Steadily Going Inane.

Fuck you Facebook

2009-03-14T01:22:00.003-04:00

Really.

Screw you Web Two Dot Oh.

2009-01-13T01:40:00.001-05:00

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

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

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

Much like I lost interest in this blog post.

Snippet

2009-01-06T14:28:00.003-05:00

Transcript

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

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

Me: Not porn.
Unexpected porn. Totally different.

Edited for grammar and content.

This blog rises from the dead...

2008-07-22T22:53:00.001-04:00

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

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

2008-05-01T00:52:00.003-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funny Blog Post.

2008-04-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

Really.

Supply side economic observations.

2008-03-30T23:32:00.000-04:00

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

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

I approve of Kingfisher's T&A policy.

2008-02-28T02:08:00.003-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not yet.

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

“Throwing Stars.”

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

The list needs more.

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

Damn...

2008-02-05T11:41:00.000-05:00

This writing shit is hard.

Cheesecake, good cake or the best cake?

2007-12-05T01:44:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-11-11T21:55:00.000-05:00

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

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

Apparently...

2007-10-30T15:22:00.000-04:00

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

I find that fascinating.

Really.

:(

2007-09-18T13:30:00.001-04:00

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.

2007-09-12T01:50:00.000-04:00

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.”

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.

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

2007-08-15T01:22:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-07-26T02:25:00.001-04:00

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.

2007-07-05T01:59:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-06-20T00:36:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-06-13T00:52:00.001-04:00

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

2007-06-11T01:24:00.000-04:00

Sleep? New Post? Sleep? New Post?

Sleep.

Kermit

2007-05-23T02:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-08T02:24:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-05-01T01:07:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-04-12T01:17:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-31T03:31:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-03-16T17:45:00.000-04:00

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?

2007-03-14T01:17:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-03-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-02-23T02:07:00.001-05:00

is still the new Brown.

Odobenidae

2007-02-23T01:10:00.000-05:00

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

2007-02-20T02:08:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-02-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

Ventriloquism

2007-02-06T01:28:00.001-05:00

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

2007-01-30T01:41:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-01-24T00:51:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-01-21T12:28:00.000-05:00

...It's the new brown

Triangles.

2007-01-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

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.

(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.

Dromaius novaehollandiae

2006-12-27T17:06:00.001-05:00

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...

2006-12-24T14:46:00.000-05:00

..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?

2006-12-20T04:16:00.000-05:00

...Hachoo!

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

2006-12-08T19:15:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-07T16:52:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-11-28T18:08:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-11-08T16:39:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-10-19T01:21:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-10T02:09:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-10-02T01:06:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-26T02:33:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-20T13:32:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-15T01:30:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-08T02:04:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-08-29T15:10:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-25T02:58:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-21T18:34:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-08-17T02:34:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-14T16:13:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-08-13T04:43:00.000-04:00

probably go to sleep sometime soon.

High finance

2006-08-08T22:47:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-08-07T18:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-03T01:46:00.000-04:00

…"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.

2006-07-31T10:03:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-27T02:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-25T17:47:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-24T00:44:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-07-20T16:50:00.000-04:00

...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.

Be prepared

2006-07-18T01:16:00.000-04:00

Some people can travel light. They may be leaving for a six month trip to the wilds of the Amazon rain forest, or to the outer reaches of Mars and all they need to pack are a change of underwear and an English to Martian Dictionary. (The dictionary comes in handy in the rain forest if you feel the urge to bean a wandering toaster. And on Mars the rocks speak nothing but Martian. Very provincial and very, very uncultured.

But, it’s Mars. You really can’t expect the local geo-fauna to be very communicative. It’s the red planet for a reason. The reason being that red is the least talkative of the colors…

…yeah, I’m so fucking out of ideas.)

I am not one of them. I travel heavy. Really, really heavy. I over pack so badly that some people may get the impression that I believe that my sole hope of salvation depends on me stuffing as many things as I can into my backpack. For instance, this last weekend, for an overnight trip to State College, I had packed two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts and for some strange reason four pairs of socks. One of those four pairs was a pair of formal dress socks (No fucking clue why I packed that particular pair).

I hadn’t packed any shoes, but I had the sock front fully covered. If there came a time for me to do my duty, and if that duty involved me having four pairs of socks, perhaps using those socks to fight off rampaging hordes of sock-less monstrosities, I would not be found wanting.

While packing my bag all this seemed perfectly reasonable. I needed backups in case I dropped water or coffee or alcohol over any of my clothes. And then those backups needed backups which needed backups that needed backups…unto infinty.

Eventually I only ended up needing one T-shirt.

...And I forgot my tooth brush.

...And especially for one person, loud explosions and lots of semi-naked women have now made an appearance in this post.

Ouch!

2006-07-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

My arm hurts.

That was my obvious ploy for sympathy. Did it work? I’ll make a sad face if it helps.

Go go

2006-07-11T14:40:00.000-04:00

In the absence of content, a new layout.

And a picture.

This is what happens when you listen to the soundtrack from Kill Bill for eight straight hours. You expect stuff to blow up and the Crazy 88 everywhere. Japanese schoolgirls and women in yellow jumpsuits.

Dammit, I gotta see that movie again.

(Yes, I realize that I changed the layout yesterday. But I did not finish tweaking it until today.

I do wish it was just as easy to change my furniture.

Life needs a cascading style sheet and HTML tags. Now, that would be cool. And strange. But mostly cool. People should be clickable. A little hand should appear over them when you point your hand at them… and I have no fucking clue where I going with this. However, all I can think of now is the ability to drag people I dislike to the Recycle Bin. For um...recycling.

Okay, I just creeped myself out. And not even in a nice way.

Other less creepy stuff, minimize people, maximize them, save them for later, print them out (colour (Fuck you Word! It’s colour and not color!) or grayscale), send them over the internet, share them over peer to peer networks…Boy, none of this is any less creepy. )

Um, yeah. New layout.

(One of these days I’ll write something without brackets and I will pop off from sheer amazement. It seems unnatural to write anything without brackets. Brackets are where all the fun is. The paragraph is where all the moral, upstanding words live. But the brackets are where all the action takes place. The brackets are the seedy underworld of the blog post. The place of high speed word chases, and word shoot outs. Where super-word-heroes, like BatWord and SpiderWord fight crime, the word-fia led by the nefarious “LOL”, and his associates, the criminal underbosses, “U”, “4” and “l8r”.

I see a movie idea here. Something Noir-ish (Noir-esque? Noir-litic? Noir-mal?), with lots of explosions (Bang! Boom! Stunt Words used in the explosions) and semi-naked women.)

The Cheese stands alone.

2006-07-10T15:14:00.000-04:00

I usually not like people who smile too much (Smirking is a different matter altogether). That ten thousand watt smile may be pleasant, but after a while it will probably begin to grate.(Yes, I revel in being grumpy and grouchy. I have a ten thousand watt frown! If one of the fucking ghosts of Christmas came in to visit me, I’d throw something heavy at it, maybe a toaster or a large can of tomato puree. (I do have a large can of tomato puree that I bought last December and haven’t opened yet.) Except for the Ghost of Christmas Past. He’s cool.)

But far more annoying are the blank insincere smiles that the people in commercials have. They’re smiling for no fucking reason whatsoever. Nobody smiles when they are vacuuming, or when they are cleaning the toilet bowl, or when taking the trash out. (And how the fuck can they hold that smile for the entire duration of the commercial? While talking! It is unnatural, and probably involves plastic surgery, black magic and tons of duct-tape.)

No, the look on your face at that time is one of pained disgust, or a look of pained martyrdom, or a look of pained pain. No fucking smiling happens. No wide eyed looks of delight, no happy skipping with a dripping toilet brush in your hands. No looking into the toilet bowl with wide eyed wonder.

Inappropriate smiling involves smiling when you are in the presence of any cleaning product. If you are in the room with something that’s sole purpose in life is getting the gunk off your bathroom floor do not fucking smile like a supermodel just offered to bump uglies with you.

Ban those looks of childlike delight when the fucking Amazing Wonder Mop picks the grungy icky grime from off the floor. And if you show me a split screen with the leading competitor’s product, with it being used by a lady less attractive than the one using used by your product, I will come by your offices and tar and feather you. Except that instead of tar I will use the grungy grime that you used in your commercial.

No more smiling while advertising exercise products. Nobody has a smile of joy when they are on the treadmill. They grimace and look pissed off. Nobody stares off into the distance with a exalted smile as they use the device that will give them a six pack in three weeks if they use it for sixty three seconds a day. And frankly the implicit message in that commercial is that you (presumably gullible viewer) will end up looking like the person in that commercial if you just buy the product. That is fucking deceptive. But, if you are dumb enough to fall for that, you deserve to end up with the BoFlex Cardio-Ab-Ass Machine. You’ll never use it and I hope that the guilt eats you up inside. Either that or that the delivery people drop it on your toe. Try having a fucking exalted smile on your face then.

No smiling at the sight of breakfast cereal. People are not supposed to be cheery before breakfast. If they are, I will come by and shove their heads into the bowl. I’ll have a fucking exalted smile then.

No smiling when peddling pills. And no running past the side effects in a matter of seconds. If the side effects involve shortness of breath, hallucinations and death, I want to know about them. Without being blinded by the smile. Please.

Feel free to smile during a fast food advertisement. I enjoy watching people have coronaries as bright smiles flit across their faces. Much like a butterfly in the spring flitting across a field right before it becomes an early afternoon snack for some enterprising bird.

Grinning allowed during toothpaste commercials. But I’d prefer grimacing. (That’s just me and I’m willing to be flexible here.) But again, no fucking splits screens and please, please, stops using black dots to represent bacteria. I’d like to see something new. Perhaps, the grungy, grimy, gunk from that other commercial.

And more semi-naked women in beer commercials. They can smile as much as they want to. It is not in the least bit inappropriate. Hey, you‘re objectifying women, but at least you are being honest about it.

And Victoria’s Secret commercials. Smile as much as you want to. Or not. I’m really not paying attention to the smile part of the commercial. (One however does wonder who Victoria was, and what was her secret? Secret underwear? Like a secret agent? Undercover underwear? Underwear that used to work for MI6 and spy on the countries beyond the Iron Curtain? Was this underwear responsible for the fall of communism and the destruction of the Soviet Union? What was the underwear’s undercover alias? Was it impersonating a mild mannered shirt in the day and at night it would hunt down East German agents in West Berlin? I sense movie possibilities here. A movie with lots of loud explosions and semi-naked women. Or a movie with lots of loud women and semi-naked explosions)

So yeah, I got nothing.

Tag

2006-07-06T03:30:00.000-04:00

Dhi Only One tagged me.

I am thinking

…With my brain and not with my genitalia. (Well…maybe someday)

I said

…I was out of town when the crime took place. But the cops did not believe me. They threw me into prison and I had my android henchman bust me out off that joint. We escaped through the sewers. And there we ran into Ras-Karfur, the alligator lord of the sewers. Many had faced him and had failed. But I had a shotgun and so in short order he resembled pâté de foie crocodilia. But just at that moment, when I thought I was home safe…Space Ninja Pirates from Outer Space.

…Fuck.

…Far too much.

…Far too little.

I want

… Stuff. (Refer to statement made with respect to regret)

…Two supermodels, a pair of handcuffs and butter. Lots of butter.

…That which I cannot have.

I wish

…I have no truck with genies. None whatsoever.

…That…Yeah, not gonna type that.

…That…Or that.

…That…Um, that’s just plain nasty.

I miss

…Bangalore.

I hear

…The circus is in town.

…The sound of music.

…The lamentations of their toasters.

…That the Nazgul ride again.

I wonder

…”Paint your own pottery studio” or …”Paint your “own pottery studio””

…”Who the fuck was Alice?”

I regret

…That I am not the kind of person who shares his regrets.

I am
…Spartacus.

…As transparent as a concrete wall.

…A transparent concrete wall.

…A member of the Human Saunter.

I dance…

…When just the right amount of drunk. (And I was past that point on Monday, so stop throwing that in my face!)

…Badly

…The Light Fantastic.

I sing

…In the shower.

…Of my deepest feelings. (Yeah right!)

…In the car.

I cry

…No I don’t. And you do not have the proof to say otherwise.

…Except during ET.

I am not

…What I was four years ago.

…Spartacus.

…A nice person.

I write

…Like I speak.

…Stuff that I will never publish.

…Inspirational tracts for the spiritual upliftment of mankind. (Fuck! I’m pretty sure upliftment is a word. Damn you Word’s red squiggly line.)

…To a captive audience.

I confuse

…Myself.

…Others.

…Stuff. (Refer to statement made with respect to regret)

…Alien Ninja Space Pirates with camels.

I need

… Stuff. (Refer to statement made with respect to regret)

…Two supermodels, a pair of handcuffs and butter. Lots of butter.

…what I cannot have.

I should

…Do stuff. (Refer to statement made with respect to regret)

…Hit the sack soon.

…Lose six pounds.

I finish

…With a bang. BANG.

…With a whimper. Yelp.

…As credits roll on the screen.

Well, since we link to the same folks, everyone else who reads this blog consider yourself tagged. Email me your posts or the links to your blogs.

Nobody ever expects the Ninja Inquisition...cause Ninjas are sneaky.

2006-07-04T23:38:00.000-04:00

While on the topic of genies, is this the deal with them, “Rub my “lamp” and I’ll make your wishes come true.”?

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Say no more.

I hope that I have successfully ruined every story in the Arabian Nights. Ones that have genies. The other ones are fine. Particularly the ones with the Vampire Robot Pirate Ninja from Outer Space. Go back and read the book. I’m sure it the name of the story was The Vizier and the Vampire Robot Pirate Ninjas from Outer Space. Or it could be The Vizier and the Camel. One of the two. I could be mistaken…because camels are rather like Vampire Robot Pirate Ninjas from Outer Space. Just without all the vampirism, roboticness and pirated sneakiness.

I’m absolutely scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

I got nothing.

And speaking of nothing. That was what I was afraid I would have had to have had for dinner tonight (That sentence seems far too convoluted to be right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a have had in such close proximity to another have had. It’s like when you see one Vampire Robot Pirate Ninja. You would be surprised. You’d go, “What the fuck was that” or if you prefer something less colorful. “Egads! What in heaven’s name was that?”.

But then you’d move on and you might tell people at work about it, “Hey! I saw a Vampire Robot Pirate Ninja at the Burger King on Route one yesterday.” And they might believe you…or not. I rather think that more people would believe you rather than disbelieve you. Benefit of the doubt and all that shit.

“Yes, I’ve known him for a year now. He doesn’t get high…more than twice a week. Fuck it. Let’s believe him.” The “him” here is you who saw the Vampire Robot Pirate Ninja.

(Word is going insane with my writing. There are green squiggly lines everywhere. Like snakes reproducing in the spring. Green squiggly snakes. Or maybe organisms that are green and squiggly and reproduce in the spring. Fuck that, I’m no biologist.)

And they would believe you and you could talk about it at lunch. Or over dinner. Or use it as a pick up line at the bar.

You: “Hey I saw a Vampire Robot Pirate Ninja at the Burger King on Route One.”

Hot Blonde at bar: No way!

You: Oh yeah!

And then hopefully we shall pull a discrete curtain over some tasteful Horizontal Mamboifying. Or nasty Horizontal Mamboifying. Whatever tickles your fancy. Your Horizontal Mambofying could consist purely of your fancy being tickled..

Yeah, Lets abandon this train of thought.

But if you had the audacity to claim that you saw not one, but two fucking Vampire Robot Pirate Ninjas at the Burger King on route one you would be laughed out of town.

“Yes, I’ve known him for a year now. He does get high twice a week. Fuck it. Let’s burn him at the stake.” The “him” here is you who saw the Vampire Robot Pirate Ninja.

The lunch, dinner and bar scenarios are absent in this case because well you have been burnt bat the stake. Not a pleasant way to go, but completely your fault for making up stories about seeing two Vampire Robot Pirate Ninjas. The gall! )

So yeah. I found some noodles.

I got nothing. Really.

I am...

2006-07-03T00:39:00.000-04:00

...many things.

But boring is NOT one of them.

(Take that you evil person, you. You know who you are!)

(I really, really like brackets.)

(And cheesecake.)

(And bru...Never Mind.)

(Add open ended statements to that.)

(And smirking.)

(And saying frig when I'm alone and fuck when I'm around people.)

(And making random observations. For instance, I came up with this wonderful plan for a friend who has issue with flipping people off on the road who annoy him. I suggested that he throw a salad at them.

Why?

Because nobody likes salads. And this shows that he put some thought into it, instead of a mere wag of that middle finger.

I said random observations. Not random and funny.)

The best way…

2006-06-30T02:49:00.000-04:00

…to get over a bad mood is to take a long drive, late at night.

I’ve realized that all my drives, the ones to get over my bad moods, have a certain pattern to them.

And here is the pattern.

At some point I will have to decide whether to go left or right, and I will not make my mind up until the last second.

At some point I will turn the radio off.

At some point I will pull into a gas station. (If the gas station is in New Jersey, the guy who pumps the gas will probably be Indian and will insist on talking to me in Hindi. At that point I will gleefully practice my atrocious Hindi on him.)

At some point I will turn the heater up all the way for no good reason.

At some point I will kick my shoes off and drive barefoot.

At some point I will begin to miss Bangalore terribly.

At some point I will see a funny road name.

At some point I will have to swerve to avoid a cute, furry animal that is doing its damndest to become roadkill.

At some point I will start thinking about my next blog post.

At some point I will be doing thirty in a fifty five zone.

At some point I will pull over to let the guy behind me, the one getting increasingly pissy about me doing thirty, pass me.

At some point I will turn the heater off,

At some point I will whistle or hum a tune under my breath.

At some point my bad mood will dissipate.

At that point I will find a place to take a U-turn to get back to my apartment.

At that point I will realize that I am thirty five miles from my apartment.

At that point I will realize that the place I am in is very dark and very, very, very creepy.

At that point I will check my rear view mirror for angry mummies, hungry zombie, large carnivorous dinosaurs and rabid toasters.

At that point I will begin to think about vampires and that one movie where the serial killer was hidden away in the back seat of the victim’s car.

At that point I will twist in my seat and examine my back seat.

At that point I will turn the radio on.

At some point after that I will be doing sixty in a thirty zone.

At some point I will have to swerve to avoid a cute, furry animal that is doing its damndest to become roadkill.

At some point I will wonder if I will be late to work tomorrow.

At some point I’ll reach home.

Pa-kching

2006-06-28T02:28:00.000-04:00

When I moved into this apartment last September, I decided that I needed a toaster. A toaster that could toast both bread and bagels (Not simultaneously. Well simultaneously if you’d prefer the bagel barely toasted or the bread slice done to a nice burnt crisp.). And this toaster that would allow me to have a moderately civilized breakfast. It would rescue me from the cereal that I have had nearly every single fucking weekday morning that I have been in this country. (Post Cranberry Almond Crunch…Positively Cranberrifically Almondy and Crunchalicious)

Well, that did not happen. The toaster sits on the countertop gathering dust and slowly, but oh so steadily going insane. Even toasters have feelings, you know. And this toaster is more emotional than most. It sits there on the countertop thinking evil thoughts and planning my demise. It scares me.

And it has an accomplice. A sandwich maker. Equally neglected and unused.

Neither of the two has been able to make me give up my cereal addiction. And now they wait for their moment. Perhaps one bright morning they will pop up and ambush me…

Yeah, I still have nothing to write about. My excuse for those previous paragraphs could be that I’m high. But I do not do mind-altering drugs, (I’m high on Life. Say no to drugs kids. Life: the anti drug.) And I have been sadly sober for so many months. But seriously, doesn’t a toaster not performing its function cause some kind of Karmic Stress in the Universe? A rip in the fabric of space time through which the legions of Hell could come pouring through. (Wouldn’t it be nice if the legions of Hell sauntered through, or walked through at a steady pace? But no, they’re mean and ugly and they pour. It is what they do. And they do not even wipe their feet on the doormat. Rude fuckers)

That incidentally is the premise of Doom. Doom, the game and not Doom, the state of Rajneesh’s social life. Rip in the fabric of space time. Big bad monsters come through (with muddy feet); Neanderthal-ic hero blows holes in them. Huzzah. (And Gadzooks!). The premise works for a game.

Not so fucking much for a movie. Yes, Doom the movie does exist. And in a stroke of cinematic brilliance (And by brilliance, I mean asinine stupidity), the movie tries to preserve the first person perspective of the game, which consists of a gun shooting stuff at stuff (Insert phallic/reproductive reference here). I don’t suppose that it could be much worse than a movie about the Da Vinvi Crap. (Which should have been shot in the same way, first person perspective, but instead of a gun we have um… a soduku puzzle book, and instead of monsters we have Eccentric English Noblemen. And if you care that I gave away the wafer thin plot of that “book” go fuck your self with a rusty fork. Or go fork yourself with a rusty fuck. Whatever tickles your cutlery!)

I’ve decided that I’ll be producing movies based on games too. My first one will be about Minesweeper. Explosions. Sex. Mines. Explosive Sex in Mines. Tons of gratuitous nudity. (Women only! Yes I’m sexist. Go fuck off!)

Clever dialog:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Boom!”

“Of all the mines in the world why did she have walk into mine?”

“Frankly my dear, I don’t sweep a mine!”

“I’m the king of the mine. Boom!”

“Luke, I am your Boom!”

“Andy came to Mineshank in NineteeenBoomityBoom.”

“Boom T go home!” (Okay I cried during ET. I was five for pity’s sake, and ET was so sick and “ET go home”. If you did not cry you were a heartless monster.)

Catchy tag lines:

“Part Man, Part Mine. All Boom.”

“A Boom sixty five million years in the making.”

And I’ll follow it up with a movie about Pac Man. A touching family movie about how a yellow circle with a mouth ate ghosts. On second thoughts screw the family movie part. It can be the new movie in the Ghost Buster series. Ghost Busters 3: Lots of Naked women.

Yeah, so my toaster wants to kill me.

Vegetarian Vegetables

2006-06-25T23:46:00.000-04:00

In a fit of quite possibly misguided enthusiasm, I decided that I would work today. The original plan was that I would wake up bright and early, at the crack of dawn (on the west coast, so nine thirty here in the east.) work until three and then perhaps meet a friend later in the day.

Because of a few beers and some moderately pleasant (Moderately might be stretching it. Mildly? Vaguely? Peripherally? Tangentially? Insurmountably? Lackadaisically? Unintentionally? Weightily? Sixteen Elephants of Pleasant Company?) company during the imbibing of the beers, I got home late last night and woke up at twelve today.

Now, on the menu at that bar, (Or “on the menu in that bar’ or “Bar the menu in that on?”…Coherence has never been my strong suit. Get over it. I like my stories to meander a bit. Like a river or a drunk toaster salesman. Or a drunken toaster sails-man. Toaster sailing isn’t a very well known nautical pass time, mostly because most participants get electrocuted in short order. “Splash…bzzzt “, ah the smell of freshly toasted… (Bah! Sails-man isn’t even a word. I needed to hyphenate it so that I could do the toaster sails-man bit.)) , was a list of food that you could get at that bar. It in fact, was the menu and was doing what menus have been doing since the middle ages, which is doing the whole listing of food and drink bit (Before the great menu reformation of the sixteen hundreds, menus were a wanton lot, doing body shots with squirrels, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. They used to dress up in awfully uncomfortable green tights and say stuff like “Yoiks, my merry men”, and “Can I take a look at your bow, good Sir.” (If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m facing a minor case of blogger’s block. I am randomly putting stuff together hoping to come up with something. Anything. I fully expect that by the time I’m done typing there will be three more digressions one of which deals with my obsession with cheesecakes and brun…Um yeah, never mind.) (I think I’ve closed all the brackets that I’ve opened, but I’m not sure. I suppose I could copy this text into a programmer’s editor to look for matching brackets but I’m far too lazy.)

One of the items on the menu at that bar, (Or “on the menu in that bar”), was a Vegetarian Dosa. Yeah a fucking Vegetarian Dosa. Now I do not even like it when North Indian restaurants serve Dosas (Because they ruin them, not because I’m biased against North Indians or anything.) . And a Vegetarian Dosa? With a cilantro chutney? It’s enough to make a strong man cry. Vegetarian? Does that really need to be said? Isn’t that a given? Unless somewhere, someone has committed the atrocity of stuffing a Dosa with Chicken Tikka? ...Actually that wouldn’t be a half bad idea. Or a Tandoor Dosa. Hell, that isn’t a bad idea either. (As promised, now our regularly scheduled digression. Cheesecake and brun…um yeah never mind.)

So, yeah work. Didn’t get any of that shit done.

The lone wolf from the Jungle Book

2006-06-23T00:52:00.000-04:00

Earlier today I had decided that for once I would write something serious. Something relevant, something that resonated with my readers, something that they would be able take away and think about and perhaps not forget.

And then at the Indian Store I saw that the title of a new Hindi movie was, the Banana Brothers. It’s like the universe is saying, “Fuck that. You know you cannot be serious so why even try. So go make some sophomoric joke about bananas.” (Nudge, nudge wink, wink say no more.)

Well, Banana Brothers. I imagine the story is about two bananas that were separated at birth. One banana was adopted by a rich Mango and went on to become a PoliceBanana, and the other was adopted by a Vegetative Fagin and eventually rose to become the head of the UnderFruitworld. And they both fell in love with the same Apple. ( I should have made them fall in love with a Cherry, but then the opportunity for absolutely fucking inappropriate humor would have been far too overwhelming for me to resist. Or should that be absolutely inappropriate fucking humor.)

There is a banana from the Middle East for comedic relief, Sheikh Banana or as he prefers to be called, Banana Sheikh. (I apologize. I truly do.), and the gangster’s moll played by an over-ripe Plum. (I have no clue where I’m going with this. Reminds me of the charts with fruits names that we had in school.) And so they’re in a crowded bus, squashed together, (I now know where I’m going with this. I’m going to fit in as many lame as fruit puns as I can.) and stuck in a traffic Jam (I’ve capitalized the jam, so that you do not miss the pun).

Um yeah so fuck that. I can’t do this to myself any longer. Make up your own puns and do not send them to me. Unless they’re good. Then send them. With money. And domin…Never mind.

So where was I? Ah yes. Sadly I’ve turned into one of those people who turns over a packet of food to see the nutritional facts listed on it. Twenty five percent of my daily allocation of hydrogenated long chained poly nucleotide ribosomal gobbledygook, three hundred calories. No way am I eating that. No, I’ll survive on cereal bars and yoghurt.

I hate yoghurt.

I really, really do.

Especially mixed fruit yoghurt. I think the yoghurt I had for lunch today had in it most of the cast of Banana Brothers.

For a few magazines more.

2006-06-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, at twelve I had an appointment with a doctor, and she kept me waiting in the reception area until a quarter to one. There I was getting quietly bored, examining my fingernails, admiring the inside of my eyelids, counting the number of hair on the second joint of my left ring finger (two). You know, fun stuff.

Now, you may say, “Rajneesh, weren’t there magazines for you to read?”

And I would, with a sad smile on my face reply, “Yes there were.” And then I would shake my head and stare off into the distance, an expression of muted sadness on my face, the face of a strong silent man who has seen horrors that he cannot, will not talk about.

The look that the Lone Gunslinger gives in every western, as he contemplates the time, when as an innocent kid he out drew the Lone Gunslinger and became the Lone Gunslinger.

So that’s the look I’m giving you. Squinting off into the distance, desperately hoping that my contact lenses do not pop out of my eyes. I tip my ten gallon hat back, draw my trusty six gun and dive to the left. And then we cut to bullet vision, like the Matrix, or Max Payne, and I shoot the toaster.

Um…Yes. So the reception had magazines. Tons of them, a veritable cornucopia of magazine-osity. It was like the magazine fairy had, in an orgasm of generosity spread her bounty all over the office (Ick!). What I am trying to say is that there were tons of magazines.

Let there be no grounds for ambiguity. Magazines were profusely present. Magazines were profoundly present. Magazines were doing the horizontal mambo with nary a care.Magazines peeped at me from under the chairs; they waved at me from the racks. Some of the more adventurous ones were hanging out near the end tables, doing body shots and playing drinking games. Verily, ‘twas like the reception area that launched a hundred thousand magazines.

And.

They were all women’s magazines.

Specifically, Women’s Health and Healthy Pregnancy. Every fucking issue from the beginning of time. When people hadn’t thought up of pregnancy. When stuff used to reproduce by splitting itself across a diagonal. (One of the halves would go off to sleep and the other half would fume because the sleeping half did not want to talk about its feelings.)

There also was a book of nursery rhymes. It informed me about Jack and Jill, who apparently went up a hill. To fetch a pail of water. (No indoor plumbing). Jack fell down and broke his crown (tiara?), and Jill came tumbling after (Clearly a follower and not a leader. This will reflect badly upon here during her semi-annual review)

In sheer desperation I picked up Women’s Health, and made an astounding discovery. A happy astounding discovery. Women’s Health has more hot semi-naked women in it than Maxim does. Do women enjoy looking at hot semi-naked women? (I hope so!). Does this make them healthy? Is this why the name of the magazine is Women’s Health and not Hot Semi-Naked Women Monthly?

Um, yeah so, don’t judge a magazine by its title.

Do, a deer.

2006-06-19T04:16:00.000-04:00

I’m wasting time while I should be doing something important. Like typing up this important document that I need to submit tomorrow.

And this is what I come across on um a place where people give themselves stupid taglines.

…And smile a lot it Cost Nothing (FREE)…

Now I suppose I should be charitable and give the person who came up with that the benefit of the doubt. But, I’m not a nice person and hell, that all uppercase free absolutely slays me. …It Cost Nothing, (FREE)… the uppercases fill me with joy. It brought a smile to my face. And the smile cost me nothing! (FREE!)

...The hills are alive with the sound of FREEEEE (It Cost Nothing),
The definitions they have sung for a thousand years.
The hills fill my heart with the sound of FREEEEE (It Cost Nothing)...

(To the person whose website had those lyrics. Embedded fucking MIDI music is not a good fucking idea. It was a bad idea when Hotmail was an innovation. You know, the early nineteenth century. Hunting through multiple Firefox tabs, looking for that one page with the tiny little pause button to stop that atrocious rendering of the hills are alive with the sound of FREEEEE (It Cost Nothing), is not pleasant)

I’m a bad person, and if a hell existed I would go to it. To be tormented by devils who would insist on making me read the Da Vinci Crap, or would use z instead of s in plural forms. (You know who you are, you evil degenerate person you.).

(I like brackets)

Or maybe they would recruit me. I could be sadistic to the bad folk. “Paint your “own pottery” studio” or “Paint your “own pottery studio””, I would ask them, and no matter what the answer, I’d force them to do nasty things. Like watch soccer.

Unless they like watching soccer. In which case I’d sadly shake my head, and give them up to someone vastly more qualified at torture than me. Perhaps one of those twisted researchers at Gillette who have come up with a razor that now has sixteen blades.

I’m not exaggerating. It has sixteen blades. However, to avoid ripping a hole in the fabric of space time, only four of them will appear in this reality at any instant of time. The rest are stored in a pocket reality inaccessible to normal humans. The one that has wayward socks and all the contact lenses that I ever lost. And contact lenses Cost Something (NOT FREE).

And no, the title does not suggest that you do a deer, unless of course you are a stag, in which case whatever rocks your boat man. It is pronounced Doh a deer. From that little-known Simpsons episode, where Homer saw a deer and exclaimed, “Gadzooks, a deer. Come Watson, the hunt is on.”

The truth.

2006-06-16T16:38:00.000-04:00

I forget.

2006-06-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

This week's issue of Time magazine has an article about the Freedom of the Seas, a cruise liner. The title of the article is, A Whale of a Boat. And so as you may imagine, the article is all about how large the boat is.

They compare it to the Statue of Liberty. (Twice as high!)

The Titanic. (Twice as wide! Nothing about sinkability, but twice as many life boats.)

A Large Chocolate Cake. (Twice as Tasty! And creamier)

Fine, I made that last one up, but it does not come close in sheer stupidity to the next comparison that the writer used. A comparison that was so breathtakingly idiotic that it, well took my breath away.

Are you ready for it?

He stated without the slightest trace of irony or sarcasm, “…the ship is heavier than 12500 Elephants.”

No one could have up with that comparison without being seriously high on some chemicals. Or being seriously idiotic.

Honestly, when did the elephant become a unit of weight? Even a pound is more logical than one metric Elephant. Do people go into stores and ask for one hundredth of an Elephant of potatoes? Or do you go on a diet to lose that one twenty fifth of an Elephant that you have around your waist?

And when was the Elephant standardized? Are all elephants now the same size? Where was the international conference on standardizing the Elephant held? Were there representatives from both the Asian and the African sub-species? Did they get along? Was there alcohol at the after-party? Did a temple elephant get drunk and disgrace itself by dancing on the table and waking up naked and sore the next morning…With a post-it note stuck to its trunk, saying, “You were fantastic. Call me xxx-xxx-0843.”

Will thin elephants be forced to eat a high calorie diet to pack on those um…not pounds…but sub-Elephants? Will overweight elephants have to go to aerobic classes? Jazzercise? TaiBo? Run on the treadmill? Get up at six in the morning to go running? Will teenage female elephants have to starve themselves to conform to the media’s portrayal of the ideal female elephant?

Who did frame Roger Rabbit? Where in the world is Carmen San Diego? What’s the good word? One small step for man, one large leap for mankind? Is there a Santa Claus in Viginia? Who the fuck is Alice? “Paint “your own pottery” studio” or “Paint your own “pottery studio””? How many chucks could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? I before E except after C? Will these questions ever end? No? Yes? Maybe?

Will we have more inappropriate comparisons and/or units of measurement?

As long as Three Hundred Bottles of Wine? ( This amount varies depending on whether the bottles are full or empty.)

As bright as Sixteen Sixty Six Fireflies swinging the Salsa in Spring ? (Quantitative, poetic, and alliterative.)

As young as one fifteen millionth of Mount Everest? (Quantitative and poetic, but not alliterative.)

Will this post end abruptly?

So...getting lost and stuff

2006-06-14T01:04:00.000-04:00

The problem with living in a place for any extended period of time is that you cannot get lost anymore.

I moved to New Jersey eight months ago, and three months after that I acquired my car. (And a huge ass debt to the evil capitalist bankers. Vive La’ Revolucion. You can call me Comrade Rajneesh. I’ll be communist like Psmith, who believed that practical communism involved grabbing as much as a person could and then sitting on it.

I could be a good communist. Not the riff-raff proletariat, but a member of the politburo. One of those who defend the masses from the corrupting influence of capitalism, using their bodies to insulate the proletariat from luxury and decadence.

And it would allow me to do one of the things that I have longed for ages to do. Kick a door in. I’ve always wanted to kick a door in. I dream at night of doors that I could kick in.

I’m not quite sure what one does after kicking in a door. I fear I would probably be embarrassed and apologize to the people on the other side of the door. Or I might whistle nonchalantly and point unobtrusively to my dicey looking sidekick.

You need to have sidekick if you are kicking in doors. I do believe that not having one would cause a rip in the fabric of space time. They have to be dicey looking. You cannot have a sidekick who looks like a fine upstanding member of the community. We do not want Dr. Jeykll, we want Mr. Hyde.

I’d prefer a silent sidekick, not the one picked for comic relief. I’d rather have a grim brooding one. One who looks like his wife just ran away with a randy toaster. No quick quips or amusing eccentricities from my sidekick. I’ll be doing all the quipping and the eccentricity-ing.

We’d be a dynamic duo. Just no tights, and no homo-erotic undertones.

Maybe a female sidekick. Naturally hot. Because I’m a sexist pig. She’d still have to be silent (Desperately stifles urge to make incredibly sexist joke), because I insist on doing the quipping and taking care of the banter. She can do the whipping of the bad guys or the re-education of the proletariat (Though the proletariat may like being whipped by a hot sidekick. I know I woul…Never mind.)

(Boy, this is a long ass digression.))

So...getting lost and stuff. Good Shit.

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer .

2006-05-31T16:17:00.000-04:00

I woke up at six today.

Intentionally.

I use my cell-phone’s alarm to wake me up. I usually set an alarm for seven forty five, and for seven fifty and for seven fifty five and for eight and for eight five, which is when I finally wake up.

The cell phone alarm is an obnoxious siren. Guaranteed to wake you up if you haven’t been dead for more than a week. (Still effective, but not covered by guarantee if you have been a corpse for more than a week. Its corpse reanimation properties extend only that far.).

Well, normally it is a siren. Except that today it wasn’t. Today it was quiet metallic voice telling me that it would hurt me if I did not get up immediately.

My cell phone scares me now.

Given my phone's gentle persuasion, (blood curdling threats) I dragged myself out off bed and stared owlishly at the phone for a few minutes. I fully expected it to turn into a Dalek, or the Terminator. The creepy liquid one from T2 and not everyone’s favorite governor.

I woke up at six today. Intentionally. Because, for some unfathomable reason I decided last night that waking up at six in the morning and running for an hour before getting in to work was a good idea.

Sadly, I am not a morning person. I consider eight thirty to be an unearthly hour. And I wasn’t aware that six in the morning existed. (I was aware that six in the morning in the night exists. That’s when you go to bed at six.)

Six in the morning is a strange time. The world looks disgustingly fresh and clean. Squirrels scamper about a-squirelling. Bird flutter about a-birding. (I love verbifying nouns). My cousin, who was at my place this last weekend, informed me that the bike path that runs by my apartment goes from Trenton to New Brunswick, or, if you prefer, from New Brunswick to Trenton. My response to this was, “There’s a bike path that runs by my apartment? Huh, fancy that.” I did know that there was a path, but I felt like being obnoxious. Coz’ I’m special that way. All a part of my boyish charm.

So, at six in the morning, squirrels were a-squirelling all over that path. I counted twelve of them hanging about, gossiping, bringing in the newspaper, and doing body shots. (Squirrel alcoholism is really, really sad. The next thing you know, the rodents will be wasted by mid-afternoon, slumped over a bar somewhere, pouring out their sorrows to the bartender, writing bad blank verse and strumming away half heartedly on a guitar. (Think Deperado without the guns, but with Salma Hayak. Because Salma Hayak improves anything. Salma Hayak doing body shots!) The bartender naturally will not understand them because most bartenders do not speak Squirrel. However, most bartenders do speak Rabbit and a rabbit interpreter might help… If in fact you are an inebriated squirrel who needs to pour his sorrows out to a bartender. And if you can find a rabbit prepared to do an honest days work. All they care about is rabbitting. (Now, that is a euphemism that works.))

Leaving behind the corrupt squirrel settlement, (Squirrem and Gammorel), I set off down the path. With a song in my heart, (That old Beatles classic, “Why the fuck am I not asleep at six.” It’s from the little known “Tribute to Rajneesh” album.) and a … um something else in my soul(Cheesecake?).

And strangely enough, I rather enjoyed myself. I probably will be making a habit of this. What? You expected me to rant and complain? Hey I liked it. I’m sorry, but I’m not a completely disagreeable person.

Yeah, so early morning runs and stuff. Good shit.

Sometimes

2006-05-25T00:09:00.000-04:00

You read something, something so brilliantly written that it takes your breath away.

So...

2006-05-22T13:21:00.000-04:00

...I was at this fancy dress party.

Gesundheit!

2006-05-21T22:35:00.000-04:00

The problem with being a sarcastic person with a moderately caustic (well… extremely caustic) sense of humor is that people do not, will not, cannot believe that you coughed innocently.

Such attitudes sadden me. I had a mild cold and I needed sympathy.

Needless to say I do not get any.

There was no need to say that I did not get any sympathy, but I said it nonetheless. Cause I’m cool that way. I say that which should not be said, I do that which should not be done. (Or at least I do that which some people might frown upon, if they knew I had done what I had done. Or had wanted to have done)

My great decorating adventure continues. The print has been hung up and looks rather spiffy. And I have another bookshelf. Which is a good thing because I seem to attract books like honey attracts bees. (Or a more interesting metaphor, like supermodels attract Rajneeshs. Or cheesecake attracts Rajneeshs. Or supermodels bearing cheesecakes attract Rajneeshs.)

Ah, so where was I?

I was considering buying a new television to replace my tiny, tiny television from grad school. Not because I watch much television, but because deep down every guy needs a Television as some sort of electronic phallic symbol. A forty five inch screen (No! I am not overcompensating.). In high definition! With picture in picture. (It’s surprising how quickly analogies break down isn’t it?)

I’ve watched maybe a half hour of television over the last couple of weeks and so maybe, just maybe, I will refrain from installing the electronic male fertility symbol in my living room.

But I will not give up cable. I fucking do not watch television, but I will not give up cable. It costs me an arm and a leg, and out of the sixteen hundred channels that I get, I watch only two…that is when I do turn on the television. You can watch the television without turning it on. But there’s this same show on all the time. I think it is about the colour, “Dirty Grey”(‘s Anatomy?).

So yeah, Television and cable. Good stuff.

(I meant to write more, but I finally caved in and bought Half-Life 2 today.)

Grrr...

2006-05-18T16:59:00.000-04:00

The day after I told someone that work was less hectic, it got to be a lot more hectic. I blame you completely for this. (You know who you are!)

I doodle...

2006-05-12T23:32:00.000-04:00

...a fair bit.

A. Prince. Among. Men.

2006-05-11T01:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, just sometimes I shoot my mouth off without pausing to think. My brain’s going, “Fuck you Mouth. Wait for me dammit. I can help” And my mouth replies, “Screw that. I can do this.”

And sometimes I shoot my mouth off after pausing to think. My mouth says to my brain, “You think this is a good idea”, and my brain replies, “Hell yeah, go for it. I’d do it if I were you. Be a man Mouth.”

I think that what I did a few months ago, during a job interview was the latter.

I was in the car with two of the people who would be interviewing me over lunch. They were talking were talking about life insurance policies. Not something I am normally interested in, because death isn’t something I usually think about. (I DO THINK ABOUT DEATH). Mouth said to Brain, “Fuck this all, I’m bored. Let’s do something fun.” And Brain replied, “Go for it dude.” …and Mouth went “Watch me.”

So as they continued to talk, animatedly, about insurance and premiums, I looked out of the car window and said, with all the weariness I could put into my voice, “Boy, old people sure know how to have fun.”

Brain broke into stunned applause, and the Mouth basked in his finest moment.

And presenting the continuing adventures of Mouth and Brain, here are lines that Mouth has uttered, tongue planted firmly in cheek (Well…mostly), in a place where circumspection might have been warranted..

“I am a prince among men.”

“It is all a part of my boyish charm.”

“I am a delicate flower.”

“A life without Rajneesh isn’t worth living.”

“I assumed you possessed the intellect of a mildly retarded three year old. Clearly I was mistaken.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be a legal corpse than a felonious one?”

“I am a pathological liar. And a horrible, horrible person. That is true.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just that I don’t trust you.”

“You are a moderately trustworthy person.”

“You are a strange, strange woman.”

“You are an obscenely tall person.”

“Everything belongs to me unless otherwise stated.”

“Have friendly dolphins refuel the plane.” (I’m particularly proud of this one”)

“We thought about doing the presentation in interpretive dance, but it just did not work.”

Yeah, so apparently Mouth and Brain are both drunk and high.

Harmonious interiors

2006-05-10T00:58:00.000-04:00

I'm confused.

And busy as hell.

How busy would hell be, if hell did exist?

Would the Devil say he was a busy as hell, if the Devil did exist? (And I'm not referring to that devil who occasionally reads this blog.)

He’d say, "Stop bothering me, I'm busy as hell!" And then he would snicker and stroke his goatee. And smirk. And smirk some more and stroke his goatee some more.

I always picture the Devil as smirking. Like someone who knows something funny but refuses to share it. I can imagine him thinking, “It is “Paint “your own Pottery Studio””, and not “Paint “your own Pottery” Studio”” and gloating in the smug superiority of his knowledge.

Goatees are good for that. For stroking and for framing a smirk. Anyone with a goatee looks sinister. I have repeatedly mentioned this fact to a colleague who has a goatee. He retorted that my penchant for dressing in black is far more sinister.

I smirked at him.

I may have mentioned this before. But I have a very, very annoying smirk. Actually a smirk that women find very, very annoying.

I practice it in the mirror.

I think it is rather devilish.

I briefly practiced an innocent expression. I made me look like a mildly retarded sack of flour, and so I do not use it in public anymore. (Most sacks of flour are actually quite intelligent, but sadly mistaken in believing that it is “Paint “your own Pottery” Studio””)

I hate decorating. I really, really do.

(The segue here? Painting to decorating.)

(Or maybe Deus ex machina. A rampaging horde of mildly inebriated toasters took over the blog and forced me at crumb point to start talking (complaining?) about decorating.)

But getting it half right is some kind of a genetic imperative. And so I stress over it and obsess about it. I try to build a unified theme, with colors that flow together and build a sense of harmony.

And halfway through I say, “Fuck it all” and take a nap.

So this leaves me with an apartment that looks half decorated, just as it would if the person in charge of decorating it had said “Fuck it all” halfway through and had taken a nap. The wall above my couch has the hooks for a painting, but I’m too lazy to hang it up. (Only a poor reproduction I’m afraid. My wallet went into terminal withdrawal when it heard the price for an original, or even for a lithograph.)

Yes, I’m talking about decorating the apartment. That admission makes me feel vaguely emasculated. Now I have to grunt and scratch myself in an inappropriate place to reassert my masculinity.

Grunt.

Scratch.

No! That is not a catalog from Pottery Barn in the back seat of my car.

And please for fucks sake, it is “you” and not “u”. “Z” is not a fucking acceptable alternative for the letter “S” in plurals (It saddens me when people I am fond of commit these transgressions). And fucking capitalize. The shift key is but a finger away.

And for the fucking love of all that is good and pure do not fucking ask me what I am into. I am into nothing. Nothing is fucking into me. Ask me the field I fucking work in and I will give you a fucking detailed answer. Ask me what I am into and I will try to do unnatural things to you with my umbrella. And I assure you that you will not enjoy it.

Yeah, so, decorating and shit. Fuck it all.

(I am the King of Coherence and Structure. Crown me now and take me to my harem.)

EDIT: "r" does not fucking equate to "our" or "are". You can use "r" if you are pretending to be a pirate, but never ever in any other context.

****************

2006-04-19T01:10:00.000-04:00

I’m old (ancient?) enough to remember a time when I had no passwords. Not a single one.

The first one I acquired if for my now long defunct hotmail account (Props to anyone who remembers what it was. I still use the non @hotmail part of that address on far too many forums and websites. Perhaps not a wise move. I was eighteen when I came up with that name. A particularly idiotic and sartorially challenged eighteen.), and then another for my next email account, and then a third and a fourth. It’s gotten to the point that I do not even bother to remember my passwords anymore. It’s easier to pretend that I have forgotten the password and have it emailed to the one account whose password I do remember.(That is a cunning lie, I never bothered to commit the passoword to memory, so I cannot claim to have forgotten it. It makes me feel like a criminal mastermind.)

And I am also paying the price for other peoples stupidity. Using your name as a password isn’t a good idea. Yes, I know that. Unfortunately some people do not. And every password now brings with it a whole set of rules. One of the first eight letters must be uppercase; they should contain a number and a symbol. The symbol can be one that you can type with your middle finger of your right hand when the index finger of the same hand is on “x” and the ring finger is on “z”. The password should not contain more than three letters in sequence. Other disallowed sequences are the natural alphabetical sequence, the first letter of the days of the week, and any letters which sound the same if you are standing in a wind tunnel with a jet engine roaring behind you.

I can hardly wait for the day when I can have a chip implanted in me, something that will allow me to access my email if I twitch the appropriate appendage. By appropriate appendage I mean my finger. Get your filthy minds out of the gutter!

And while I am dwelling on prehistory, the first game I ever played on a computer was PC Pool. This was back in ’90 or ’91. On a friends computer, with a black and white monitor. Without a mouse. The instructions for the game possessed a charming simplicity and directness: Hit the Space Bar to shoot the ball.

And, I’m not kidding, but for the first few weeks that I played the game, I waited with eager anticipation for a drinking establishment with aliens in it. Aliens who would be gathered around a pool table… perhaps playing pool or a variant, billiards maybe. Or maybe not even that, maybe just aliens hanging about a bar, getting drunk and setting their passwords.

Eventually I did realize that they meant I needed to hit that long bar shaped key, the one that was used to type out blank spaces. This realization made me sad.

I never have quite gotten over that traumatic disappointment.

The Magic Dragon

2006-04-11T01:10:00.000-04:00

I’m a complete blank. Therefore I shall ramble on and on and on.

My calluses are itching.

I pulled a muscle working out. I won’t say which muscle, but think Home Improvement when it was funny.

I’ve discovered this passable imitation of an Indian Bakery a few miles from where I live. Plum Cake!

However to make up for the guilt that accompanies my eating the cake, I need to work out. And the muscle pull does not help matters.

So I am vacillating between overwhelming guilt and excruciating pain. Yes. Pleasant.

And keeping with my recent home-sickness, I’ve developed an all consuming longing for sweet buns, the kind you get at Wariar’s or Thom’s bakery. It’s gotten to the point where the people at work hare off in the opposite direction when they hear me mention the word "bun". It was in the course of the hunt that I uncovered the Indian bakery facsimile.

They do not make sweet buns, but the puffs are excellent. And coincidentally the second time I was there I ran into their Vice President of Marketing. I spent the better part of a half hour trying to convince him that his sole hope of redemption lay in convincing his higher ups that sweet buns were the way to go. At around the twentieth minute his eyes glazed over. But I persevered. I’ll picket the place if I have to.

A few weeks ago, an old friend (By old I mean a friend I have known since kindergarten, and not someone old, for instance someone in their thirties.) asked me why I wrote nothing about what was happening in my life on this blog.

The reason for that is simple. It’s called a private life for a reason. It’s private. Private: From the Latin word Privaticus, which roughly translates to none of anyone's fucking business but my own. And I’m a private person. Not traded on the open market. Ergo I do not air my clean linen (I'm a bit of a clean freak, I clean the dirty linen) in public.

But dipwad, if you still read this, you now know about my obesession with baked products.

Insert Evil Laughter Here.

2006-04-04T10:17:00.000-04:00

In a moment of narcissism, megalomania and inspiring courage in the face of insurmountable odds, I got www.steadilygoinginane.com to point here.

Creak creak creak or tennis.

2006-03-31T01:20:00.000-05:00

Most religions have the occasional valid moral and philosophical viewpoint. The only problem is well…that they are religions.

And so they do not believe that their beliefs can stand the test of logic and argument, that they could be wrong and so they wrap it up in a God/Pantheon mythos. The “Insert Divine Being(s) here" told us this and so it has to be true. And if you do not agree, we will kill you to show you the error of your ways.”

Hell...Even I can come up with fairly valid edicts.

Here’s one right now. “You really should not hump the furniture.”

A perfectly reasonable and sensible edict. Humping the furniture can give you nasty splinters, or if it isn’t wood and is plastic or metal a nasty rash. (Because of the friction). And that worn spot on the couch may be hard to explain.

But do you think people will take this edict to heart? Will they look at it logically and rationally and evaluate the pros and cons.

No they fucking won’t. They will choose to believe that since they have been asked to refrain from humping the furniture, there must be something in the furniture humping sub-culture. Overnight this will explode into the mainstream. Furniture humpers will be everywhere. Peer pressure. Respectable professionals will visit the seedier parts of town for clandestine assignations with footstools of ill repute and questionable hygiene.

Society will break down.

I can try gently persuading people to see the error of their ways. I can draw fancy diagrams with arrows and bold text showing them why the edict is good. But they wont give a crap about my logic.

However, if I made up a story about a giant blancmange that came down from the skies, larger than your average blancmange, and said to me in a voice sweeter than Tiramisu:

“Hump not the furniture, for that is evil. And an abomination in my eyes. And it’s poopy. So stop. And if you continue to hump the furniture, you shall go to the lowest part of Insert Appropriate Stick Here, but if you refrain, you shall receive Insert Carrot Here.”

And people would then listen. They’d give me donations to fuel the War Against Furniture Humpers. Young idiots…devotees would hang on my every last word. They’d take down notes and sell books authored by me. And photographs of me grinning obnoxiously at the camera as I decapitate an Ottoman with loose morals.

And while I’m at it I’ll slip in a few edicts, one about people whose middle name ends with X being spawns of the Evil Sofa and another that all good devotees will sign their worldly possessions over to me.

So…Yeah. Don’t hump the furniture.

People...

2006-03-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

…mistake my misanthropy for a sense of humor.

I suppose that that is a good thing.

Bleh

2006-03-21T00:36:00.000-05:00

The Da Vinci Code and its author are in the news. A lawsuit.

Frankly, I do not give damn about the lawsuit.

But I do dislike the book. Intensely.

And the book is bad. Atrociously bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Two dimensional clichés impersonating characters. A Distinguished American professor. An Exotic French babe. An eccentric English nobleman. All we need now is a Ninja and a cute puppy. And a spaceship. And aliens. And pirates. They would only improve the book.

(That would be a good plot...If the pirates made the professor, the babe and the nobleman walk the plank. And the aliens laid eggs in them which hatched and then the Ninja fought them! On the spaceship. While a tidal wave on Mars wiped out the alien colony.)

A wafer thin plot. The Da Vinci Stupidity. Not my off the cuff masterpiece.

And a supposedly “fast moving” story.

That’s what the author called it: “A fast moving thriller.”

It is not.

It is fast moving crap.

The Da Vinci Code is literary diarrhea.

Gah!

I see everything twice.

2006-03-20T01:57:00.000-05:00

At a Wal-Mart standing around doing nothing. Hanging around waiting for a friend to finish shopping and plotting against correct sentence construction.

Over the public address system, an improbably cheerful female voice asked, “What’s new at Wal-Mart?” I assumed that that was a rhetorical question, and I was proven correct as she continued, with that disquieting zombie-like cheerfulness, to list out what, in fact, was new at Wal-Mart. And that annoyed me. Because I believed that the correct answer to that question is, “Who gives a flying fuck.” I’d like to hear that over the PA system. Really, I would. (If I had gotten around to reading my copy of 1984, I would have called it Orwellian, but I haven’t so I won’t. )

Now, a Wal-Mart Super center Sells everything. Guns, bicycles, televisions and fertilizer. And books. I'm um... mildly strange I dislike it if book shops even sell CD’s, so finding the book aisle next to the candy aisle grated upon my soul, (not that I have one, but apt imagery) to a degree nearly inexpressible. And well their selection was um…wanting would be a polite way of putting it.

Wanting? Now I’m being all snobbish. But in my defense, the shelf I was looking at had a nasty sign saying, “Hot new releases”, with a flame decal below it. To stress the hotness and the newness of the release. (Sidebar: Doesn’t hot new release sound like a description of an ejaculation?).

Where was I? Ah yes. Hot, new releases. Well the moron, (you know who you are) who had dragged me to here was still “consumering” away, and so with nothing else to do, I started to read the titles.

Barefoot Tigress.
The Wandering Princess.
The Last Mistress.
The Lonely Seductress.

I noticed a pattern here. Clearly these books were meant for a particular audience.

Snakes.

Notice the strong hissing sound with which all the titles end?

SSSSSSSSSS.

SSSS.

SSSSS.

SSss…

Who hisses? Snakes. They’re famous for that. And for their love of trashy paperbacks. They cannot wear shoes and so are naturally barefoot. The wander from place to place hissing and so engrossed are they in the hissing, that they miss stuff and so are perpetually last when the numbers are called out while playing Bingo. And um…the last title, well I hope they get it on and aren’t lonely anymore.

Well, that’s my interpretation of what the target audience for those books could be. Snakes. And other things that hiss. Like valves, and um… balloons with holes in them.

I love the letter “e”. Suffixing a word with an “e”, adds a dash of class to the word. So instead of a “Shop” you have a “Shoppe”. You can buy a gift at a shop, but at Shoppe you can buy a Gifte.

See, all fancy and shit.

However, using Shoppe instead of Shop, when Shoppe is preceded by the words Adult and Gift, does not help one little bit.

And neither does the Giant Neon Arrow (A phallic fertility symbol? Something Pagan or Druidic? ) beneath those aforementioned words.

And now I’m going to try to squeeze in a couple of chapters of The Last Wandering Lonely Barefoot Seamstresssssss.

This space for rent.

2006-03-17T23:47:00.000-05:00

I have a funny haircut.

That is all.

Help Save Load

2006-03-14T10:38:00.000-05:00

Chilli referred to an email in this post.

And since I’m feeling particularly lazy I’ve decided to post the contents of that email here. Now, the email is nearly two years old, so it may see a little dated to any “shudder” F1 fans. But what can I say, apart from “Go fuck yourself.”

From: Rajneesh S
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 1:44 PM
To:
Subject: Re: The Ultimate Driving Machine

Michael Schumacher is the most dominant athlete in the world. The six-time Formula 1 champion has won all but one of the circuit's first nine races this year. He's also the world's highest-salaried athlete and the towering icon of the sport that claims to have the largest worldwide television audience. But his excellence goes beyond his on-track success and off-track popularity. Schumacher is nothing like Jackie Stewart, Mario Amoretti, and the other motorsport legends he's now surpassed. Schumacher may be a remarkable driver, but, more important, he's a venture capitalist in a flame-retardant red jumpsuit.

No, he is a joker in a flame retardant clown suit

The 35-year-old German is remarkable because he's managed to mold an entire sport in his image two separate times. Formula 1 once had the reputation as the sport of international playboys, its well-heeled drivers drinking champagne, puffing cigarettes, and chasing women in exotic destinations like Monte Carlo. Schumacher, though, is a caricature of the Teutonic robot—a legendary workout freak who became quicker, stronger, and fitter than the competition by outworking them in the weight room.

And working out is very important, because F1 cars have three ton steering wheels

While other F1 drivers were straining in the gym to catch up to Schumacher's physical standards, he changed the sport again. Schumacher's peers don't consider him the best driver in the sport—that honor goes to Giancarlo Fisichella. But what his fellow drivers don't understand is that virtuosity behind the wheel isn't the most important skill in Formula 1 these days. Schumacher has transformed F1 from a sport to a technology war. In doing so, he's attracted billions of dollars to feed his business, develop technologies to his specifications—and annihilate the competition.

Giancarlo Fishy fella? (That cracks me up even now!)

Michael and his brother Ralf, who also races on the circuit, grew up as gearheads. Schumacher learned about the technology of racing while working alongside his father, a small-town repairman for kiddie race cars called karts. When he joined the Ferrari team in 1996, Schumacher was ready to get his hands dirty. The Italian automaker spent $450 million crafting its race cars in 2003, mostly thanks to sponsorships from megacorporations like Marlboro and Vodafone*. But while Ferrari has always had a stake in F1, it wasn't very successful throughout the 1980s, a huge source of consternation for such a prestigious brand. When Schumacher signed on, he was able to ensure—partly because of Ferrari's name brand and partly because of its desperation—that he would have both the resources and the operational control he felt he needed to dominate.

Ooooh schumi is a dominatrix! (A male dominatrix, a dominator?).

If Ferrari were a football team, Schumacher would be the quarterback, the GM, and the coach. Though he didn't give his team the idea to greatly outspend its top rivals—around $100 million more than Williams and $150 million more than McLaren—he did teach them how to spend it wisely. Schumacher understood the crucial importance of building the team and technologies around him—if the best pit crew, technicians, and engineers in the world tailored his car to his strengths as a driver, then he couldn't lose.

If Ferrari were a football team.
Um. Couldn’t think of any crap for this. Oh got it.
If Ferrari were a football team Schumi would be the driver of the team bus.

In F1, the drivers may be stars, but the cars are king. Every team spends the offseason in wind tunnels and with feedback testing equipment, secretly crafting improved design elements. This season, Ferrari extended its technical lead by unveiling its "narrow waist" design, in which the back of the car is almost impossibly thin and low to the ground, diminishing the drag exerted on the car and giving the car greater stability in turns.

Fascinating. Simply fascinating I say.

Ferrari's design excellence allows Schumacher to methodically destroy his rivals. While simple maintenance and production costs eat huge chunks out of smaller teams' budgets—a season's worth of tires and gearboxes alone can cost well into the millions—Ferrari can perpetually fine-tune a suite of technologies so that its cars perform under the most extreme conditions of acceleration, braking, and turning. As a consequence, Schumacher's car almost never has significant technical problems, a huge advantage in a sport where the ultra-expensive cars often just stop working because of technical malfunctions. To keep up with Ferrari's superior machines, other drivers have to take risks. As such, they consistently make mistakes out of impatience, imprudence, or desperation—hitting walls or other cars or just spinning out uncontrollably. In this past weekend's U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis, only half the cars that started were able to finish.

“Where the ultra-expensive cars often just stop working because of technical malfunctions. ” Get a Santro people.

So obvious is the role money plays in Schumacher's success that F1's governing body is taking steps to minimize the importance of cash. Formula 1 will soon ban certain electronic driving aids and will further regulate tire and engine use and testing, all in the hopes of keeping down costs so lower-class teams can compete.

Also, half the laps will be done in either bicycles or auto rickshaws. And the last lap will be run by the drivers in the nude while being chased by hungry dogs…or horny dogs.

Schumacher is a peculiar global sports icon. He can claim to be the greatest race car driver in history, and judging from the sea of Ferrari-red bedecked fans, his team is far and away the most popular on the circuit. But he's a distant champion, respected but not adored. When Schumacher turned in a subpar qualifying performance at the Grand Prix of Canada, the fans—including the Ferrari faithful—erupted in cheers and applause as driver after driver bested his lap time.

Can he be a global sports icon? F1 is not so much a sport as a mental disease. Call him a global mental disease icon. Incidentally nine out of ten people surveyed said that they find scrutiny of their toe nails growing, far more interesting than F1

Mostly, fans are desperate for someone, anyone, to give Schumacher a fight. While few events compare with an F1 race in terms of loud, macho, colorful spectacle, Schumacher has killed the suspense. There's a sense that something is badly wrong with Formula 1, but no fans or drivers really fault Schumacher or Ferrari. They just worked hard, played by the rules, and outsmarted the competition.

Actually fans are desperate for something, anything to make f1 less mind numbingly dull. A few events that compare with an F1 race in terms of a loud, macho, colorful spectacle are as follows
1. The aforementioned growing of toe nails
2. Measles
3. The icky stuff in a persons navel
4. The classic watching paint dry
5. Haircuts
6. Channel surfing
7. Competitive belching
8. Watching paint dry, extreme version

Two weekends ago at the Canadian Grand Prix, Renault's Jarno Trulli broke down on the very first lap because of suspension problems. Later that day, I saw Trulli at the Montreal airport, waiting in line with us race fans for a commercial flight to Newark. I asked if it was tough seeing Schumacher dominate a race that he had barely started. He just shook his head, demoralized. "Schumacher," he muttered.

Actually what he muttered was “Stop fucking bugging me asshole ." Right after that he proceeded to die from boredom. A common affliction among F1 drivers. Also a common affliction among us normal people who really dislike F1 and are subjected to long boring analysis of probably the most boring “sport” on earth, rivaled only by NASCAR.

Snippets...

2006-03-09T15:16:00.000-05:00

- “So are you people stressed? I’ve noticed a flurry of activity.”

- “If by stressed you mean fucked and by people you mean Rajneesh, and by activity you mean Rajneesh getting fucked, then I’d have to say yes.”