Saturday, August 16, 2008

Basic Instinct

As a race, we have always take things a little too far. Haven't believed in moderation. During the industrial revolution we worked the workers to death, which eventually led to Karl Marx having a field day. During renaissance we thought our brains out, which eventually led to grotesqueries that we are forced to acknowledge as pieces of art for fear of ridicule. During the writing of this post I was completely incapable of coming up with a third important period in history, which eventually led to the formation of this banal sentence.

As I said, extremes. With time, we have sunk lower into this nadir. It has never been truer than in this century. Green Peace activists have taken the red out of red meat, while at the same time we have dumped so much of our filth that mother nature might as well give up on us tomorrow. Why? At least let me enjoy my meat without making me think of the torture that the animal to which the shoulder on my table belonged to underwent. There is not much to look up to, is there?

They say the night is always darkest before the dawn. Things are at their worst before they get better. Just when we thought things could only get better, they give us hybrid cars. Really. Hybrid cars! Human ingenuity or human stupidity? Cars. It was the only constant in our lives. No matter what the world went through, there was always the comforting thought that a couple of hammer strokes in the right places would always get the car started. We did not have to depend on the bloke with a laptop to tell us what was wrong with our throttle response (This line, of course, is a complete rip-off of Neela's in the movie Tokyo Drift).

I remember the days when even the slightest of engine misfires told me if it was the fuel line, suspended matter in the fuel, spark plug, or distributor cap that was the culprit. Today it could be regenerative braking, battery (Yes, battery! Imagine that.), MPFI, Engine Management System or any or all of a host of other factors that we previously thought could only occur in the Star Trek universe. If I wanted to be bothered with all that I would call Captain Kirk. If I want a car, do not saddle me with a computer.

There was a time when if you could afford to buy a car you could not be bothered about the fuel prices. Those were simpler times, freer times. You could buy a Lincoln that did 8 miles to a gallon because, heck, you were rich enough to buy a car. Cars were never meant for anyone other than the rich. That is why we have public transport. That is why I love the Ferraris and the Lamborghinis. They have stuck to the basics while all around them have lost theirs.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

How to write a blog post

Ask not what a blog post can do for you. Ask what you can do for a blog post. No, not for the altruistic reasons of working for a bigger cause (all that is humbug) but for the obviousness of it being insanely simpler to answer the latter. You can do nothing for a blog post, save for creating it. Then again, human beings have been making babies for eons and look at where that has brought us.

Before purists start to frown (do purists ever not frown?), it should be stated that this blog is not a 10 step guide to Nirvana. The Buddhists have the 8-fold path, the Jains have the 4-fold path. This needs verification - since this blog cannot be prosecuted, I am not going to spend my energy checking facts. That reminds me of this statement made in the US Senate about the right to be entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts, which is a complete load of bull since it violates my fundamental right as a being on this planet to be entitled to whatever the hell I want to be entitled to, not to mention how much more colourful life could be if we all had different definitions for, say, the colour red.

That brings us to the subject of stilettos. <Trinity impression begins> No? Let me tell you what I believe. I believe that my blog means more to me than it does to you. I believe if you are really serious about deciphering it, you are going to need my help. And since I am the author of this blog, if you don't like it I believe you can go to hell. Because you are not going anywhere else <Trinity impression ends>. Stilettos are such fine creations, exceeded in fineness only by the fine legs that go into them. Speaking of fine legs, I have not seen a pair finer than those belonging to the sassy Stacy Keibler.

We should pause here to note the sickness of the jibe made by whoever it was who chose to coin the word ‘lisp’ to describe the condition that lisp describes. Now that it has been noted, we can choose to move on. Only, I prefer being here. Why move on when you can be perfectly happy not moving on? Besides, if Einstein was right (and I would like to think that he was – not for any good that this may bring to mankind but to avoid the disaster its falsehood can cause, a case in point being all nuclear reactors suddenly deciding to shove E=mC2 right up Einstein’s backside turning this planet into one giant fireball (on second thoughts, that may be fun)) no matter how far you travel you would end up where you started. Perhaps that is why all political speeches never seem to get anywhere.

It is not all bad. Aside from the obvious plus of no one ever needing to listen to speeches (which, by the way, does not need an Einstein to point out) there is also the comforting relief that one part of this world is always going to get rich by sucking on the other part, or for that matter, one part of this world is always going to make the other part read their blog posts by suckering them into it, evolution my fine tight ass!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Of Die Hard and Romanticism

Being a man of strong opinions, I have been accused of many things. Never before, though, have I been accused of ‘pulling off a Scripto’ or something to that effect.

For the uninitiated, ‘Scripto’ is a term of supreme endearment that my favourite blog reader addresses me with. Whether the endearment ends there I shall never know – I would be shattered if it did. Thus I choose to live in my ignorant bliss.

I have been a die-hard romantic, strictly in the sense of John McClain who simply refuses to die however hard the situation may be. I take pride in my romanticism being as it is a disappearing trait indeed in these days of T20 cricket, not that I have anything against or for this brand of the sport. At any rate, I refuse to partake in an argument that has many takers. I root for the underdog, always have, always will.

Instead let us examine the psychological effects of a nude painting of Lalitha Pawar on adolescent boys. This is a thin line to walk. Aside from bordering child molestation, it verily crosses into the territory of human rights abuse. I do not know what is more horrifying – subjecting under-age boys to the anguish or having the imagination to conjure up such a scenario.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Gabbar, Thakur, and the rest of them

"How many men were they?"
"Two, chief."
"Hmm... They were two. You were three. Despite that you are back. What did you think? Chief will be happy? Will slap your backs? Sons of swines!!!"

Sadly, this is what my posts have been reduced to - making impressions of classic, immortalised dialogues of the holy grail of Indian cinema, Sholay. That is not to say that it has not been done in the past. In fact, that is what makes it such a nadir of creativity. When your brain cells are completely dead, you turn to Sholay.

Self-loathing aside, what made me allocate some disk space to Sholay on my blog was this bolt of enlightenment I was hit by a couple of nights ago after some frenzied sexual activity. Well, yours truly is now a married man. And that means he has the social licence to do it whenever, wherever though, unfortunately, not whoever. Ah, the vagaries and travails of life!

Driving the point home, or at least making an exercise in slipping to the abyss of writing by using phrases as hackneyed as this, the question to ask is whether Gabbar really cut off Thakur's hands. I know in the movie they show us he did. But then, they show a lot of things in the movies. We can't go around believing everything we see on celluloid, can we? What if Gabbar did not cut off Thakur's hands? Does that not leave a new line open for alternate thought?

Picture this. Gabbar has Thakur by his balls, not literally of course. The only way out is for Thakur to give Gabbar a handjob, literally of course. Thakur, like any man facing a life and death situation does what any man facing a life and death situation would do. It was not the handjob that was disgusting. It was the aftermath of it. Not everyone is smart enough to use as hair gel a body fluid that has had no precedent of being used this way before Cameron Diaz. The fluid spills over Thakur's hands. And Thakur was so grossed out by it that he could never bring himself to use his hands again. Ever.

Now, that sounds like a logical explanation.