Friday, September 05, 2008
Nothing in particular
But anyways, fuck politics, I haven't biked all summer. My folks are here, visiting me. For the first time in the past 8 years or so. Their attitude towards life has changed quite a bit. They used to be big on traveling and seeing things. Now all they want is to go to malls and department stores. But I guess they've already seen most of the world and there's nothing that can excite them anymore. Now my dad's idea of a nice day out is to hang out in Home Depot gawking at toolboxes. My mom's day is made when we visit the Indian grocery. I would like to take them somewhere through the use of brute force, but it's a challenge for me to think of something they haven't already seen. I'm hoping for some geological oddity to suddenly appear in this part of the world, like, say, a volcano in the Poconos or maybe somebody could find a hitherto undiscovered tropical rain forest in south Philly. I am entirely out of ideas.
So we go to the Indian store. They have decent frozen chapatis.
My garden has blossomed under my dad's regime. He is a garden guy. One result is that my lawn looks awesome because he waters it everyday, come rain or shine. The other day it was about to rain and I yelled out to my dad outside, watering the lawn. "Dad stop watering, it's gonna rain". Dad yelled back, "It's okay, I have an umbrella". I did wait a couple of months hoping this would actually happen before making it up. Sadly, it never did because it would have been a great anecdote to narrate to random people on the internet.
I also have a tomato forest growing on my deck. Back in spring, I purchased a packet of tomato seeds and planted them all, believing that with my vast experience in killing healthy plants, I would be lucky to have but a single one alive by the end of summer. But with my dad in charge, all of them managed to grow and stay alive and now it's like a daycare center out there, only with juvenile tomato plants. They are a rowdy bunch. They fight with one other for the sunlight, block out each other's rays, fall onto the jalapeno who gets needlessly dragged into the fight. Man, they are a handful. I can't wait till they mature, sprout a few tomatoes and move out into their own soil.
I bought a bird feeder for my deck. It is my way of giving something back to society. The Republicans, with their free market-based poverty, don't care about feeding indigent and homeless birds and the Democrats are too busy feeding "people". I have been told that the birdhouse has been embraced and well patronized by blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, goldfinches and in my father's words, "black bird that was definitely not a crow"s. I haven't seen a single bird. Apparently my birdhouse only sees action during the early morning hours.
I guess that's it for now. Thank you, come again.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
On Sarah Palin
"Sorry America, but she was the best looking pro-life creationist woman we could find in two days to take over the presidency just in case I croak. But hey, don't worry, I ain't going anywhere. I'm only 63 or 73, I keep forgetting which."
The Goose Egg Fantasy Football league
Friday, August 15, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Man servant
Now, let's assume, for the purpose of discussion, that this guy were to have the softest of skin, the tenderest of lips and muscular arms, capable of vigorous to and fro action for at least five consecutive minutes. For many of you, the choice of chore for this man-servant would be an obvious one to make.
I would beg to differ, though. For a long time, I have wished to hire a man-servant to perform one daily task for me and just that one task. And that is the assignment of every morning, walking into my closet and picking out my attire for the day.
For I hate my wardrobe with a joyless passion. Some day, after I have moved into a new house or a retirement community or homeless shelter, I would like to burn it down. It's because I have the worst taste in clothes. My taste in clothes is so awful that after I purchase an article of clothing, I do not buy anything else for a long time in the fear that it will be even worse than what I had previously purchased. And that is why at least ten minutes of every single morning of my life are spent in mulling over which one of my clothes I hate the least on that particular day. Ten minutes of time that would be better spent smelling the roses, watching morning mist unfurl from dew-covered grass or pouring concrete into a foundation.
I am sick of deciding what to wear each day. I want someone to make my choice for me. I need someone to decide if I should wear a coffee stain or deodorant residue. If I should be loud of color, bright of stripe or carry around with me the rank odor of two unwashed weeks. These are tough decisions and someone has to make them. I've been in this game for a while now and now I think it is time for me to retire. My constitution cannot handle it anymore. Life is short and I feel it should not be spent trying to decide what to wear. Some people are made for it while some aren't. I am not. If you ordered me to wear a potato sack to work, I would do it happily, no questions asked. But if it were left to me, I would waste half the morning trying to decide between Idaho and Russet potatoes. It is a sad state of affairs.
So that's what I need someone to do for me. However, I do not wish to impose this thankless burden on a member of the fairer sex. Which is why I need a man-servant.
Are there any about? Soft skin and tender lips would be a definite plus.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Dear China
You are fucking assholes. Kindly take your games and shove em up your ass.
Regards,
g
Please Desist
"If I had a _____ for every ______, I would be ______."
This issue of Please Desist was inspired by some Republican chick on CNN saying :
"If I had a vat for every case of sour grapes from the Clintons, I would be drunk on wine right now."
So, please desist.
Endorsements
This blog also endorses Best Buy who unquestioningly replaced my PS3 that also got douchebagged.
Finally, this blog endorses this Desi guy who has ably demonstrated the least feasible way of staying alive for more than 60 consecutive seconds.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Okay, God
But if that wasn't the case, dear Lord of Lords, next time please extend me the courtesy of delivering your messages to me either through the destruction of somebody else's property or through the psychedelic visions of your spokesperson on earth, Mr. George W. Bush. Of course, that is not a direct order, just a humble request.
PS : Since you did not destroy my refrigerator during the storm, I will assume that you do not disapprove of my beef and alcohol consumption.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Cave Creek Chili Beer
But anyways, the long and the short of it is that I liked this beer. Go get some and let me know if you like it too.
PS : I forgot to mention that the motto of the brewery is "We drink all we can and sell the rest".
Also, do not eat the drunk chili pepper worm inside the bottle. It tastes like Sir Francis Drake's corpse.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Gay
But usually nothing of the sort happens and you are left disappointed and frustrated, questioning Mother Nature's intention behind bestowing the moniker "Gay" upon someone without having anything funny to say about it.
And then just as you are getting ready to resign yourself to the incredible monotony of life, today, you read this (via PZ). Apparently, a sprinter whose name is "Tyson Gay", won the 100 meter dash at the US Olympic Track and Field trials. The American Family Association (or NAMBLA), a right-wing organization, reported on the event. Now, the AFA apparently feels that the word "gay" is an undesirable euphemism for referring to people who rightfully should be called what they are, namely, homosexual. I guess this is to preclude the younger generation from making any kind of subliminal association between homosexuality and happiness (being gay). Therefore, towards this purpose, the AFA appear to have added an auto-word-replace macro to their web-publishing that replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual" in every article they publish. You probably see where I'm going with this. This is the article the AFA published on their website :
Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.
His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]
Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.
comment
"in punjabi " maa-di" has a very different connotation. The correct usage is "teri maa-di". It can be used to start as well as end arguments. It can also be used in the middle of an argument just before fistcuffs replace vocal cords. It is a very versatile phrase and can also be adapted to other situations - greeting, salutation, frustrations. But mostly it is a a unhappy and angry phrase, that blames 'yo mamma' for all that is wrong in this world."
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Maadi
Bragging
So then the other day, I was in this furniture store that was having a going out of business sale and I was looking at this table and the Chinese saleswoman asked me if I wished to take this table home today. I said that I couldn't because I had biked to the store. She said really, where had I biked from? I replied that I had biked from home, which was off Bob's road, did she know Bob's road? Apparently she did know Bob's road and she Ohed and Ahed and she looked damn impressed with my biking abilities which fucking irritated me. My frustration was due to two things. One, I had just completed the Schuylkill Trail the previous weekend, a distance of thirty miles which had filled me with vanity. And two, here was this woman getting impressed and complimenting me for a stupid biking excursion from Bob's road to her furniture store, which might have been three or four miles at best. Her getting impressed at three miles of biking was an insult to my vanity. I felt like I had just invented a perpetual motion machine but been awarded the Nobel prize for my other invention of toothpaste.
So this created a combustible mixture inside of me, which was just waiting to burst out. Which it did. I said to the furniture woman, "Bob's road, oh, come on, Bob's road, no that's close, very close. Very close, for me that is. You see, I bike a lot. I bike thirty miles every weekend. So Bob's road isn't a huge distance for me. I love biking." There, I had said it. She was now free to legitimately explode in admiration for my skills.
She asked me, "So are you interested in this table?"
Actually I was, because it was a good-looking table so then we measured it and I went back home and found that it was the wrong size of table. Too wide. This weekend I will do the Perkiomen Trail and go see a different table.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wikimulch
It is not just because I see mulch every which way, wherever I ride, but also because mulch has a personal history with me. I found mulch here, underneath my deck. It was a stray orphanized bag of mulch, deliberately left by the previous owners of my house in order to torture me. They knew that I did not know what the heck mulch was. I was a real estate n00b. Mulch who? I do not know why they seeked to torture me though, since I paid them above-market price and did not haggle (sorry mother, it is true, fish is not real estate).
Now. About mulch. What is mulch is what I have to find out, let's say. Also, why mulch? Now here I have two options, okay. One is to log on to the wikipedia and ask the wikipedia, hello sir, good morning what is mulch, thank you please. The other option is to log on to my blog and after entering my shitty login and shitty password, ask the air, hello air, what is mulch, thank you please, and thank you for being so invigorating today after two days of 90s and 100s.
Wikipedia would have given me my answer in about 5 seconds, 2 of which would have been consumed in trying to find if my blog was referenced in that wikipedia article. And then what? I would know what mulch is, but where is the social interaction? Where is the personal bonding? Not here. Not here, it ain't.
But where is the bonding? It is here, in the blogs. For if wikipedia had not been born, if wikipedia had been aborted as a fetus, or if papa wikipedia had remembered to wear a condom while fucking mama wikipedia, the world would have been a different place. A better place. Oh, so different. For, if I had woken up this morning, wrought over the question of the mulch, I would have gone straight to my blog and asked of you, my twenty or so intentional readers, hello readers, pray, what is mulch? Are you in the USA? Are you of sane mind? Are you of ample vision? Are you ambulatory? Then, what is mulch? What, for God's sake, is mulch? And, what the heck is it for?
And you would have answered, mulch is ...... this, and mulch is....that, and mulch is.... you know, whatever. And I would have contemplated your answers, formulated my own follow-up question, maybe something like, hey, but why is it called mulch and so forth, and you would have replied, hi gawker, sorry, but this is all the time I have, it is summer and it is now time for me to go swimming with my girlfriend, and I would have said, sure, go, who the heck is stopping you, I have nineteen other intentional readers, who the fuck cares, and then I would have asked you, you there, in the corner, you, pretending to read CNN on the other Firefox tab. Yes, I would have asked you. Why mulch?
And you would have told me. You would have guessed, or you would have lied. Either way, there would have been an interaction, a bonding. There would have been a conversation, an exchange of ideas, a give and take of viewpoints. The foundation of society as we know it.
But now there is wikipedia. So I won't ask you. I already know what mulch is. It's a stupid answer in bulleted form and quite predictable. And I had kinda guessed it anyways. So no blogposts about mulch. No personal interaction. No enlightening conversations.
Which is why, fuck wikipedia. The next time I have a question, I will ask you. And you better be ready with an answer. It's okay if you make stuff up. After all, it's all about the interaction. And the comments. And the follow up replies. Mulch? Mulch could be a Seattle-based grunge band. It could be an ice-cream flavor. Or it could be a pornographic position.
Mulch is whatever you tell me it is.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Helpful replies
"Will Call of Duty 4 (a PS3 game) work on the PS2?"
Some of the helpful replies he received from forum members were :
" Will my DVDs play in my VCR?"
"yes, but you have to mod your ps2...1st you have go buy a ps3, then you pretend its the ps2 and batta bing....it'll work.
" Will Uncharted work in my Dishwasher?"
"Will Assassin's Creed work in my blender?"
" Will Halo 3 work in my frying pan?"
You can clearly see why these forums are so popular among advice-seekers.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Another Garden update
A rose plant has appeared and it already has a yellow rose hanging from it. I never did anything to facilitate its growth. I remember back in India when my dad had to lavish a considerable amount of time, water, fertilizer, affection and rogor on our five hundred and sixty seven rose plants before a single one graced us with a flower. Here the roses do not appear to require any human intervention to prosper and celebrate life. In fact, they appear to be prospering in spite of my presence which, historically, has been to the detriment of plant-life. Neither of my thumbs is green.
And then there is another plant right by our doorstep which has also appeared out of nowhere and is now partying like it is 1999. This organism has assumed the appearance and demeanor of a rain-forest and has annexed most of my driveway to its kingdom. Currently, it is bearing about thirty-forty huge pink bastards and these bastards are so gigantic that due to their weight, the plant is forever lying prostate on the ground. I don't know what breed of flower this plant is. So the other day, I asked my neighbor, who appears to be knowledgeable in this area, if he knew who or what these flowers were and if they came from a decent family.
"Yes, they are called panties", he replied.
"Can you spell that for me please", I requested.
"Could you use it in a sentence", he countered.
"I have panties growing in my garden", I replied.
"P-E-O-N-I-E-S", he said.
"Oh yes", I said. "You mean ponies."
My other neighbor has the lushest, greenest, thickest backyard I have ever seen. It is in stark contrast to mine, which is a weed infested mess with a few blades of grass trying to make a decent living but having very little success. There is a well-defined boundary between my backyard and my neighbor's where the grass ends and the desert begins. It is so bad that the rabbits on her property have erected a fence in order to keep my rabbits from crossing over to the other side. They say the nibblings better over there.
I do not know what she did to deserve that kind of lawn on her property. I wanted to find out. So naturally, my first step was to guess. After spending a lot of time guessing, I made a list of things that I guessed were responsible for the superior health of her lawn. I then went to Lowe's. I purchased a weed killer. I purchased grass seed. And finally, I purchased grass fertilizer. Since I wanted my grass to de-weed, sprout and grow all on the same day because in this part of the world, summer only lasts for a couple of months which go by so fast that they seem like a couple of days and sometimes hours if you are playing the PS3, I mixed together weed killer, grass seed and fertilizer and applied the mixture to my lawn. The next day, my lawn disappeared, weeds, grass, earth and all. In its place was a deep hole, the bottom of which I could not see and through which I could faintly hear a number of voices speaking in a Chinese dialect.
Repeat after me. Patience is a virtue. Grass takes time to grow. Your neighbor's grass will always be greener. Weed killer, grass seed and fertilizer are not friends.