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.