Why are birds such assholes?

You may not have realized this, probably due to the sheltered nature of your lifestyle, but not every asshole who's ever descended to earth from Planet Asshole was human. In fact, there are quite a few birds whose assholistic tendencies can rival even the finest mankind has to offer.

Take for instance, the Canadian goose. What an asshole. It's not just that this dipshit is an illegal immigrant from Canada, but also that it regularly fails to realize that it is a bird and would get its ass handed back to it, were it to ever engage in hand-to-hand combat with a human foe. Regardless of that fact, when this asshole is not shitting gigantic human-sized turds all over the path leading from your office building to your car, it is standing over them with the menacing demeanor of a mother guarding her newborn babies, prepared to fight to the death anybody who would dare crush them en route to home and hearth. Get over it, asshole. To you, they might be priceless nuggets of your body and soul, but the rest of us don't give a birdshit. And if I'm walking towards my car, better get the fuck out of my face because you're a goddamn bird and I don't know if you watch Animal Planet but you're supposed to be instinctively apprehensive (read scared shitless) of my species.

And what's with all the road-crossings? Watching these fuckers jay-walk all over our major arteries during rush hour would make one wonder, where are all these wankers off to? Meetings? Presentations? You're probably saying to yourself, "Dear God, am I doing as much with my life as these geese are with theirs"? To which the answer is, yes, because they are just being assholes. Only an asshole would deliberately cross a road on foot during rush hour despite being endowed with actual working wings.

Now you probably wouldn't believe a sparrow to be a bird subscribing to the asshole mindset. After all, it's just a tiny soul, keeps to itself and gets bullied by the larger birds. But then, you don't know assholes. Assholes come in all sizes and innocence. And the sparrow is a tiny asshole, but an asshole nevertheless. Look, you purchased a bird feeder for thirty bucks. You've been keeping it well-stocked with bird feed, spending about fifteen bucks twice every month. It is food fit for a king, delicious and you know that for a fact because you've taste-tested it yourself. So when it is time to patch the bare spots in your lawn with grass seed, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to assume that the sweet innocent sparrow that regularly dines in your feeder would leave your grass seed alone and in peace. But you would be wrong because the sweet innocent sparrow is an asshole. A human would say, I have eaten this man's salt, perhaps I should keep my grubby paws off his lawn. But not the sparrow. The sparrow will eat your salt, have your grass seed for dessert and then return it back to your deck in dropping form. That's how big an asshole the sparrow is.

But there is a feathered asshole that puts all other assholes to shame. Even human asshole heavyweights such as Axl Rose, Bill O'Reilly and Terrell Owens' agent. This is an asshole extraordinaire, one who reigns uncontested at the top of the asshole pyramid. Meet the common grackle. It is not a crow and it is not a blackbird. It is a grackle. Let's call it for what it is, a grackhole.

The grackhole loves to dine at your feeder. That's not necessarily a bad thing since that was the precise intent behind your purchase of the feeder, namely, to allow destitute birds access to adequate nutrition, while maintaining their dignity. But the grackhole is an asshole. The grackhole will keep other birds out of the feeder. And you know why other birds hate it and keep out of its way? Because apparently, the grackhole is in the habit of devouring the other birds that eat at your feeder. Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of an asshole does that? Let's say, you're at a restaurant and you decide there's nothing you like on the menu. Do you then say to the waiter, "Hey, I'll have the guy sitting at that table over there, grilled medium rare with mashed potatoes on the side. By the way, what's the soup of the day?" Not even Dick Cheney would commit such an act of blatant assholery. At least not until you're done with dinner and you go back home and wake up in the middle of the night to find Dick Cheney squatting on his haunches at your bedside, gnawing on your exposed fibula. But at least Dick Cheney will let you eat in peace. Not the grackhole, however. Because the grackhole is an asshole.

A few facts appear to support the hypothesis that the grackle is a world-class asshole. For example, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says that the grackle has actually benefited from deforestation. Yes, you heard me right. How fucked up does a bird have to be in the head to actually hate trees and rejoice in their destruction? Another fun fact about the grackle is that it allows ants to crawl onto its body in order to destroy the rest of the parasites that live there. I do not even wish to know what it is that the ants are supposedly destroying. Hopefully it is not cancer. I would like cancer to remain on the grackle's body.

But the grackle is not just an asshole to its own kind. It's also an asshole to you. You, who installed the bird feeder on your deck in the first place. You, who are responsible for the healthy radiant rainbow-colored penumbra around the grackle's neck. Yes, you. The grackle doesn't care about you. For the grackle, you are nothing but a pair of hands hovering in mid-air that refill the feeder every couple of weeks. As far as the grackle is concerned, when you're not replenishing its food supply, you are just a fat lazy slob who lolls around on the deck wasting his life, gaping at the scenery and more importantly, keeping the mighty grackle away from its food and preventing it from achieving its daily masticatory goals.

And so, realizing that you are not going to budge from your seat without some external encouragement, the grackle alights on a nearby tree branch along with a couple of its thuggish buddies and kicks things up a notch by firing up the karaoke machine. The grackle's grating "chack chack" is the avian equivalent of fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. In the beginning, you are loathe to admit defeat because by God, you purchased this townhouse in large part due to its wonderful deck and the nice view it has of the woods and the stream and there is no way you're gonna let this filthy cockatoo keep you from getting your money's worth. But after ten minutes of nonstop chacking, you finally admit defeat and make a dignified retreat into the keep, whenceforth you watch as the gleeful little fuck leaps onto your feeder and celebrates its victory by defecating into the flower basket you've just populated today with fresh pansies.

What. An. Asshole.

Shirtless Stupid

I am considerably gladdened by the realization that criminals in my neighborhood appear to be mental midgets. Apparently there was this guy who robbed and assaulted a cab driver and then, in order to elude the cops, fled into an apartment building where he was arrested in about an hour. Evidence of his sub-par mental faculties:

1.> The building he ran into was unoccupied. Thus making him the sole occupant of that building.

2.> The building he ran into was less than 100 yards from the scene of the crime. Really, criminal? You couldn't be bothered to run, say, 200 yards? You did have an hour to kill before the police showed up. So in the meantime, couldn't you have run to the train station? Where you could have caught the Septa R5 to 30th street? Where you could have boarded the Amtrak to Whitefish, Montana? Instead, you chose to run 100 yards. Good call, man.

3.> Finally, in a brilliant move whereby he clinched the 2009 "Evasive maneuver least likely to succeed but mad props for trying" award, the guy removed his shirt in an attempt to fool the cops. I suppose he was thinking, "Hey, if no one could tell Clark Kent was actually Superman merely because of his glasses, I'm sure I'll be made virtually unrecognizable by the sheer lack of garment on my upper torso". I'm sure he even called up his own mother in order to test his disguise and said, "Hey mom, I'm not wearing any clothes, can you tell it's me on the phone?"

So to recap, in order to escape the long arm of the law, this guy ran into an unoccupied empty apartment building within a stone's throw of where he knew cops would be arriving, stayed there for an hour and removed his shirt in 30 degree weather, hoping to meld into the crowd, of which there was none.

The cops explained how they caught the guy. "He was not dressed for the weather".

With geniuses of such outstanding cerebral caliber trying to rob me, I can now sleep soundly at night. All I have to do is post a sign on my door that reads, "After picking lock, please pull to open" when it actually needs to be pushed.

Aftershock

Don't you think calling a second earthquake an "aftershock" kind of absolves the Earth of all responsibility? Why this euphemism? Just call 'em like they are, earthquake 1 and earthquake 2. Calling it an aftershock is like saying, alright Earth, you fucked our shit up with an earthquake but guess what, you get to do it again without additional penalty or infamy. We will just call it an aftershock. Don't do that, man, don't spoil her. You give Mama Earth an inch and she will take a mile.

It's like allowing someone to get away with a second murder as long as the guy commits it within a day or two of the first one. We would just call it an aftermurder. No one gets prosecuted for an aftermurder. After all, it's just a part of the entire murder experience.

Link(s) of the day

Human : Fuck you, animal.

Animal : Fuck me? No, fuck you, loser.

Parenting

Last fall, I was driving my parents through Vermont on a foliage-hunting trip, and during a conversation initiated by the sheer overpowering beauty of the place, I randomly mentioned that someday I would like to hang up my keyboard and mouse, buy a house in Vermont and run a bed and breakfast.

The moment I said that, my mom began to look at every subsequent house that we passed on the road in a new light, as the future dwelling and business establishment of her beloved son. She would quickly analyze its advantages and shortcomings with regard to structural integrity, aesthetic appeal, picturesque location, proximity to essential services and the condition of its indoor plumbing fixtures. This was all achieved through a cursory half second inspection of the passing blur. Then, following a fifteen second conference with my dad, she would tender her final recommendation on a possible purchase. She carried on in this vein until finally I had to tell her, mom, I don't know if this will ever happen, I have no money, no green card, I can barely afford my current mortgage and I don't know diddly squat about the hospitality sector. She replied, okay then, we'll do this again later when you're ready. My mom's funny.

I am not sure if I will ever be such a devoted parent to my kids. I can picture my son or daughter telling me that he or she would like to buy a house in Vermont and me replying, "Excellent, I'll come visit you when you're done. Make sure there's beer in the fridge." Are there any good parenting courses one can take online?

Tip of the day

I learnt this one way back during my graduate school days. If all your friends hail from a particular region in India and insist on conversing in their native dialect while in your presence, keep yelling out in a sporadic manner, "Hey quit talking about my mother", till conversation either dies out completely or transitions into a more comprehensible format.

Breaking in

We have a new guy in our office who's been temporarily assigned to us from India. He will be with us for the next four months. He's Maharashtrian and coincidentally, from Pune. My American colleague G is in charge of supervising the new guy. G wandered into my cubicle yesterday.

gawker : What's up G? How's the new guy doing?

G : Habeeb is in training class.

gawker : Habeeb?

(The new guy isn't Muslim and his name isn't Habeeb.)

gawker : Listen G, don't try your "all brown people are terrorists" jokes on the new guy just yet, okay?

G : What brown terrorist jokes?

gawker : You remember, when I didn't shave for a month and when I finally did, you asked me if I had graduated from terror camp?

G : Oh, that.

gawker : And when we were in the Indian restaurant, you complained they weren't playing your favorite song, and when asked which one, you put your palm on your mouth and yelled "ulululululululu"?

G : So when can I start making terrorist jokes?

gawker : I will break him in gradually. Start him off on some mild Mahashtrian mother-sister stuff. Gauge his reaction. I will let you know if and when he is ready for your overtly racist material.

G : Alright then, you do that. And don't cross any borders illegally in the meantime.

gawker : Oh, and no "Mexicans, Indians, what's the difference" jokes either.

G : You're running a pretty tight ship, Osama.

gawker : Just trying to keep the office safe from suicide bombings.

How to

So this Bosnian guy tried unsuccessfully to kill his mother-in-law using an anti-tank missile. He probably doesn't play Call of Duty a lot because as an expert in the field, I could have told him that it is very difficult to kill infantry-in-law using an anti-tank missile. You have to aim really hard and cannot rely on the splash effect of the explosion like you would in case of a common grenade.

The best way to carry out the kill would have depended on the circumstances. If his target were to be running from room to room, a submachine gun like the mini-Uzi or the MP5 would have been perfect for the purpose. If he were to be at a longish distance, say encamped in her neighbor's garden or high atop a tree, an M16A4 rifle would have been great because it gives you both the range as well as the accuracy. If he had lots of time on his hands and wished the endeavor to be totally bereft of any danger, he could have used a Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle from, half a mile away. This rifle does make a loud noise, but that should be drowned out by the sound of your neighbor trying to kill his mother-in-law with an anti-tank missile.

As an aside, I like how the reporter sympathetically explains how "She cannot be killed be (sic) conventional weapons".

Disclaimer : This blog does not condone the actual killing of real human beings.

Emasculinity

Black guy ahead of gawker at the Subway : "I'll have the nine inch sub please".

Indian sandwich maker guy : "You mean the six inch sub?"

Black guy : "Yeah okay, the six inch one".

gawker (to himself) : "Quit showing off, bastarguy".

Cooking show

I came up with a great idea for a television cooking show. I will be pitching it to Food Network, Fine Living Network, Black Entertainment Television or any private citizen with a transponder who will answer my phone call. I don't think this idea has ever been implemented in the entire history of cooking shows. In my show, I would give my audience a step by step demonstration on how to cook all my favorite dishes. The twist is that this would provide people with a list of steps on how not to cook that particular dish. Every dish I have ever tried to cook has turned into a federal disaster and this would be a good way for me to capitalize on my failcooking. For example, if I were to add chopped tomatoes to something, that would let you know that you would be better off adding grated apples instead. At the end of my show, I would have the studio audience come over, taste my dish and show their appropriately disgusted facial expressions to the camera in order to demonstrate to all of you sitting out there just how bad my food turned out to be.

For now, I'm trying to come up with a recipe for the pilot episode that would perfectly capture the worst of my cooking instincts. I'm thinking the first omelet I ever produced as a graduate student in the US. In my recipe, I used two onions and only one egg, chopped the onions lengthwise and added onions and egg separately to the frying pan. If you refuse to follow those steps to the letter, you should end up with a perfectly delicious omelet.

I will be calling my show "The Opposite of Bad Cooking". I will let you know when to turn on the TV.

PS : A commenter correctly pointed out that the show should be named "The Opposite of Good Cooking". Turns out I also suck at naming food shows about cooking that sucks.

Pretty

I've been styling my own hair for the past eight years. When I say styling, I mean cutting and when I say cutting, I mean shaving it off. I do this to myself every three months. As a result, I look like a human only about 30 days a year. Today is one of those days that happen to be at the end of every shaving cycle. In about a week I will voluntarily re-inflict baldness upon me and turn into a cue ball. But during these next seven days, I will be pretty, oh so pretty. Enjoy my beauty while you can, world.

Extraordinarily Funny

If you are into Hindi film music, you need to check this out.

No more a failure

Are you like me, someone who periodically turns around and flashes a beam on the receding outline of his life to realize that he's accomplished nothing of significant worth in his thirty odd years on this planet? Do you often feel that your life turned out to be, if not a lemon, at least a nectarine and wonder whether you should ask for your money back? If so, boy, do I have a solution for you.

All you have to do is find one trivial thing you do successfully every day, add the number of times you've been doing it over the years and there you go, you ain't a failure any more. In my case, it's walking up and down stairs. I have been doing this continuously without falling down for the past eight years of my life. Let's do the math.

Each day at work, I climb thirty-five stairs four times a day.

35 x 4 = 140 stairs a day.

I do this five days a week.

140 x 5 = 700 stairs a week.

Let's say fifty weeks a year.

700 x 50 = 35,000 stairs a year.

For the past eight years.

35,000 x 8 = 2,80,000 stairs.

So to recap, I have climbed 2,80,000 stairs without falling down even once. Wow. Just, wow. I'm blown away. Seriously, that is quite an achievement. To give you some perspective on how huge this is, consider that in England, every year, over a 100,000 people are treated for injuries caused by falling down stairs. Have you ever listened to 100,000 people falling down stairs? It's quite a racket. And these are only the folks who were man (or woman) enough to admit that they fell down stairs and drove themselves to the hospital. If you consider that the difference between the number of people who masturbate and those who admit to it is a factor of five and apply that factor to this case, it turns out that over 500,000 Brits fall down stairs every year. And these are all fine, upstanding, successful people who you once thought were better than you.

But I have successfully navigated 2,80,000 stairs without taking a single tumble. I'm proud of this feat. More so because I'm a stair-runner, not a stair-walker. My mother was right. I am indeed special.

So off you go, all you special people out there and start crunching those numbers. Whether it is your ability to sit on the same chair an umpteen number of times without breaking its legs or opening a door without pulling it off its hinges or tying your shoelaces without snapping them in half (something which I suck at), go find something you are very successful at and be happy.

Historic aerial PA

I've often wondered what my neighborhood might have looked like, say, 50 or 100 years ago and this website answered my question. It's got aerial pictures of Pennsylvania from the 40s and 70s, arranged by grid on the map. Amazing. I wonder if other states have such a website as well.

PETA makes a funny

PETA is pissed at Call of Duty : World @ War. PETA doesn't like the fact that players are forced to kill attack dogs that can be unleashed by their opponent once he or she achieves a killing streak of 7. In the interest of avoiding a cliched response, I will forego the act of wondering aloud what PETA's opinion is with regard to the brutal murder of human beings in the game. So now that's foregone, let us relish PETA's deliciously demented alternative vision of the concept, preferably to be implemented in the next Call of Duty sequel.

To help the folks at Activision Blizzard learn about the ethical treatment of animals (something we're sorta experts on) we're offering to let them take PETA's "Developing Empathy for Animals" seminar free of charge, and we're sending a package of dog-friendly Nintendogs games to their office.

With a little Nintendogs influence, perhaps the next Call of Duty game will have you unlock achievements for petting the dogs you encounter and going on walks or playing Frisbee with them.

The moment I read this, I knew it was a winner. Who wouldn't buy a war game where you could unleash a pack of vicious rottweilers on your enemy who, by rule, would be forced to place his gun aside for the moment and braving claws, fangs and the certain onset of rabies, pet those brutes and take them on a frisbee slinging walk while you take your time deciding which part of his anatomy you want to blow clean off his body? Heck, I sure would.

At this time, I would also like to offer my pre-emptive approval to the UN Human Rights Commision's future request that every subsequent war-based video game give the player an option to either stab his opponent in the back or cuddle with him while feeding him spoonfuls of warm scrumptious apple pie.

QOTD

Colleague1 on Colleague2 :

"If this guy came upon a wall, instead of climbing it, he would probably run left and right trying to find out where it ended."

?

A sudden influx of people to this blog from IIT IIIT Hyderabad leads me to ask the question : Am I on the syllabus?

For Dummies

This weekend, as I was foraging in Borders, I saw this book called "Forensics for Dummies". It made me question whether there really are a lot of people hovering around a dead body, thinking, "Fuck 911, I'm gonna investigate this one on my own".

One more thing about the "For Dummies" series of books. Most people who buy these books believe they are not really dummies. And that the reason they are buying this book is because they just want to be taught that topic as if they were a dummy. Well my friend, I hate to burst your bubble, but if you need to be taught like you were a dummy, chances are you actually are a dummy. So rest your mind in ease because you are indeed getting value for your money.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I am currently reading the book "Mutual Funds for Dummies". After reading this book, I feel there should be a special series of books for people like me called "For Dummies who are also afflicted by ADD". These books should go slow enough for one to grasp the subject matter, but also not so slow that one reaches for the TV remote.

One book that I really don't want to see in a bookstore is "Commercial Airline Piloting for Dummies". I hope they don't publish that one. Now I know that we live in a politically correct world where everything is supposedly possible for everybody regardless of gender, sexual orientation and mental capacity, but honestly, I would strongly discourage dummies from wanting to assume control of a commercial airliner. Not just dummies, but even people unsure about their dummy status, people who might buy this book just to be on the safe side. When I fly, I want somebody in control of the plane who is absolutely 100% sure that he is not a dummy. While landing the plane, I don't want the pilot going, "Hmmmm...My instructions were to land on runway 2, but I might be a dummy and reading those instructions wrong so maybe I should land on runway 3". The end result might be a landing on runway 2.5. Definitely not a good idea to publish this book.

Fortune

So apparently, my folks consulted an astrologer, who concluded that my planets would (finally) begin to align starting in June. I'm not sure whether to believe the astrologer or the fortune cookie that informed me, "You have a curious smile and a mysterious nature".

Dreams

My latest thing is to wake up in a panic about five times a night, believing that my house is on fire. My previous thing was to wake up in a panic about five times a night, believing that my roof is leaking. I wish I could somehow find a way to combine these two dreams and finally get some sleep.

Things that suck : Volume XXXVIII

During the course of a conversation, you draw a rather funny analogy which gets lots of laughs and then somebody takes it a step further and extends your analogy, but now it's not funny anymore and you have to laugh at it regardless because the person who did it laughed at your original analogy.

Drawing blood

I got my blood drawn today. The last time I got my blood drawn was for our I-485 immigration applications which was two years ago. If you are getting your blood drawn, here's some advice. Try not to eat at a Mexican restaurant right before you get it done. My second recommendation is, if you are hell-bent upon disregarding my advice and intend to go right ahead and order a burrito, please do not order a side of rice and beans. Otherwise, you will make it a day to remember and blog about.

My wife had her blood drawn first. She emerged from the room, rubbing her arm. "They couldn't find a vein so they had to repeatedly stick their needle into me", she complained. Ha ha, I said callously, for I found the situation not lacking in humor. "Now watch how a man gets his blood drawn". I walked inside very casually as if to show those folks that I get blood drawn everyday for one reason or another. No big deal for the man.

They sat me down and stuck it to me. They began to siphon out my blood. And as the tubes started to fill up with red, I got the distinct sense that my life was being sucked out of my body. I could feel the blood supply to my brain being diverted into the test tube. And then, I had to vomit. I informed the attendant of my wish. I also told her that after vomiting, I would probably die and that I had not yet written my will and would she make sure that my wife got everything, except for my Wodehouse collection which should go to my sister? She said okay and gave me a bag. And then I let it all out. Burrito, side of rice, side of beans and two kinds of hot sauces, chipotle and habanero.

As I walked out, my wife took one look at my pale face and foam-flecked lips and asked me, "So is this how all men get their blood drawn?" Humbled, I accepted her sarcasm and begged her to teach me everything she knew about vomit-free blood-letting.

As a result of my last experience, I was somewhat apprehensive at today's blood-drawing. I said to the nurse, "Heh heh, you better get a bag ready because I've been known to throw up". She replied, "Oh don't worry, we will make it quick and painless". She stuck the needle into me and asked me, "Are you okay hon?" I said, "Yes, I'm okay, but it is when I see red that I begin to see white". She replied, "In that case, why don't you look over to your left. Look at those pictures of puppies and pandas and the baby bear".

I turned my head and indeed, there were baby animals on the wall. "Don't worry", said the puppy's sad eyes. "It's not blood, it's honey". "Give me that honey, shithead", yelled the baby bear. "Quit fighting you two ass-jockeys or I'll smack you both upside down", said the panda. Oh, those silly animals. They saved me from being humiliated again. I didn't puke this time.

Submarines

I wonder why more people in the US don't own a submarine. Americans like to be around water, in water, on water and aboard vehicles that travel through water. Most everybody in the US owns a boat. Why not own a submarine? It is way cooler than a boat. A boat can sink and it will be bye bye and off to the depths. And the people going bye bye will be the ones cruising around in the sub and waving.

What's the point of owning a boat? All it does is stay afloat. What's the big deal in staying afloat? I can't swim and I can still stay afloat. Just give me one a them parachute swim trunks. Diving is so much more difficult. I don't know how people can hold their breath underwater and still manage to fight each other in the movies. If I am underwater and merely think about the fact that I am underwater, I immediately go ahead and gulp down large amounts of swimming pool.

I think the point of owning a boat is more to do with the public display of free time and money than the actual enjoyment thereof. You can navigate your boat to another boat and chat it up with your boat-owner friend, both of you deriving satisfaction from the fact that the other knows that you own a boat. Difficult to do that in a submarine. "Hey Jack, haven't pinged you in a long time, where you been, over." "Yeah, had to surface for a while, had some stuff to do, over." "Well, it's good to see your blip on my sonar, how's the weather over there, over". "Weather's great, climate control holding up, CO2 scrubber working overtime if you know what I mean he he, over." "He he of course, well, gotta scoot, catch your wake later, over and out."

Email joke

So I emailed this joke to a couple of American colleagues. Didn't get a response. So I went off to their cubicle to get their response in person.

gawker : Hey guys, so what did you think of the joke I sent you?

colleague1 : I hated it. So much that I printed it out just so I could shred it.

colleague2 : Yeah, and then I burnt the shreddings.

gawker : Come on, it wasn't too bad. Anyways, it wasn't mine.

colleague1 : Really? It had gawker written all over it.

gawker : Well, we Indians are all pretty much alike.

colleague2 : Yeah, you all stink.

gawker : Sure, sure. So are we doing Indian for lunch?

colleague1 : Yeah.

colleague2 : Thirty minutes.

heydagoodagadi

Our office building has an evening janitor whom I bump into every single day as I'm running downstairs after the day's work is done. Very friendly elderly fellow and always greets me when I meet him. The only problem is, I still don't know what he's been saying to me as a greeting. This is because when I see him and I say "Hey, how you doing", he doesn't wait for the closing notes of my "doing" to die down before he commences his own greeting. In fact, he carefully times his own greeting to begin at the precise moment when I say my "Hey". As a result, what I've been hearing till now as a combined cacophony of our two greetings can be phonetically described as "heydagoodagadi". I'm still trying to figure out which part is mine and, thereby, isolate his vocal frequencies from the mix. For all I know, he might have been asking me to go fuck myself. I hope not because I've given this guy considerable love over the years.

Pakistan

A simple way to make Pakistan a democracy would be to make the Army Chief an elected official and the President a chihuahua (or any other non-threatening dog).

M80

I saw an M80 today. A Bajaj M80 on a Pennsylvania road. Okay, it might not have been a Bajaj M80, possibly a Ford M80 or a Goldman Sachs M80 but it was definitely an M80. It had the same vertical mini wingettes straddling the fuel tank and the same bespectacled Indian sitting on it. I couldn't believe my fucking eyes. Actually, I could. If not my eyes, what else am I gonna believe? My ears? Hey, what's that I hear, isn't that an M80? Or nose? Yargh, that smells like an M80. No, I trust my eyes. But I wonder how this thing got here. Does Bajaj have a showroom in the US? Perhaps they have a black market M80 outlet on Oaktree road.

I wonder if they would sell me an Atlas Goldline Super bicycle.

step ex lesb

Last weekend, my colleague had to drive four hours to his step-sister's daughter's birthday party which was being celebrated at his step-sister's ex-husband's house where he watched her ex-husband have a fight with his step-sister's lesbian ex-lover over the custody of the kid.

So quit complaining about your life.

Animals

I remember the exact point in my life when I became an animal lover. It was back in India and I was around 8 years old, maybe 10. A construction lorry had pulled up alongside our house. Without warning, the driver backed up into our garden fence and damaged one of the fence posts. He then took off without bothering to wait for justice to be meted unto him. I was furious. I ran behind the lorry driver, following him from inside my garden, screaming little child epithets. Even at that young age, I was well versed in the art. When I reached the end of our domain, I had to quit, my progress being thwarted by a neighbor's fence. That is when my attention wandered to the property across the road and I saw a dog, who had also been chasing the lorry from inside his garden and had been similarly foiled by his own fence. I marveled at how the dog had correctly determined that a crime had been committed and had taken it upon himself to extract justice for his human neighbor.

As the two of us watched the receding silhouette of the miscreant vehicle, it dawned upon me that animals have as great a sense of moral outrage against society's evildoers as do humans, if not greater.

Even today, when I go back home and look at the bent fence post (which still stands bent), I think of that dog and our joint crusade against injustice.

Stupid post

You know what I hate? When I write a stupid post and make the mistake of linking to CNN in my post and then my stupid post shows up as linking to the CNN article on the CNN website and then a ton of people from all over the world come to my blog from CNN and read my stupid post. Really hate when that happens. A man should be able to write stupid posts in peace without having people from all over the world come and read it. What's that you say, a man should quit writing stupid posts instead? Now you're just being stupid.

Stripes

When I was young, my mom forbade me from wearing anything with vertical stripes because she believed it made me look longer and skinnier than I was and I was already quite long and skinny. Consequently, I had a shitload of horizontal stripes and not a single vertical stripe during my mid to late childhood.

I think now would be a good time for me to test if my mom's Vertical Stripes Theory does indeed hold water.

Sad Day

When terrorists shoot a cricketer, they call it a sad day for cricket. When I get shot, I wonder if it will be a sad day for software development.

PS : I actually think it will be a happy day just because of my horrific programming techniques.

Boot

I keep forgetting which word Americans don't understand, "boot" or "trunk" of a car. By the time I figure that out, the conversation has already ended. Due to this peculiar handicap of mine, I have been unable to participate in the last twenty or so boot or trunk related conversations I have been witness to. And the most vexing part is that I have a lot to contribute to this topic. I might not have a PhD in boot theory or trunk mechanics but I do know my automobile storage compartments.

Presidential Address

My facial muscles are gradually uncringing themselves. They suffered severe trauma through the past 8 years from watching Ex-President Dufus try to speak in public. Some doctors said the damage was permanent and that I would not be able to appear in photographs any more. Some said to try cheek yoga. Others suggested nuzzling an elephant. Nothing seemed to work. And a baby elephant in the Philadelphia zoo will probably turn into a man-eater when he grows up.

But after watching yesterday's presidential address, I could feel my muscles beginning to relax. They are still a long ways off from assuming a normal expression, though. For now, everybody needs to stop getting offended. I'm not cringing at you. I have just forgotten how it feels not to be disgusted.

Shorter Oscar Awards Message

"Please go see Slumdog Millionaire. It is an awesome movie on India. India is a country in Asia. Don't worry, it was produced by a Brit so you will understand what the actors are saying."

Disclaimer : I have not seen the movie. I did, however, watch the Oscar Awards.

Individual Climate Control

People who purchase cars with individual climate control should just stay single. I mean, if you cannot even agree on what temperature to maintain your car cabin at, your marriage is already doomed. How the heck are you gonna decide on anything, ever? When you adopt a pet, are you gonna get a vertically split half pitbull half chihuahua? Teach your kid to play piano with one hand and strum the guitar with another? And what about those romantic moments? If you're drinking out of the same glass with two straws, will one of you insist on drinking coke from your side of the glass and the other a milkshake?

Does this thing even work? When hot air mixes with cold air, it turns into lukewarm air. Trying to have hot air and cold air in a single confined micro space is physically impossible. As impossible as having hot water and cold water in the same bathtub.

It is simple, really. You're the husband, you lose the fucking jacket because you get hot easily. You're the wife, you put on a fucking jacket because you get cold easily. That is what marriage is about, people, it is about compromise. Maybe if you followed this advice, it would save you a shitload of money on alimony payments. And save some for your mortgage payments. Perhaps bring the economy out of the shitter so that the rest of us can live our lives in peace.

McNuggetini

The McNuggetini

A McDonald’s chocolate milkshake with vanilla vodka, rimmed with BBQ sauce and garnished with a chicken McNugget. (via (via)).

I call it McWhatTheFc.

PS : How about the Disgustini?

Any more ideas?

Cock and Balls

I have a colleague who likes to say "cock and balls". He regularly uses this phrase as a substitute for the word "nonsense". Each time he says it, I have a vision of him scooping up somebody's cock and balls in his hand, kind of like how a good Indian housewife scoops up a lamp for the purpose of gratefully celebrating the awesomeness of her husband with it.

He is also a fan of dropping into my cubicle every f-fucking-ive minutes and just going on and on about shit. He sits in the next cubicle so due to his repeated invasions, I think I have developed this seventh sense on when he's gonna do it next. My sixth sense is actually my paranormal ability to turn on any television channel that is playing Seinfeld at any given instant. So anyways, due to the power of this seventh sense, never, not even once, has he caught me surfing the internet. I think I'm gonna use this sense for other non-office related activities, for example, when I'm in the Chandrapur jungle and a tiger's about to pounce on me from behind because I devoured the goat originally left as its bait, I can take appropriate evasive measures because I knew he would be coming.

This same colleague that I was referring to, had, in the past, developed this highly irritating habit. Whenever I was confronted with a problem of any sort, his advice to me would be "You know what we need in our software? A (problem) button." For example, if I was looking for my stapler, he would say to me, "You know what we need in our software? A "Find the Stapler" button."

Now he has moved on to a different approach. His latest solution to any problem is for me to go to www.(problem).com. So he will now say, "You know what you should do, you should log on to www.findmystapler.com". Oh he is a riot.

So anyways, like I was saying, this guy likes to say "cock and balls" a lot. That's all I really wanted to say.

Tripe and tendon

I tried the Vietnamese beef tripe and tendon noodle soup. Contrary to what I was hoping, tripe and tendon weren't code words for "tenderest cut of filet mignon" and "most succulent and juicy ribeye steak". They actually stood for tripe and tendon respectively. Tripe is apparently cow stomach, which would be okay if you needed a stomach transplant and by a happy coincidence, happened to be in a Vietnamese restaurant. And also happened to be a cow. Tripe was fairly disgusting. Tripe had the texture of a chopped up and sauted bicycle tire tube. It was also bereft of taste. Tripe was the stuff you usually find, pick and throw out of whatever meat-based dish you are eating. So bye bye tripe, it was nice seeing you and have a great life.

Tendon was better. Tendon, which is the connective tissue between bone and muscle and sounds as disgusting as tripe, is actually quite tasty. It is collagen which turns into a melt-in-your-mouth gelatinous mass when slow-cooked and can be tolerated without much difficulty.

Anyways, the point of this exercize was to get to know tripe and tendon and explore the possibility of a long term relationship with these two folks. But as I mentioned, tripe and I turned out to be on totally different wavelengths. Tendon and I, well, we might have something going on. There was definitely some sexual chemistry happening in that bowl. We'll just have to wait and see.

QOTD

"Smokers should quit. If they can't, they should learn to be sexy smokers."

Best smoking post ever.

13 inch TV

Colleague1 : That guy who just passed us. He had a head like a 13 inch TV.

gawker : Where?

Colleague1 : There, that guy in the Hyundai.

Colleague2, still trying to process Colleague1's initial statement : What? Why did you compare his head to a 13 inch TV?

Colleague1 : He had a huge head. I couldn't see his neck.

Colleague2 : But why a 13 inch TV? Who compares a head to a TV? Why not say he had a head like a basketball?

Colleague1 : He had a square head, like a TV.

Colleague2 : You could have said he had a large head. Christ, John.

Colleague1 : Look, I didn't want to send any homosexual overtones. You know what they say about guys with large heads.

Colleague2 : What....that they have big remotes?

Colleague1 : Forget it. Anyways, I made gawker laugh. That's something.

gawker : Actually, I am quite easily amused.

The Stupid Shuffle

Here is something stupid people do in nightclubs. I seen it with my very own two eyes. The night is moving along nicely and the beautiful people are busy laying the groundwork for a possible crotch-to-buttock application scenario and then suddenly, there is a lull in the music and the DJ puts on this song they call the "Cupid Shuffle". And what happens? The Stupid takes over. Takes over everybody. Don't matter if you're a salesgirl from Macys or a professor of advanced thermodynamics from Princeton with tenure. When the song comes on, if at that moment you find yourself on the dance floor, you are obligated to and will have to perform the Cupid Shuffle. It begins with everybody filing into a military type formation in multiple rows. At this point it would be wise to steal a quick glance at the person beside you in order to gauge the degrees of freedom you will be afforded during the shuffle. And then the shuffle begins.

The song consists of a series of instructions to the audience on how and where to position their bodies for the next few minutes. It goes like this :

“To the right, to the right, to the right, to the right”. Here, Mr Cupid expects you to slide your body to the right. You can do the bare minimum, as in just walk over to the right. Or if you are a humongous fan of the song, you could perform some kind of elaborate hand-leg routine while doing it.

Next, the song goes :

“To the left, to the left, to the left, to the left”. Now you have to go walk to the left. If you hate walking, too late, pal.

“Now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick”. Here it is mandated that you kick your feet in front you, making sure you only kick one foot at a time. You may laugh now but when you are in that room, the stupid can get to you.

“Now walk it by yourself, now walk it by yourself”. This is probably the most difficult move in the song because you are being asked to walk it by yourself while being in the midst of a human limb porridge. But don't lose heart, just do your best. Think of yourself as being in a vast meadow with no one in sight and just the blue sky reaching out to the horizon. As far as you are concerned, you are now walking it by yourself. By the way, don't you wish you were actually in that meadow instead of in this shithole, walking left and right and kicking at stuff?

Now granted, I have no first hand experience of how it feels to do the Cupid Shuffle, having contented myself with watching other people doing it (kind of a common theme of my life), but regardless, I still have a really hard time trying to fathom the source of pleasure these people experience while doing the shuffle. Or is it that Americans will obey any set of asinine instructions as long as they have been delivered in rap form? Case in point, even in today's dire economy with the banks tumbling and the jobs disappearing and stock market crashing, if a rapper asks us to wave our hands in the air as if we just don't care, will we tell him to kindly fuck off? No, we will stop caring and start waving. Why? Because he's got the full authority of a beat behind him. And if you don't, well, as a wise lady once said, "the Rhythm's gonna get you."

New

Out in the parking lot, I unlocked my car but tried to open the door of a different car. It's because I am currently driving a rental. I wonder if this kind of thing also happens to newly married people.

Disturbing search engine query of the day

Somebody came here searching for "teabagging the corpse".

Even more disturbing, he / she stayed on for 5 minutes.

I think I'm gonna go hide all my corpses.

Twitter

Fuckit I'm on twitter.

Bought

I just purchased my first stock. It has already gone up by 0.3 points. I am now officially "dabbling in the stock market". I am an investor. I shall attend board meetings and clap like a maniac as Michael Douglas preaches the virtues of being greedy. I will also have live streaming quotes on my computer and install a second monitor on my desk. I shall use this one for doing work. Soon I will be rich, at least, till somebody flies something into something else or a large number of somebodies buy a large number of somethings they can't afford and then have to pay for them.

But that time is not today. Today we shall feast on the finest foods and wine, the best that, let's see, a 100 dollars can buy. No wait, 90 dollars. Actually, it's 80 now. You know what, let's just postpone this celebration for later.

Google auto-suggest for Indians

Link of the day

If, like me, you are prone to frequent bouts of depression due to the existence of religion and its horrible all-pervasive stench that clings to everything that accidentally ventures into its sphere of crapulence, then here is a link for you that will remind you that religion is also the reason why we laugh at all in the first place. It is the fine folks at the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (which appears to be an organization that thinks of itself as a global complaint desk for Hindus), registering their disapproval of the movie Slumdog millionaire. Not to worry, you do not need to have seen the movie (I haven't) in order to fully enjoy this web-based manifestation of their disapproval. By the way, this link is being brought to you via this blog which is also the Exceptional Blog Find of the Day. (via).

In case you are gainfully employed or an employee of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, I will quickly lay out for you the more humorous portions of said disapproval.

1.> Quoted from site : "The film shows that Hindus attacks Muslim area shouting 'They're Muslims, get them'. Jamal's mother was killed by a Hindu after she was hit by a rod on the head. Jamal and his brother Salim ran away after seeing their mother killed. While running they reach a street in which they see a child dressed like Lord Rama. Jamal watches him carefully and sees a bow in his right hand and thinking that he will be killed by the person dressed as Lord Ram, he goes by a different route."

Complaint : This child is guilty of looking "horrible" and has "skeptical facial expressions" that are "denigrating to the religious sentiments of Hindus".

2.> The film shows Hindus killing and burning Muslims.

Complaint : This gives the message that Hindus kill Muslims now and then by attacking in mobs. As we all know, this has never happened in the entire history of Hindu-Muslim violence.

3.> In this film Jamal, a Muslim boy shows kindness to a Hindu girl.

Complaint : Apparently, someone who is vaguely described as "The News", is a confident proponent of the theory that Muslim boys are exclusively in the habit of getting paid to lure Hindu girls and not a single Muslim boy has ever existed, who has shown kindness to a Hindu girl.

4.> The blind beggar character in the movie is a Hindu.

Complaint : Why inflict blindness specifically on a Hindu? Also, why is that Muslim over there shown to have good teeth? And this other Hindu shown to have a bad taste in clothes? And that Muslim to have a pretty smile? And this Hindu to be balding? It's all a giant conspiracy.

5.> The child dressed like Lord Rama is giving blessings with his left hand.

Complaint : Gods never give blessings with their left hands. The reason behind that is Hindu Gods, like Hindu mortals, wash their hindquarters with their left hand and therefore, to give blessings with the same hand would be impolite in the Divine Rulebook of Etiquette. Implying that a Hindu God would show such impropriety as to give blessings with his left hand, especially Lord Rama, who we already know was so well-mannered as to throw his own wife to the dogs at society's behest, would be blasphemy.

By the way, the Hindu Janajagruti website is chock-full of such stuff so I recommend you go peruse it at leisure. For example, this page, where somebody with an old woman / dead poet fetish complains about the painter M F Husain drawing the Hindu Goddesses Laxmi, Saraswati and Durga naked while drawing mother Teresa, mother Husain and the poets Ghalib and Faiz fully clothed.

(Above : Obelix the Gaul and Dogmatix the canine, casting aspersions on the mental acuity of the folks at the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti)

Gated

Apparently Bill Gates unleashed a swarm of biting mosquitoes at a technology conference, in order to create awareness about the deadly nature of malaria in third world countries.

This gives me a great idea on how to spread AIDS awareness in the next technology conference. Why yes, it does involve a swarm of prostitutes armed with used hypodermic needles.

Also, just to clarify, I consider the perpetuation of "Bill Gates released more bugs into the world" or "the conference being abuzz" jokes to be beneath the dignity of this office.

Irony?

The Times of India :

"In a string of tragedies where ironically those hailing from AP met a violent end in the US in the last 15 months, software engineer N Akshay Vishal working with fraud-hit Satyam Computers was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Arkansas on January 13 last."

I don't understand. What's the irony here? Do you ever get the feeling nowadays that people are using "irony" for just about anything they can't remember the correct word for?

Behold

I finally had enough of computer speakers, headphones, graduate era discount stereo systems and movie-based home theater systems. It was time to move on. Time to splurge a bit and experience music as it should be. Behold the purveyor of aural bliss or as I call it, "He that comes in your ear and makes you come too".

(Native Indian warrior Chief Snorting Horse shown for scale, also coming in somebody's ear)

Fashion : You can't just walk it off.

You know, there are a number of things in this life that we take for granted. For example, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let's consider life itself. What if you weren't alive? Have you ever considered that? Aren't you glad to be alive? You might not remember this, but a lot of stuff went into keeping you alive. When you were born, you had to be fed, clothed and kept from eating your own poop. It was a lot of work and goddamn did it suck. But someone did it and now you are alive. Treasure that fact. Do not take it for granted.

And liberty, how about that liberty? What if you were a caged bird? Can you imagine how much your life would suck? Or if you were water in a glass. Wouldn't you miss the time you went babbling through that brook until you were accosted by that dam and siphoned down those pipes?

Or the pursuit of Happiness. Have you considered how fortuitous it is that you are pursuing happiness and not the other way around? You can't run for shit and Happiness would catch up to you mighty quick. I hear she is into leather and spiked stuff.

So, along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I have stopped taking many other things for granted. I treasure most things. Most but not all. One thing I was still taking for granted was the ability to walk. You'd probably say to me, but gawker, what's the big deal about walking, I do it all the time with little or no trouble. And you would say that because you wouldn't have seen the Hindi movie "Fashion". This movie transformed my life. It changed my opinion about walking.

Fashion is about a girl who is a very talented walker. She walks like nobody's business. She is such a good walker that people routinely come up to her and exclaim my, oh my, where did you learn to walk like that? And she says, why, it came to me naturally when I was a baby. She was terrible at crawling. But boy, that baby girl could walk.

So this girl gets recruited by a modeling agency where she puts her walking abilities to good use on the fashion ramp and earns bunches of money. She turns into a supermodel. Her walking makes her famous. Her fame develops walking, nay running abilities of its own and spreads far and wide. People attempt to walk like her but they fail. You can't compete with the expert. No, it takes a tremendous amount of talent to put foot before foot without falling down. Trust me, I tried it myself and within two days, I was clutching at the walls trying to stay awake and upright.

But here's where the movie gets poignant. Here's the part that made me cry. This simple happy girl begins to get arrogant. Her walking goes to her head. She begins to feel she is the greatest walker the world has ever known. She spurns her family, her friends, her co-walkers. She even spurns walking itself and takes to driving. And to cap it all, drinks while she is doing it. Her walking career begins to falter. Her assignments begin to dry up and pretty soon, she turns into what each of us have nightmares about turning into. Just an ordinary person who can walk. This is disastrous to her psyche and she spirals into depression. To drown her sorrow, she starts doing all kinds of crazy stuff like black guys and cocaine until finally, one day, she wakes up, sees herself in the mirror, looks at her heavily mascaraed eyes and says to herself, Lord oh Lord, what have I become? Where are my eyes? No amount of tissue-rubbing can bring her eyes back. And then she realizes it's not just her eyes that she's lost, but her entire perspective on life. She decides to turn into a new leaf.

So she goes back to her family and her friends. The people she should not have discarded like a pair of worn-out socks in the first place. She loses her arrogance. She replaces it with compassion and a tremendous fear of walking. Her friends are extremely supportive. They try to rebuild her walking career by giving her ramp assignments. The very first day of her rejuvenated walking career, she is faced with a dilemma. Should she drown herself into the memory of her failed past or should she welcome the future and walk? Bright spotlights are shining on her. She can hear the audience in the crowd snicker. Too many doubters and too few well-wishers. Will she able to walk? Well, the movie is still a long way off from ending so you are guessing, no. And you are right. She fails in her attempt to walk. She has the pluck to walk, the will to walk, the bones, muscles, tendons and the primal instinct inherited from our hungry foraging ape-like ancestors to walk, but for this troubled woman, that is still not enough. She fails. And that's when you realize you should never take walking for granted.

But our girl, she will not give up. She is a survivor. She plugs on. She accepts another walking assignment and this time, she is going to be the star of the show, what they (supposedly) call in the business, a show-stopper. Expectations are even higher this time. Not only will she have to walk, but do an exceptional job of it. It is crunch time. And then, it is showtime.

It's her time to shine. She is up next. But she still has her doubts. "Can I walk?" she asks herself. After all, I did walk around all day today. And yesterday. And every day of the past twenty or so years. I walked to the grocery, to the laundry, to the bathroom. Once, I even ran, she muses with pride. It's not like I can't walk. But why can't I transfer my walking abilities onto this ramp? She is about to give it a try and then.... and then, disaster strikes. A telephone call. She is notified that one of her friends is dead of a drug overdose. Her legs go limp. And to add to that, it is now time for her to walk onto the ramp. Dimly, through her tears, she hears her friends, colleagues and gay philanthropic fashion designers exhort her to walk. How can they ask of her something so difficult at a traumatic time like this? Whoever's heard of such a thing? Time's running out. She needs to walk now or her walking career is over. She can almost see her legs in an ordinary salwar kameez instead of a micro-mini.

But it is darkest just before the dawn. Just before time runs out, she grits her teeth, pushes the sad away and walks out onstage. The crowd draws a sharp breath. This is the finest act of perambulation that they have ever been witness to. She turns to the camera, poses for it and smiles. She continues to pose and smile. She has walked this far. Now she has to walk back. Will she able to do it?

Of course she will. It's just walking, for fuck's sake. She turns and walks back, turns again, looks at the camera, re assumes her pose, smiles and waits for the other supermodels to join her onstage for the finale. She has done it. She has walked. Her life is finally back on track. She breaks down from exhaustion. She weeps and sways. Her fashion designer holds her close to keep her from falling. And the credits roll.

Walking. It's not just something people do when they have to go somewhere not far enough to use a vehicle. It is difficult and something not to be taken for granted. The next time someone asks you to just walk something off, just reply to them, why don't you just go fuck yourself?

What? II

The NY Post reports (via) that "A US citizen was booted from a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to New York after he complained there were "Arab types" on board".

Three questions spring to mind. Did this guy know that he was on a Turkish Airlines flight? Did he know that he was in Turkey? And did he travel to Turkey for a corneal transplant operation, receive his transplant in the Istanbul airport just before he boarded his plane and then realize, goshdarnit, Turkey was full of Arab types?

This reminds me of the time a friend of mine from India stepped off the plane in New York for the first time in his life and exclaimed, wow there are a lot of foreigners in this country. Actually he didn't really say that but this is a good way to illustrate my point. Also, if he had actually said that, I would probably not have divulged it in a public forum like this for fear of embarrassing him. So since he didn't actually say that, I am comfortable with saying that he did.

What?

God was certainly looking out for all of us.

Actually no, jackass. God's the asshole who convinced that goose to fly into your plane engine. It was the pilot who was looking out for all of you.

HNY

May your new year be filled with happiness and joy and most of it be triggered by good things that happened to you and not somebody else.
May your fridges overflow with and kitchen utensils be forever dipped in leftover food.
May the erroneous payment of a ten dollar bill instead of a dollar bill continue to not bother you all that much.
May your flexible health plan benefits go underutilized.
May your home dwindle in value due to the real estate bust and not because cardboard got cheaper.
May your indoor plants continue to prosper and grow in spite of your presence in their life.
May your doors continue to keep out visitors and windows continue to drown out their cries.
May you age only in body and not in mind if you're a man and do the exact opposite if you're a woman.
May your children continue to disappoint you only to the extent that you've disappointed your own parents.
May your unhealthy self loathing turn into a healthy loathing of another person.
May you continue to find copious amounts of evidence that you are the most important person to have ever dwelled upon this planet.
May your better half and significant other continue to be that in name only.
May your frowns turn upside down, yet your head stay attached to your torso.
May all your bullets find vital organs and your vital organs continue to elude bullets.
May all your friends continue to find the inner strength to suffer your interminable bitching and moaning in silence.
May your hair reverse its lifelong trend of southward migration.
May your hopes and dreams be sufficiently unrealistic for their dashing to cause too much heartache.
May you finally discover your soulmate or at the very least, a credible, constantly refreshed password hack site.

HNY.

Shoe throwing

As an unbiased observer and avid shoe-throwing connoisseur, I have the following advice for participants on both sides of all future shoe-throwing events.

Advice to shoe-throwee : The next time you are at a press conference, somebody throws a shoe at you and you are able to dodge it, plan your next couple of seconds while taking into account the fact that most humans are bipeds and that another shoe will surely be forthcoming.

Advice to shoe-thrower : The next time you throw a shoe at someone, first do a pump fake. That will cause your target's head to dodge reflexively. When it bobs back up, that's when you actually throw your shoe. Also, try not to let your overwhelming hatred for the guy impair your shoe-throwing aim.

That is all.

Video game taunting

There is currently an interesting discussion going on in the amazon.com video gaming forum on the best way to taunt someone whom you've just killed in an online gaming session. Taunting has always been an integral part of sports and gaming both offline and online and methods for doing so have varied. In real life, it is easy to taunt someone. You can just tell the guy that he sucks. Or you could pretend to hold him up in your arms and gently lower him onto your hips in an act of conjugation. Forcing a fellow member of your own gender to envision the scenario of sexual congress with yourself has traditionally been a pretty effective taunting tool for male competitors, both juvenile or otherwise.

However, taunting is much more complicated when you are playing online. I remember when I was an Unreal Tournament fanatic in my youth, I used to derive a lot more satisfaction from the celebration that accompanied the demise of my opponent than his death itself. In UT, taunting was easy. You had a fixed number of pre-programmed verbal taunts that could be applied at the click of a button. Many people favored the "You like that?" taunt, which I personally found a bit grating. Imagine the nerve, asking someone you've just killed if he liked it. Very discourteous. Some people were more blatant with the "Die Bitch" taunt. Again, that was not my style. Too primitive for a thinking man. The only time I employed it myself was when somebody killed me eight times in a row and then finally, I managed to kill him back. It was a good way to release all that pent-up homicidal fury. My favorite taunt in UT was "Neeeext". Now that is an intelligent taunt. Not only does it inform the deceased that a celebration of his demise is under way but that killing him was so bereft of any challenge whatsoever that I was immediately ready for my next victim with no need for respite. In UT, you could also do celebratory dance moves that were similarly pre-programmed into the keyboard. I seldom used them because for one, I suck at dancing even when I am in pixel form and the move is pre-programmed and two, I have been killed too many times while dancing and it is quite a humiliating way to go down.

So what I learnt from the forum discussion is that taunting is a big part of the Call of Duty 4 online experience, which I am currently addicted to. I have never indulged in any taunting in COD4 until now simply because I never knew how to do it and COD4 doesn't have any pre-programmed verbal taunts or dance moves. But apparently it can be done. A popular taunt in COD4 is what's known as "tea-bagging". Now I know what tea-bagging means in real life but I wasn't sure what it entailed in an online pseudo-environment. Fortunately, I was saved from the embarrassment of asking this question by someone else who asked it before I did. The reply was quite detailed and graphically informative.

"There are variations ... but its basically kneeling on top of a corpse's head so your genitals are obviously on his forehead. You can do one long kneel or a quick kneel-stand up motion a couple times to emphasis the tea-bag. I prefer the quick up and down motion ... I get better results. Sometimes it helps to say 'tea-bag - tea-bag - tea- bag' for each kneel down."

A less informative reply that was too cliched to be humorous was, "You fill a cup with hot water then pull out a bag of your favorite bag of tea, then commence on t-bagging." I could "groan" at this reply but that would be cliched as well.

A subsequent poster elaborated on a variation on tea-bagging that he claims to have developed himself in his spare time, which he calls "tuck and twist". It involves "T-Bagging the person whilst spinning in a 360 degree circle". It is an interesting approach and I can see how that would work with the tea-bagger and tea-baggee both spinning together in sweet harmony. I would have tried that one out but spinning makes me dizzy. A third poster brought up the point that he prefers his taunting to be pre-mortem in that he sneaks up on snipers and first humps them in their back before killing them, the advantage of this method being that the deceased is able to replay the entire sequence during the killcam clip (the short animation that plays back the player's death for his benefit).

Now that I've reviewed a bunch of people's taunt sequences, I've come up with one of my own. This is what it's gonna look like. I'm gonna do it to a sniper because I hate snipers and I think it is my duty to periodically remind them of how much they suck. So I sneak up behind a sniper and I sit beside him. Perform a few pushups. Then, when I am ready to see him die, I knife him. Then, I pick up the weapon he just dropped, shoot his corpse with it, fire it in the air till it runs out of bullets, throw it back onto the corpse and finally, yes, I'm gonna go with the flow here, tea-bag the corpse till it weeps in heaven.

I do no favors online.

Commercials

I love that television commercial. The one where the squirrel runs out onto the road chasing a nut and a car is driving up and the squirrel sees it bearing down on it and lets out a panicked human-like yell and then other animals in the vicinity, fearing for the squirrel's well-being start yelling as well, including raccoons, mice, deer, owls and so forth, even a grasshopper whose yell is in the form of a mild buzzing, which is conceptually quite funny. Then the woman in the car, who has a funny face on her begins to scream as well and now everybody is yelling or screaming, except the guy who is driving the car, who looks at his screaming female with some amusement and with a deft turn of the wheel, drives around the screaming squirrel. Apparently, that particular make of car has amazing handling. I effing love that commercial. It is very funny. The problem is, even after watching this commercial a hundred times, I still do not know what brand of car it is promoting. Commercial Win or FAIL?

And then there's the Head-on commercial. It simply consists of a female voice repeating the following sentence three times in quick succession, "Head-on : apply directly to the forehead". On the screen is a picture of a woman applying Head-on directly to her forehead. While she is thus engaged, the caption next to her reads, "Head-on : apply directly to the forehead." The message is unmistakably clear. The product is called Head-on and it should be applied directly to the forehead. Aesthetically, probably the absolute worst commercial of all-time. But as to effectiveness, look at me, I'm writing about Head-on. Definitely commercial Win.

Theory refuted

Researchers in Harvard and UCSD appear to have refuted my law of "conservation of happiness". This theory of mine was a pretty solid one as seen by the fact that it lasted for about two years and required the combined resources of these two academic behemoths for its refutation. What these researchers have now concluded is that contrary to my theory, happiness is not a finite resource and that there exists a perpetual happiness machine which has the ability to generate this emotion continuously without requiring any additional input. This happens through a chain reaction of happiness initiated in one person and subsequently transmitted to other people without any loss of happiness in the emotion-initiator. Although I am a bit miffed that my theory has been invalidated, I am also happy about the fact that happiness is a renewable resource and that mankind need not fear running out of it. And that this happiness of mine will, in turn, generate happiness in other people around me and leave the happiness in me untouched.

In spite of the failure of my theory to withstand scientific scrutiny, in the interests of fairness and good science, I demand that my theory continue to be taught in schools alongside this newer theory in order to allow students to hear both sides of the argument and make up their own minds.

Rusty Gears

gawker : So did you interview the new guy?

colleague : Yes, I did. He's smart.

gawker : Really? What are his qualifications?

colleague : He has a masters degree from UPenn.

gawker : Cool. Masters in what?

colleague : Bayesian.

gawker : Bayesian?

colleague : Bayesian.

gawker : Bayesian probability?

colleague : Yes, Bayesian.

gawker : How will that help him in tech support? Are you sure about this? That he has a masters in......

colleague : Bayesian. Yes.

gawker : Hmmm....Bayesian....strange.

colleague : Yes. Bayesian.

gawker : Masters. In Bayesian. Hmmm.

colleague : Yes...?

gawker (sound of rusty gears creaking into motion) : Oh.....

colleague (waiting) : Yeeees........?

gawker : Goddamn you.

colleague : LOL.

gawker : Thank you for your patience.

colleague : You're welcome.

anomaly

I get the following email from my colleague :

"Gawker....there's something strange about this function in the code....Did you write it?"

I go through the function and it's in a file that I usually stay clear of. So I reply to that effect, saying no, it's probably not mine. Colleague then sends out an email to my boss, asking her if she wrote the function.

A few minutes later, my boss replies, "The comments to the function contain the word 'anomaly'. That's not a word I usually use."

Colleague mails me, "You know what, I don't even know what anomaly means. So I'm sure it isn't my function either."

Sure enough, it turns out to be my function. Now I have been instructed to use the word "anomaly" in the comments of every function I ever write. Digital urine.

joke

So as I was relaxing in the restroom today, I came up with this new joke that I am planning to use at the next Software Developers Stand-up Comedy Convention (or NAMBLA). It goes like this :

"Hey, so what is with memory leaks? If you're not releasing memory, why is it leaking?"

I hope you like it.

If you're a java developer, I warmly welcome your deprecatory comment regarding how this joke would not apply to you since java is free of memory leak issues.

Favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember Matt Taibbi's good old takedown of Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat"
And then I don't feel so bad

(Nostalgia brought on by this)

I like this guy

Here is a guy I admire and respect very much. He's the CEO of AIG, the insurance company that got bailed out by the federal government a few weeks ago. Turns out that the executives of this just-bailed-out-company gathered last week at a posh resort in Phoenix, complete with “cocktail parties, limousines, and dinner out at a top restaurant.” (via ThinkProgress). All this was paid for, presumably, with taxpayer dollars, money that was supposed to be utilized in helping the company back to its feet financially.

But here's why I like and respect this guy so much. When asked on Larry King Live as to why this conference was kept so secretive to the point that AIG instructed the resort not to put up a single sign proclaiming their presence there, he replied that the reason for that was because the company was trying to tighten its budget and therefore, did not wish to waste any money on signs.

Now I am not one to indulge in vulgarities but if you were looking for role models for your testes, your search ends right here. At this man's balls. These magnificent works of art that I respect and admire so much.

Amazon review

Oh you fickle amazon.com review raters, why won't you like my review? Only three out of four of you found my latest review useful. What about you, fourth rater-guy? In what way did my review displease you? Did I not say enough times that the game I was reviewing was awesome? Did I not inform you that the weapons were awesome? I even touched upon the awesomeness of the maps and how the atmosphere of the game was awesome and how the dualshock 3 controller added even more awesome to the pre-existing awesome of the game. And finally, just so as not to leave you wondering, hmm, I wonder if this reviewer thought this game was awesome, I even titled my review, "AWESOME!!!!".

So how come you didn't find my review awesome? You must be hard to please, little man.

So I was going through my old amazon.com reviews that I appear to have written about eight years ago and I was shocked at the quality of my writing. It turns out that there was a time when not only did I spell the word "rocks" as "rox" and "sucks" as "sux", but I even flaunted those usages in public. Also, I appear at that point in my life to have subscribed to the mindset that typing "r" instead of " are", "u" instead of "you", "wud" instead of "would", "cud" instead of "could, "wot" instead of "what" and "mebbe" instead of the word "maybe" could result in tremendous time savings. Additionally, it is also clear that I used to belong to the Sarah Palin line of thinking which heartily recommends getting rid of the "g" at the end of every progressive verb, thus leading to a number of "freakin"s, "makin"s and "killin"s in my writing. You know, I am now thinking that my decision to remain oblivious of this blogging business right upto the crack of 2005 was probably a good one on my part.

Back to the 80s

Fix his car

Fix his car, Philly. You flipped it over. Remember, every flipped car you fix today will allow you to guiltlessly flip another car tomorrow. Think of the future of car-flipping.

High

I don't know how long this high is gonna last but it feels good. Damn good. I feel my stress lowering to pre-George Bush levels.

I also think it is now time for the Philadelphia Eagles to do something.

California

What is up with you California? I thought you had more brains than this. Have you been hanging around the wrong kids again?

Be gone

You might think I am overdoing it, but I am deadly serious. I never ever want to see Sarah Palin again. Not on tv. Not on the internet as a picture or a smileyface. Not even in the sky as a cloud resembling her bangs. I do not want her name to be uttered in anecdote or joke form, at least while I am in the vicinity. If you wish to refer to her aloud in conversation, you would do well to code it in a manner such that I fail to interpret it to be her name. Using piglatin, spelling it out incorrectly or using sign language is highly recommended. I want each and every pair of Sarah Palin eyeglasses in each and every novelty store destroyed and the store disinfected with heavy duty bleach. I want you to start using the letter "g" at the end of every progressive verb and stop winking into the camera, were you to find yourself in such a situation. When I type in "Sarah Palin" into Google, I want to see zero search results and Google to ask me, "Did you mean Saree Wearing". Towards that end, this post has been programmed to self-destruct in 3...2.....1.

*gone*

Al Franken update

Al Franken is a mere 2,000 votes behind with 90% votes counted. It's still a race.

The Onion

...did not waste a minute.

Continued

Al Franken is still in the race. With 80% reporting, he is only 5000 votes behind. I hope he wins. I am really rooting for him. Both these blogs probably owe their existence to Al Franken. And that's not just the vodka talking.

It's a beautiful day

I deleted this post. It didn't sound right. If you're quick, it might still be in the feed somewhere. Stupid vodka.

Viva La Revolucion.

Election Night

7:47 : So to recap what's been happening till now, McCain has swallowed up Kentucky. Vermont, sweet sweet Vermont has acquiesced to being tenderly spooned by Obama. Obama supporters are gathering in Chicago in anticipation of the giant cataclysmic orgasm that he has promised them tonight. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer already shuddered to a satisfying climax when the brand new CNN gadget allowed a field reporter to be holographically beamed into the studio.

McCain is leading in Indiana 51 to 48 but the blue areas of the state haven't been counted yet. Obama is leading massively in Florida 58 to 42 with 11% counted.

7:57 : South Carolina goes to McCain.

7:59 : New England (except New Hampshire and Rhode Island), Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and DC have been called for Obama. Oklahoma and Tennessee go to McCain.

8:07 : Obama is killing in Orlando, FL. I guess Donald Duck hates America.

I hadn't planned on live blogging tonight but there is little else to do during Wolf Blitzer's bathroom breaks.

8:10 : Obama is leading 60% to 40% in North Carolina with 4% counted. These numbers don't mean shit. But I just saw them on tv.

8:18 : Florida is closing up with 30% counted. Obama leads 53 to 47.

8:20 : Eh? Apparently ABC, NBC and MSNBC have already called Pennsylvania for Obama. Does this mean I won't get drunk tonight?

8:24 : Philly mayor Nutter is leaning out of his car moonroof, saying tonight is historic. PA really appears to be decided for Obama.

8:29 : My old hood, lovely New Hampshire has been called for Obama. Sen. McCain has reportedly opened his first bottle of Xanax.

Call this a hunch but I think this is going to be a landslide. But don't quote me on that.

8:37 : Obama maintains lead in Florida and North Carolina. CNN is calling Pennsylvania for Obama now. I am proud of my state. Chicago is beginning to smell blood.

8:43 : They are showing McCain headquarters. Some old guy just began to sing on stage. He doesn't look familiar. Must be one of them country music boys.

8:46 : McCain's senior campaign advisor just gave what appeared to be a concession speech on NBC.

8:49 : Obama is still ahead in Florida 52 to 48. I failed to note how much had been counted. I would have made a horrible reporter.

8:53 : I don't know if this means anything to ya'll but Republican Elizabeth Dole has been defeated in her race for the North Carolina senatorial seat. The reason this is significant is because Dole ran a campaign accusing her opponent, Democrat Kay Hagan of being "Godless" and hobnobbing with "atheists". And she lost. In North Carolina.

8:56 : The Republican campaign manager in Delaware county, PA is refusing to believe PA is lost for McCain. He wishes to wait for more numbers to come in. I applaud his optimism and wish him a safe ride to his home, where he is no doubt expecting to find a beautiful woman waiting for him in bed who will turn out to be a heiress to a billion dollar fortune, none of which was invested in Wall Street.

9:01 : CNN calls New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Rhode Island for Obama.

9:03 : Obama leads McCain 174 to 49. 270 Gives you the presidency.

9:05 : Obama supporters gathered in Chicago have now begun to shed various articles of attire and dance in a sensual suggestive manner in preparation for the massive orgy of hedonistic celebration that is expected to commence in a few hours.

9:08 : Arkansas goes to McCain. No word yet on whether McCain has accepted it.

9:10 : Alabama walks over and joins Arkansas on the McCain side. Sen. McCain pretends not to notice. It's about time, he grumbles under his breath.

9:12 : Georgia goes to McCain. Indiana has remained steady with McCain leading Obama 52 to 48 with 60% counted. Not sure if Indy and Gary votes have been accounted for yet. Florida looks like it is going to Obama with 50% counted already. If Florida goes to Barack, the night is over.

9:18 : New Hampshire gets a democratic governor. So does Nevada.

9:21 : Don't know how I missed Michigan. Okay let's do this again. Michigan goes for Obama.

9:22 : Obama is leading majorly in Ohio. Also in Antarctica. And the planet Zocon.

9:24 : Over at McCain headquarters, Hank Williams is singing a song without a melody. Wolf Blitzer just walked off claiming to have a major projection for us when we return after the break. This could be it.

9:27 : McCain's campaign advisor is blaming everything on the Republican party. And you can too. Go ahead, compile a list of all your recent transgressions and blame them all on the GOP.

9:33 : Ohio goes to Obama. It is over. America will have its first black President ever. This blog is now calling the election for President-Elect Barack Obama.

9:35 : Virginia is closing up 50 to 50. I guess Fake Virginia votes are now coming in. This is gonna be a washout.

9:40 : CNN's John King is now picking random states, trying to find a way for McCain to still win this election. Don't bother, John.

9:42 : John King admitted defeat. He could only muster up 259 electoral votes. He then exhorted people on the West Coast to go out there and vote vote vote *cough* for McCain *cough* so as to keep this circus going till the crack of dawn.

9:46 : I am going to Fox News with a cup in which I shall gather Brit Hume's tears.

9:52 : New Mexico. Obama. Muchas gracias amigos.

Dinner Break. Back in 10.

10:20 : Iowa Obama. Texas McCain.

10:22 : Democrat Al Franken is leading Republican Norm Coleman 44 to 39 in Minnesota for the senatorial seat. The reason for my interest in this particular race is because Al Franken is the guy who first piqued my interest in US politics through his excellent book "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them". It's a really great funny book. I'm not lying. I hope he wins.

10:29 : Turns out white people like Obama. Perhaps they like me too.

10:32 : Obama is still leading in Florida with 72% counted. I think once he is done with being president he could move down there and rule as an Afro-Jewish warlord.

10:39 : Things have quieted down a bit in the CNN newsroom, allowing John King some leisure time to play with his high-tech gizmos. Campbell Brown looks on approvingly.

10:42 : Karl Rove's flesh folds are on Fox News right now. Not sure what they are saying.

10:58 :Virginia goes to Obama. This is historic. This is huge.

10:59 : CNN projects President Barack Obama.

Good job people. You deserve it.

And by you, I mean John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Time now to go and gloat on the right wing blogs.

Over and out.

11:25 : Alright I am back.

11:26 : McCain is giving his concession speech. Says, "I don't know what I could have done to run a better campaign." Hmm...let me count the number of ways....

11:27 : Is it me or is Cindy McCain totally color blind?

11:28 : Bye bye Sarah Palin. You were a nice little footnote in American history. A great diversion, thankfully short-lived. Hopefully we will never hear from you ever again.

Four years ago, as I was watching the proceedings of the 2004 Democratic convention, this skinny black guy no one knew walked up to the podium and delivered the keynote address. I did not know who this guy was but boy, did he grab me with his words, style and demeanour. The moment his speech ended, I turned to my wife and said to her, "Listen to me wife and listen to me good for what I say to you is the truth and nothing but. This man is going to be the next president of the US". True story.

11:47 : McCain was gracious in his concession. But it didn't fly with me. Hopefully Obama is a better man than I am. Now we are waiting for Obama to speak.

11:51 : Throngs of people have gathered outside the White House. Perhaps many of them are under the impression that Barack will be moving in today itself. Someone in the White House is feeling mighty unloved.

11:57 : President-Elect Barack Obama is on stage. We are officially in the future.

12:08 : Obama : "I will listen to you, especially when we disagree."

And so it begins.

What will it be?

Viva La Revolucion or Viva Viagra?

If we are lucky, we will know in 5 hours.

Do not vote

I have never really grasped this popular concept that the act of "voting" is noble in itself. Come election season, people keep telling each other to go out there and vote, no matter who they vote for. In fact, I just saw Obama do that. He went on the tv and asked viewers to make sure that they vote tomorrow, even if it was for McCain. Why would Obama say that? How would somebody voting for McCain be good for Obama? When he is out campaigning, Obama asks people to vote for him. But those are just his supporters. Shouldn't he also reach out to the other side of the aisle and tell McCain supporters that it would be best if they just stayed home?

The fact is, voting is highly overrated. Voting has been put up on a pedestal. Everybody runs around saying voting is good for democracy. I say fuck democracy, voting is only good if it is serving the country and its people. And the country and its people would be best served if only those who were about to vote for the better candidate did so while everybody else stayed home and played monopoly. Just like cholesterol, there is good voting and bad voting. The purpose of voting is to elect the better candidate. If everybody voted, including supporters of the crappy candidate, how would that be beneficial for the country?

Saying that everybody voting in an election is good for the country is like having two guys in a toilet, one taking dumps at regular intervals, the other flushing away the mess and telling both of them they are doing a wonderful job and to keep at it because it is this combination of shitting and flushing that is keeping the democracy of the toilet in a state of vibrancy. But really, let's be honest here, the shitter's not helping at all. He's just an impediment to the general hygiene of the toilet. In fact, it would be better for everybody concerned if the shitter were to quit shitting so that the flusher could be of any benefit to society by returning the toilet to its state of turdless equilibrium.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you are a McCain supporter and you are thinking of voting for John McCain just because you feel obligated to do so, because you feel it is your duty as a responsible citizen to vote, then please don't. You'll only be causing grievous harm to the process. Don't listen to those jackasses who are trying to emotionally blackmail you into voting. Trust me, you would be performing a huge service for your country if you did not vote. I would also say that people like me who are not eligible to vote should do their bit by trying to dissuade their friends from voting who they know are gonna vote for John McCain.

Tomorrow's an important day. If you are a resident of the US and if you are a McCain supporter, please do your part and stay home. And if you are an Obama supporter, keep as many McCain supporters from voting as you can. That is what the founding fathers would have wanted you to do. To hell with democracy. Democracy gave us George W. Bush. Let's try something different this time.