The Goose Egg Fantasy Football league

Should I do it? Would anyone be interested? Let me know by a show of hands.

Irregardless

Not a word. Deal with it.

Man servant

Let's say that as I go about my daily routine of being valuable to the world, some guy I didn't know from Adam were to approach me and say to me, hello gawker, how is it going, I heard the good news about your PS3 and your TV, and by the way, for some unfathomable reason, I would like to be your man servant for the duration of your lifetime and so, please to let me know what you would like me to do.

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.

Dear China

Dear Chinese Olympics Organizers,

You are fucking assholes. Kindly take your games and shove em up your ass.

Regards,
g

Please Desist

On this issue of Please Desist, I hereby request the public to please desist from generating any more wisecracks having the following format :

"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 partially endorses Circuit City who have agreed to replace my big screen tv that was struck down by an act of God who, honestly, is kind of a douchebag. The second half of my endorsement will take effect once the replacement television set is actually on my property.

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.

(via FailBlog)

Okay, God

Okay God, I get the message. You do not approve of me playing the PS3 or watching Blu-ray movies on my 55 inch HD TV or blogging about playing the PS3 and / or watching Blu-ray movies on my 55 inch HD TV. But seriously, oh Shepherd of Mankind, was it really necessary to convey your disapproval of my activities through the delivery of a monster thunderstorm that would generate a power surge gigantic enough to knock out my PS3, 55 inch HD tv and computer? Even when they were turned off? Seems like you really overdid it there, oh Savior of the Weak. Were you entertaining feminine company in your heavenly bachelor pad, the courtship of whom necessitated a show of brute machismo for establishing your manly credentials? Well, in that case, I understand.

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.

Cave Creek Chili Beer

I think I finally found my beer. It is called Cave Creek Chili Beer. It combines the two loves of my life which are beer and spice. This is a spicy beer. I mean, it is actually spicy as in chili hot. The beer bottle itself contains a chili pepper hanging around in the beer like a drunken worm. I love the taste of this beer. Many a times have I wondered how to get drunk and satisfy the spice sensors on my tongue, both at the same time. I tried downing tequila shots followed by a spoonful of Andhra style hot lime pickle, but it did not hit the spot as I had hoped. Something seemed to be amiss. But when I drank this beer, the spot that had not been previously hit was not just hit, but blown into shreds. This beer helped me achieve my objective of getting spicily drunk. I like this beer and if you are Indian, Mexican or ancient Incan, you will like this beer too. The evil snobs at Ratebeer.com appear to think that it is a cruel joke perpetrated on the beer loving community by the Mexican mafia and are quite vehement in their criticism of this product. One guy even noted that the beer bottle contains "some sediment, perhaps dirt and chili pepper particles". I am sure the same guy would waste no time in praising a Belgian manufactured beer as "being earthy", and since we know that the earth is mostly composed of dirt and chili pepper particles, it would be a classic example of double standards.

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.

Gay

You know, oftentimes it so happens that even though you might be extremely liberal in your social outlook and of the opinion that whatever people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms should be no one's business but theirs and of anyone else watching their archival footage, and even though you are all for homosexuals being treated like everybody else and being given their due rights, still, when you encounter somebody whose last name is "Gay", you cannot help but wonder and desperately hope that somehow, could this set of circumstances possibly lead to a humorous turn of events?

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 :

Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.

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.

So I guess that is it. Your wish for some guy named "Gay" to have something funny happen to him has finally been fulfilled. You may move on with your life now and look for funny elsewhere. I know I will.

comment

Quite possibly the best comment I have ever received on this blog. An alternative explanation of "maadi" from an anonymous commenter :

"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."

Maadi

My sister, while signing off from an email conversation, called me a maadi. I am aware that in marathi, this word translates to "child-bearing female". Hopefully it means something else in Bangalore.

Bragging

I think I am getting too vain about my biking prowess. Last weekend I did the Schuylkill trail again and it left me overflowing with vanity. Luckily for me, I was able to release some of this vanity into the atmosphere by bragging about it to my friend zambezi who unfortunately for him, called me when I had just completed the trail and was scarfing sambal shrimp in Penang. But there was still some amount of residual vanity left because the call ended prematurely before all the vanity had a chance to be vented. The disposal of this residual vanity had to wait a couple of days.

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.

MGS4

I want. Somebody give. Vishnu will bless.

Wikimulch

Sometimes I wish the wikipedia didn't exist. Blogs would be so much more interactive than what they are now if wikipedia did not exist. Let me give you an example. Mulch. I see mulch everywhere. Wherever I see flowers, I see mulch. Wherever I see ardently landscaped trees, I see mulch. Where grass is lacking, I see mulch. But what is mulch? From personal experience, I have this much to relate. Mulch is a soup of rotten tree parts, cut into bite sized pieces for convenient consumption. That is mulch. So now I know what mulch is. But what is mulch for? Where is the place of mulch in the soup of life? Is mulch the carrots? Is mulch the peas? The broth? Or is mulch those chunks of nicely tenderized human flesh floating ever so squeamishly?

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.

Helpful replies

On the Amazon.com COD4 forum, some guy with a considerable amount of wishful in his thinking, asked the question,

"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.

End

Fuck, it's only 1:43 pm?
Fuck, it's only thursday?
Fuck, I'm only 32?

When will it end?

Another Garden update

Lately, I have been taking an active interest in my garden. With the appearance of daylight and decent atmospheric conditions here in the mid-Atlantic, various things have begun to sprout and grow. The funny thing is that all throughout winter, not a single thing that is currently growing was visible. It's as if plants hibernate underground during winter just like fish and women.

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.

Is everybody asleep?

How come in my absence, I did not receive a single request to blog, if for the only reason that it would be the first step towards taking towelguy off the main screen? It appears to me that all you people must be closet towelguy fans. Anyways here's to the few among you who did wish for towelguy to be removed, but were hesitant to openly request it due to peer pressure.

Bye bye towelguy, your moment in the limelight is over.

Towelguy

Dear Bollywood,
???

Eagerly awaiting your reply,
Sincerely,
gawker.


(link)

Garden Update

My deck gave birth to a litter of cilantro plants yesterday. I must tell you, cilantro babies don't look like cilantro adults at all. When they come into this world, they are all like two tiny leaves and one tiny stem and they are barely green and so helpless, they don't even wave when you blow wind in their face. But when you pluck off those tiny leaves and taste them, you can feel the cilantro spirit not yet surging, but definitely germinating inside them.

They took a long time waking up. I first planted them in an old pot, a pot full of dirt left over from the previous owner. I called up my mother and told her, "Hello mother, prepare, for once, to be proud of your son for he is now helping the world meet its food-production needs."

My mother said, "what are you food-producing?"

I said, "Cilantro, mother, cilantro." I come from a family of cilantro fanboys. "Are you excited for me?"

My mother replied, "Yes, yes, I am excited. Did you break the seeds before planting them?"

I allowed a stunned silence to elapse for about a minute and a half.

"Break the seeds? Why?"

"Well, you have to kind of break coriander seeds before you plant them in the dirt."

"Okay mother, I will talk to you later." I had not broken the seeds.

I went and prepared an additional pot for cilantro-planting. Again, an old existing pot. This time I broke the seeds. Alright, that should appease the fussy Cilantro Deity.

But it didn't. I waited and waited some more. It didn't help that the weather suddenly turned cold. A week went by. Not a lot happened. I did improve my COD4 rank from 41 to 51 but that's another story which I could narrate again if you were to so desire.

I decided that it was the old dirt that was the root of the infertility. So I went and bought a fresh bag of dirt from the grocery. My suspicions were confirmed. The dirt manual told me that dirt only lasts for three months or so. Dirt comes with a manual. Long live Western Society. So I went and prepared a third pot for cilantro plantation with all the new dirt I had just purchased. I broke the seeds, used new dirt and watered the pot. Conditions couldn't get any more perfect than this. And then I waited.

And waited some more.

And finally, just as I was about to give up my agricultural dreams, two of my pots went into labor. It happened while I was at work so I couldn't share in the joyous moment but when I came home in the evening, I saw the cilantro babies and it was one of my proudest moments since the time I achieved rank 52 in COD4, but that's a different story.

The funny thing is, the two pots that first gave birth were full of old dirt, including the one with the unbroken seeds. I appear to be breaking new ground in cilantro cultivation technology.

Secondly, I have also planted tomatoes. No progress there. Tomatoes fussier than cilantro. Also, experience has now taught me that a farmer needs to be patient with his crop.

The other day, an Indian kid, claiming to be one of my neighbors, came by and offered to mow my lawn. "Really, does it need mowing," I asked him. I could barely see him through the grass so I asked him to shoot a flare so I could find him.

He answered yes, that in his professional opinion, my grass did indeed require mowing. I haven't been able to start my mower yet. I think it needs gas and I am waiting for the war to end for gas to become affordable again. So I said wokay, son, please do the needful. As I was watching him work on my lawn, he noticed that I was looking at my plants with pride and said to me," You know those are all weeds, don't you?", and he pointed towards basically everything in my garden.

The news stunned me. For a number of days, I had been watering those plants with love and water. I felt betrayed, like a prison guard who's discovered that the convict he took under his wing was actually stealing money from him. I was unconvinced.

"Are you sure? Is this a weed?", I asked, pointing to a small pretty yellow flower, a lot of which were scattered throughout my lawn.

"Yes", said the kid.

"What about this one", I said, indicating the tall thing with the crown of white things that disintegrate and blow away when you blow on it.

"Yes, that one is the worst", replied Dr. Greenthumb.

"Okay", I said with resignation. I had weeds.

The kid offered to rip them up for me but I declined the offer. They were my weeds. I had raised them and I would put them to sleep. So I bent down, began to uproot those ungrateful suckers and arranged them in a big pile.

"That is not a weed. It's actually a tulip", said the kid who was still hanging around like some kind of tomato fungus. I handed him the tulip root I had just pulled out of the ground and told him, "Okay, YOU do the weeds. I will be inside playing COD4."

I am ranked 53 now, but that is another story.