Thursday, September 29, 2011

keep waking me up

Coerced my eager-to-be-out-and-about self back into sleep at the 0515 alarm. I was entangled in some dream again, but now this 'Venus in Furs' track has conditioned a sure-shot wake-up response in me, as I fumble about in a dazed state, often in a more-aware-than-expected fashion, since locating my cellphone is often difficult. Body clock is screwed - either my body feels humbled at any period of rest extending 4 hours, or has some 3AM circadian trigger which has me often find myself awake around this time. [leaving the environmental factors - mosquitoes that come uninvited, or an overzealous temperature setting on the Air Conditioner, or the neighbor's guitar&keyboard sessions - aside].
So in effect, I wake up to 4 alarms -
  • 2 artificial ones at 0500, 0910;
  • 2 inbuilt (body factory settings) around 0300, 1035.
Maybe my mind has become so scared of drifting away from the physical dimension that it routinely knocks to check if things are right.

The best pet?

I have been stuck in a complex decision-making process. Which of the following would make for the ideal pet:
  • piglet
  • cats
  • lamb
  • monkey
  • kangaroo rat
  • arctic hare
  • turtle

Short ride and back

Back from a short loop on the bicycle that made me shed exactly 2 sweat-drops worth of effort. Sad, I know, but I had to switch sides at the floral loop ahead of Sec 18 that goes over and merges back into the Greater Noida - Delhi road; the traffic congestion was too obvious to decide against. It usually isn't so, when I get my dose of adrenaline (spiked with minor amounts of dust, sand, and vehicular exhaust) with a long loop in the geometrical plane that also seems like a loop in the temporal plane - into the past, I meant. Well, obviously, we only have the capacity to think into the past, because we cannot think into the future, because the 'future' - even though it already exists by my theory - lies in an unprocessed, raw form, upon which the 'present' acts and processes into the 'past' so we could really get a grasp on the temporal dimension, only that its after it will have happened.

References to traverse back on the temporal plane, or 'Into the past', is a vague term now, anyways, a dimension that spans across 4 cities of varying geographical content, across 3 beverages of varying sugar content, across 5 kinds of alcohol of varying age and proof, across 3 kinds of chocolates of varying cocoa content, across several kinds of food, across 3 bicycles of varying built (ATB/Road/MTB), across 3 accidents of varying horridness, across some-dozen friends and acquaintances of varying 'je-ne-sais-quoi' factor, and across 4 institutes that constituted my engagement at all times. In the wisdom I sense upon myself right now, I say "Ameen" to this realisation - that the past is dense and scattered enough to not bait myself back into.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

bogus start

Nostrils imagine smells in the following order:
- Matar Chat, or shallow-fried boiled peas with Indian masala, topped with nothing but some lemon. Reminds of an evening at HazratGanj in lucknow.
- Light streaks of mint dancing about my nostrils, a strong ticklish aroma. Reminds of mint chocolates.
- Peanut butter. Obsession since forever.

Not good for an already-delayed beginning to the day. I'm not the one to blame - the one who jumped out on first strike of the morning alarm, from a dream about herding sheep and village girls through forested valleys, and punching people. I later slept in disappointment of C not responding to our plans for a run on the basic course.
Now I know why I've been intuitively feeling cheated at purchase of new shoes - they put in a right leg half a size more than the left one, its a ridiculous error, and I'm not even sure if the Nike folks are gonna appreciate my request now after coupla' weeks of use.
Been toying with the circuitboard here at work with plastic pens and spoons, owing to a faulty something that fudges up the power backup. My dimension of work has never been this expansive-yet-vague as in this present job.

Have been feeling hungry since morn, but not entertaining the hunger calls, since the day already feels so screwed.

Monday, September 26, 2011

opinions and weekend

Settled on some opinions in life:
  • That my lolicon choice in anime is the silver-eyed, frazzled-sunset-brown-medium-length-haired, size-28-ish, 5-foot-6-ish, purple-silver-halter-top-wearing generic female stereotype.
  • That India is in a state of comic-book rot. Chacha Chaudhary, Nagraj, Super-Commando Dhruv... oh gimme a leash. Squirrel Girl - whose character came to life in the Marvel world with my onset of puberty in the real world - put it best in one of her panels (on whether she liked comic books): "I do. That was back when comic book worlds were places you wanted to escape to... not from."
  • Debating helps people solve their identity, as well as digestive problems. I hereby warn all my friends of having their blood on my hands, if they get honored with some lifetime achievement award for contributions to a mere theoretical framework.
  • I know you're being a dick, but why should I?
The weekend had me leaving my trail all over the city. I plug myself into several mutually-independent social circuits and make myself believe that I'm completing a social loop of sorts; imagine the current pulsating; am a capacitor when at my best, an infinite resistor when at my worst.

Majorly ordinary

To be extraordinary one has to settle with the more ordinary matters first. One feature of the ordinary, however, is that it allows great freedom in how you do things or when you do them. Being ordinary, means being as insignificant as everything else, and you don’t have people holding a gun trigger against your head.
Insignificant things don’t get people holding a gun against your head, or having some avalanche in lurk, or necessitates crossing a river at its full run.

In other words,

whatever shit you
cook,
it won’t matter.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Girlfriend talk

Got into a conversation over girlfriends with the neighbor - yet again, to my dismay. He makes them look as essential a commodity, as my uncle does with the toaster, or parents do with an automobile, or friends do with security devices in life. I suspect he uses the concept of girlfriends as a conversation starter, like people wearing fancy watches, or those who gain fat on their bodies to fake higher caste.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Apple Girl postcard from Manali

Things that are meant to be shared, but are hard to keep part with. This photo, well is actually a postcard, was picked up at Manali. The intent to keep this one defeats the original purpose for it was made for - to be sent to friends afar. I think it comes under the same situation as a beautiful stamp, which people'd rather collect than use on a snail mail.
Say, if a chair comes under use as a table, would it still be called a chair?


Friday, September 16, 2011

hold you close someday, i will,
to break your heart.
impossible is what we were meant to be;
impossibly close so we
could share a common breath,
and for you to kill me with your eyes
the slow onset of a mischievous smile;
then thin air you'd become
that i breathe in like a perfume,
again to let go.

you run away from me now
as my haemoglobin enriches everything but me,
a fountain of all that I ever was trying to be,
to get across to you.
but I lay dead as you run away
and, dead, I shall wait here for you forever.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

CSS me, my love

This is Über.
Download the link, extract the file anywhere on your hard disk. You'll understand the rest when you open the file in your browser:
http://saos.org/ycm.html.zip

Alternate titles for this post:
Get your girlfriend into CSS
The Standards-based way to love
I shall only love you if you love CSS3
Love knows no bounds. Only CSS.

Me and D were on a discussion about an emoticon related to extensible open xhtml outlines, when this struck me.
xoxo :D

Let the Police help you with your bomb

Have a bomb? Want to kill people for a misinterpreted dogma? Can't find a crowd? Don't be discouraged - let the Police help you!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

not so hero types

The best compliment of the day came from my neighbor, a film school student who just moved in next door, as we were dangling from parallel bars in the park: "Main toh apni film mein aapko hero loonga". Of course he couldn't see the size of my inflated pride at that moment in the dark. I complimented him back with a "Main toh tumhein lene ki soch raha thaa" ;)
He was apparently fascinated by my (trifling) aspect of physical well-being, when he, himself having played cricket for MP state (that's a fuckin' big deal, btw), was bloating up from the side-effects of the urban lifestyle, and finding it difficult to maintain a prized girlfriend. We returned back home after a minor drama of him losing his cellphone in the grass somewhere.

I literally, like, died there, dude

Adventurally-isolated Indians have a way of exaggerating anything that is remotely adventurous. They then deify it too. Then come the falsifications.

Thus a small trek in the Nainital forests becomes a "battle against survival", a trip to Kedarnath becomes "playing at God's footsteps", a trek to Vaishno Devi becomes "a miracle story", and a hired-taxi ride to Rohtang Pass wearing ridiculous astronaut suits becomes the last word in adventure for a huge chunk of populace - the only thing bigger than this is when you also hire those unimaginative wooden sledges at Rohtang Pass, pushed by skinny Nepalis, who take your picture then push you off the snowy/muddy slope at the guarantee of a harmless slow descent. That's one up on life!
Imagine that we are all born rich, very rich, with an immoderate sum of money in our accounts. We are in a world of absolute equality. But this money that we have has a complex feature - that it only depreciates with time. So somebody, say a day older to you, can never claim to be richer than you are. So this is a world of equality, but one where everybody grows poorer.
Can I dare say, that this is the same world that we live in?

Monday, September 12, 2011

Reviewing Subway's healthy? Subs

There shall be two days in every week, when the wise shall be fooled, when thousands would walk into Subway chains across India to gain weight and my sympathy.
*facepalm*

Just earlier in the day, I was trying hard to not focus at work, hence taking up the task of learning if Subway was really healthy - or the healthiest fast food chain - as claimed by several people. I could argue that Subway doesn't even qualify as a fast-food chain considering the 10-minute wait if 4 hungry customers decide to land at the same time. But leaving that fact aside, we turn back to the original discussion, to which I answer: Well, yes. I could bring more juice into it by saying "well, both yes, and no", but I'd rather respect the average intellect here that can judge when they're turning their regular sub into a fat-laden anti-Sub with the extra meat, and extra cheese, and their request for more sauce "mayo thoda zyada kar dena, aur woh ranch wala bhi". But I do have a reservation against Subway's offering to the vegetarians that, surprisingly, fares worse on the health chart than what the meat-lovers get. Veg always used to trump Non-Veg, then how come?

Indian schoolgirls in skirts

Morning jog. Army-veteran geriatrics (people with raving frilly white mustaches), schoolgirls in skirts, and cocker spaniels out there, too. Indian schoolgirls steer me to thinking of their japanese counterparts, loligirl images popping everywhere; but that thought originates in fond remembrance of missing all Comicons in Mumbai while I was around.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Doing the dog

Last night had a kitten prancing about on the verandah.It even peeked inside, through the glass door, and our stares met a couple of times. Nothing spectacular beyond this; it leap away. But that is not the point here.
Cats and dogs have had a bittersweet relationship. I remember how the sentry dog army of my colony in Mumbai would chase/dismember the felines; on the other hand Ben (I, II) only held curiosity rather than animosity for these. Cats, being so impossible to corner, just jump away; amazing science they know.

Let us pan our head to the dogs' court here, which make any crossing-paths situation into a cagematch. But sometimes these dogs would do it just for the heck of it - they charge in complete resignation, and expectation of failure, and the cat would still leap away as coded in its DNA to the charge of a dog. These dogs exhibit a one-charge, two-brake, three-veer-away routine, that almost feels practised, now that they've charged at cats without any inclination too many times.
I will NOT put forward the question of WHY they would do it.

But, instead, suppose that the cat - by a conscious decision, or some state of inebriation, or under catnip, or simply due to poor health - doesn't react that way one day when our simpleton doggy makes the charge. Our dog, conditioned to three-veer-away step now finds its intention working out as in an ideal world. But it's never known aggression, or to wrangle a living cat-thing, or even what follows one-charge when its not followed with the usual two and three... that's what 99% of the people that we know are about.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Last two on this planet scenario

Outright rejections generally go on the lines of this cliched line: "Not even if s/he was the only other girl/guy left on this planet!"
Let me complicate things here, so that the worst-est scenario above^^ can breathe some relief:
  What if you and your #1 friend (same gender) were the last two people left on this planet?

 Another parallel from the last-person-situation is, that the absolute worst possible moment for a guy/gal who's just had an irreversible vasectomy is when they wake to find they're the last of their kind left on the planet.

I should be barred from visiting the market, which gives time to think all this.

Y U NO READ SLOW

Dave Eggers puts an aspect of voracious readers into perspective below (in foreword to DFW's Infinite Jest). I have regularly tried to isolate (and probably imitate) this feature that I see in a handful of my friends, upon whom I bestow the title of the "heavyweight readers" - they eat through entire chapters in a few hours of sitting like its sliced bread, and still manage an appetite for a McAlooTikki, or a game of tennis, or some cheap whiskey with chicken tikka. I have a hunch that our reading habits derive from that which we've dared to read regularly - formulaic genre-based against non-formulaic genre-neutral writing.
It's possible, with most contemporary novels, for astute readers, if they are wont, to break it down into its parts, to take it apart as one would a car or Ikea shelving unit. That is, let's say a reader is a sort of mechanic. And let's say this particular reader-mechanic has worked on lots of books, and after a few hundred contemporary novels, the mechanic feels like he can take apart just about any book and put it back together again. That is, the mechanic recognizes the components of modern fiction and can say, for example, I've seen this part before, so I know why it's there and what it does. And this one, too - I recognize it. This part connects to this and performs this function. This one usually goes here, and does that. All of this is familiar enough. That's no knock on the contemporary fiction that is recognizable and breakdownable. This includes about 98 percent of the fiction we know and love.

Friday, September 02, 2011

Just between us

"Be my tiny yin............"
I'm a man of limited capabilities;
a man with a finite view of health, of expanse, of finances, of power that emotes, of power that corrupts, of motility, of potency.
I think of human cohabitative endeavors of yet.
I imagine my evenings with the least wanted women.
I make unreasonable plans about lands halfway touched and halfway untouched by the human presence.
I have a trigger 3 1/2 handspans from my brain that acts a magnet to my thoughts - that seizes them at inception to veer them away, and and affects how I see the world and how the world sees me and how I channel my monologues and dialogues.
I find innocence and nostalgia hitting me from all sources, and from across the wall.
I find myself crawling from unqualification and less-than-attentive grasp of trolls and trollhunters.
I find myself imagining my love interests in pleated black tops, or under hallucinogens, or in sweet bondage, or in a cheeky, nervous, wet state.
I hear Bollywood love ballads from across the wall that turn me red.
I sense an oncoming suicide, or a state of inebriation unparalleled, or a fanatic state of cycling, or authorship, and some visible tummy.