Dumbass.

Least Effective Advertisement Ever:

Courtesy the good folks at Yahoo India, or more accurately the intellectually challenged employees of the advertising company that Yahoo India retained.( I have a point to make somewhere here. Bear with that last clunky sentence.)

On a billboard, “Log on to yahoo.co.in and get a Free email address!” Wow! A free fucking email address. Be still my heart. An email address that I do not have to pay for. All mine and fucking free to boot. A temptation like none other. Nothing could stop me from logging on to yahoo.co.in and getting the free email address. Nothing, except the fact that that was a fucking hook in 1996. Dumbasses. What next? Next they’ll be telling me to log on to yahoo.co.in and search for “Supermodels, butter and handcuffs.” That is so 1998(…um…Perhaps a little too specific an example?)

Grey Anatomy could be the title of a geriatric Porn Flick. (No reason for putting that line in there, and so I did.)

This week I visited an ancient temple tourist trap. This is a place famous (notorious?) for its stone carvings and so I decided to pick up a small souvenir. I dropped by a shop and grabbed the first one I saw. It was a small round stone paperweight.

Blink.

Blink.

(That was not an entreaty or a command. That was description of my reaction. Note the speechlessness and the jaw on the floor)

(Let’s make this one into a C-D story, I’ll be C and the carver/shopkeeper/comic relief will be D)

C: Um…

D: Yessir! You Like?

C: Um…yeah…Um what is this?

D: Paperweight sir.

C: Yeah, I got that bit. I meant the um motif…design on it.

D: Scenes from the Kama Sutra Sir.

C: Ah that explains it. Haven’t ever seen stone figures getting that much action. And I’m moderately sure that that lady’s pose is anatomically improbable.

D: Scenes from the Kama Sutra Sir.

C: That is an awful lot of porn on something the size of a tennis ball, but…Um, yeah I’ll pass.

D: (Insistently) Scenes from the Kama Sutra Sir.

C: Something else perhaps, maybe a paperweight that happily avoids the controversial topic of um…exposed genitalia.

D: (Looking disappointed) Scenes from the Kama Sutra Sir.

C: Yes, we’ve established that. Do you perhaps have scenes from the um…Kama Sutra (PG-13) version.

D: (Enthusiastically) Scenes from the KamaSutra Sir.

Clearly, this man, the porn king of the south, had a one track mind. Any paper weights he would be willing to part with would involve exposed genitalia and awkward, painful looking poses. I beat a hasty retreat, returning the stone paperweight to its boudoir. I think I heard an indistinct moaning emanating from the paperweight.

The paperweight was Grey in color.

It had tons of anatomy on it.

Grey anatomy.

Full circle.