The Unbearable Stench Days

Excuse the title; I just didn't want it to be blank. There is a reason, of course, for the title. Wet clothes. It's that time again. Monsoon season. The season I wish gives me a clothes dryer when it arrives.

It seems there's been an unanimous decision to put clothes to dry in my room. I wouldn't mind if they actually dried, but fact is, they don't. Not even after 24 hours. So I end up smelling that oh so unique smell only wet clothes can bring to the nose, all day long.

Practical exams have begun, done with two of the three. Thanks to some bad decisions by a friend, I was stranded right in the middle of this huge 4-way intersection called Kathipara junction, in the rain, with no umbrella, wearing my favourite pair of pants, with dozens of vehicles splashing water on me and aforementioned friend, while returning home after one of the practical exams. It was fun till I caught a cold.

I hoped to come up with a new design before posting, but all my creativity (if I had any) seems to have oozed out. I think I might settle for one of those flashy templates in Blogger Beta.

Catch-22: Maturity (of the mind)

To judge/compare the level of maturity of those around you, you need to be matured.
Then again, if you start comparing the level of maturity of others with respect to yourself, you're being immature.

The whole thing is a farce.

...

I've done it. My archives now have a month missing. And I have nothing to show for it. Except this picture of Edward Norton punching himself:



I'll be back when I learn to write.

Killer Potatoes

These:

Add revolving text, and you have the Laughing Man.

Eating them creeps me out. You're biting into one, and it smiles back at you, as if enjoying your teeth mashing it (which is a bit odd, considering they're already mashed). Elijah Wood in Sin City, that's what these are. At least they don't squirt blood. I don't want my food to have a face. There's a reason I'm vegetarian.

In other news, I don't seem to have any luck with wireless keyboards. Using the On-Screen Keyboard. Again.

You Still Here? (Or Desires of the Heart redux)

Despite popular belief, I haven't killed this blog. Not yet, anyway. Exams got over early this month, and I've gone back to being my usual slacker self. But I didn't want to see a month missing from the archives, so here's a totally uncreative post, rehashing a list I made a year and a half back (which was called 'Desires of the Heart', and can be found here if you're interested).

It occurred to me that some of my 'desires' listed out there have been, well, satisfied. Going by the list, I wanted (in reverse, other than #9 and #10):

8. A violin. Any violin.

Well, I didn't get a violin. Didn't buy one for probably the same reason as to why Ian Anderson didn't get one in exchange for his guitar (a Fender Stratocaster, which he got from Lemmy, of Motorhead); those things don't have frets. He bought a flute instead, and I, like a wannabe rock star (which I'm not), got a guitar.

7. The best keyboard(music) ever to hit the market.

Gah, I didn't get one. I've nearly destroyed my current keyboard. Need to place it at a particular angle for it to work, and makes weird noises if multiple keys are pressed. Makes me wonder if My Bloody Valentine had a similar problem with their synthesizers.

6. A Wi-Fi enabled notebook computer for obvious reasons.

Ok, that's three consecutive things I haven't got.

5. A high resolution digital still camera, Bluetooth enabled.

Finally, something I got. Except for the Bluetooth part. I got a Cyber-shot DSC T7 (yes, that uber slim thing), with which I took most of the photos lying around this blog.

4. The best portable pocket-sized MP3 player.

I can't exactly call it the best, but it's pocket-sized, and can store 21 albums at a time. My Creative MuVo player also has FM and recording abilities, neither of which I've found myself using. Except for that one time when I recorded different people saying bad (but funny) things about other people who said bad (but funny) things about them, but that was an accident. Honest.

3. A reasonably fast broadband internet connection.

I got a reasonably fast broadband internet connection. Unlimited downloads between 9 pm and 8 am, too.

2. The best 128 MB AGP card money can buy.

Well, it used to be the best when it first came out... A GeForce 6800. Ok, so it's a GeForce 6800 LE. Big deal. It's still fabulous to the core, apart from the fact that the computer keeps crashing every now and then when playing graphic intensive games.

And, numero uno:
To get out of my college's hostel.

YIPPIE-KI-YAY! I got OUT! And I'm staying out, forever and ever and ever... Two more years of college to go, and I don't have to go from that wretched asylum.

The Beatles of Thrash Metal!

Ever wondered how it would sound if Metallica did their own versions of Beatles' songs? Ever wanted good ol' James Hetfield to sing/growl A Hard Day's Night? Well, you can experience something similar if you listen to Beatallica. They reek with awesomeness. And I hardly listen to Metal.

The Beatles would've rocked harder if they had tried Thrash Metal.

One last "Woo-hoo!" from the Human

I'm here. Wonders never seem to cease.



I'm still here. Terribly dehydrated, but still here.

I'm gonna hate May. I already hate April. It's hard not to. Hottest weather, elections and exams. The same in May. Imagine walking towards your home, under a blazing sun, sweating profusely. A group of five people, also sweating, start following you. Then you realize that they're not following you, but they're headed to the same place as you are. You wonder why. You've never seen them before. Once you reach your abode, they shove pamphlets in your hands, wet with sweat. Smells different. "Vote for Udhaya suriyan*!", they shout. You stare blankly. They say it again. You're tempted to show them the finger, but nod instead. Bullies.

* - Udhaya suriyan translates to 'Rising Sun', I think. It's what the DMK party like to call themselves, in case you didn't know. Comes from their logo.

Numb, the mind has become.

The desire to be entertained has become stronger than ever. Strong enough to prevent me from doing anything else but seek entertainment. All I've been doing for the past few week(end)s is play video games, watch movies and listen to music. Thanks to my mum.

What does my mother have to do this, you ask? Well, she returned from her trip early this month. And with her came a GeForce 6800LE AGP card, a 7-speaker home theatre system (which supports a whole lotta formats, including DivX), a Sony Ericsson W800i mobile phone, a 2.1 speaker system for the computer, and an awesome pair of headphones for my mp3 player. So every weekend I'm home, I try to make the maximum possible use of the above, except the phone and headphones. Hell, I endured a Star Wars and Godfather movie marathon yesterday and today. And enjoyed watching Baraka on the TV instead of a 15-inch monitor the week before. Borrowed games that I couldn't play before due to an old GeForce 2 video card.

When I'm away at the hostel for the rest of the week, I'm thinking about what movies I should watch when I get back home, while playing Yeti Sports on my phone and listening to songs in shuffle mode on my player. When I'm not in College, that is. There I'm trying to convince friends that Yeti Sports is bad for health and trying to get my phone back from them.

And that's why you aren't reading an entry about why it's really stupid idea to make a short film for the first time in your life in one friggin' day. Or an entry about how I lost a bag full of clothes, a phone recharge card worth Rs. 330 and my room keys. Consider yourselves lucky. And be fooled into thinking that this is a whole new design when it's just a slightly tweaked version of the previous one. MSN Astrology predicted the template change - "Today you could be in a creative frame of mind. Your artistic blah blah... Even if you are just working on your computer, you could design graphics for a web page". I didn't know MSN had associations with the NSA/CIA/FBI/Interpol.

Power Cut

Power cuts can get really long around here. The last one was longer than usual. The local electricity board told me that power was shut down for maintenance purposes in my area. Looking outside my window, I saw a few electricians servicing the transformer.



A little while later, they're still there:



They're taking an awfully long time:



And they finally get down from there, to eat:



And then they leave. But the power didn't come back. It did eventually, about an hour after those chaps left.

And College Life has been updated, after a month.

7 Songs

No, it's not a sequel/prequel to 9 songs. JJ tagged me, again. Apart from wanting this blog to be filled with such filler posts, he also wants to know the music I've been listening to, I think.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they a’re any good, but they must be songs you a’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they a’re listening to.

So, here goes:

Daft Punk - One More Time
Parlour Steps - Hero/Villian
Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Mogwai - Golden Porsche
The Decemberists - The Mariner's Revenge Song
Belle and Sebastian - For the Price of a Cup of Tea
Jethro Tull - Bouree

Right, I've got to catch the college bus in a few more minutes so here's who's being tagged, quickly:

Antickpix
Hobbes
Rads
Sandeep
TSB
Nikhil
Hannah

Best. Confirmation email. Ever.

I had decided quite some time back that if I ever got enough bob into my PayPal account, the first thing I'd do with it is get myself more music. Having obtained the necessary dough recently, I spent two days looking for music worth paying for at CD Baby. I ended up buying three albums (Hey, there was a sale). The next day, I get this email from them:

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Monday, February 13th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year". We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

The kings of sweet-talking.

For the record, this post does not have a single letter typed using a physical keyboard. My keyboard's screwed.. Every key. I'm using the On-Screen Keyboard. Yes, the one in which you click letters instead of typing them.

Sickish

For a change, college had nothing to do with me having a bad week. I was riddled with what the good doctor tells me was acute sinusitis. I realized that you're better off staying at the hostel instead of coming home when you're down with something like acute sinusitis. Even if there's a holiday. Especially if you're gonna be home alone. But I realized all that a bit too late. I was already home.

My eating habits didn't help either. I was (and still am) running on a bread diet. Pizzas, burgers, doughnuts, croissants, muffins, and the occasional white bread and naan. I didn't mind, but it was kind of difficult to go as far as the nearest Hot Breads outlet to get some of these, what with my head hurting with every step I took, and me accidentally stepping on the paws of street dogs. Well, one street dog, which was sleeping before I disturbed it, and didn't seem to be bothered enough to start chasing me.

I still managed to catch a movie on Republic Day. Rang De Basanti; it was a friend's treat. It was alright, I suppose. Good fun. What wasn't fun was what happened after the movie. The friend said there was a dinner treat too, which was fantastic, but that left me in the middle of nowhere at midnight, trying to find a bus home. And buses don't run at midnight. Even at the biggest bus terminus in Asia. I resigned to spending a fortune on an auto to get home, eventually.

Oh yeah, this new design is number... Number... Well, I've lost count. Come to think of it, I never kept count. What started out to look great turned into this piece of junk before your eyes. Ah well.

Oh joy.

College starts again tomorrow. That means staying at the hostel again. Isn't that wonderful?

Here's a little something for you tech buffs out there... Bothack. You could say it's sort of an alternative to Lifehacker, but there's more to it. Apart from the usual 'latest technology' bit, they've also got the latest on tech fests in India and around the rest of the world as well. I'm glad somebody finally took the initiative to do this. What's more, they've got solutions to those agonizing problems you often face if you're a Linux newbie. I remember facing a problem similar to the one outlined here, about a year back (not on Suse, though. I was using Ubuntu). Solved that one after a lot of digging around on the net. Don't miss this one, folks.

30 minutes or free?

Pizza Corner came first. 39 minutes or free, they said. But they were always on time.

Domino's Pizza came next, and they had this weird offer that if the pizza ain't delivered in 30 minutes, you get 50% off on the next pizza you order from them.

And then came the glorious Pizza Hut, who had the habit of delivering pizzas quite late. Enjoyed many a free pizza, at least in the beginning, when they said "30 minutes or free". Then it became "30-40 minutes or free". And then just "30-40 minutes". And today, they said, "Thank you for ordering, your pizza will be delivered as soon as possible". Sigh...

You can puke later.

One of the things I dislike about staying alone at home is cleaning up after I've eaten. Sometimes I forget to do away with the leftovers. They just lie on the table for a few days till I notice that the house stinks. That's how I spotted this:


That's rice, cooked and kept in a "microwave-safe" bowl, left unattended for nearly a week. If you're feeling sick after looking at the full size image, be grateful you didn't have to smell it.


UPDATE: Two days afterward, the nasty odour still continued to exist, only a bit more fruity now. The rice was only a partial contributor to it. I found the primary cause - a bag of overripe bananas infested by unidentifiable flying insects.

A film festival of sorts...

More than a week of holidays and home alone, I thought I finally had some time to myself. I did, only for a day though. My relatives seem to think I'd die if I live alone. I tried to avoid them as best as I could, but they cornered me. They wanted me to stay at my Grandmother's for the holidays. I politely refused. They asked me why. I couldn't come up with a reason that wouldn't hurt them. So I hurt them. But they aren't the kind who could take a hint. They tried coaxing me again, and again, and again, till I finally agreed to stay there, but not for more than 2 days. That's where I've been for the past two days.

My Grandma's place is somewhere I don't normally like to stay. Two vital sources of entertainment, the computer and cable TV, aren't a part of that place. I couldn't recall the last time I wasn't bored over there.

Now, I hadn't visited my Grandma in a year. Weird things can happen in a year. Like, my uncle (who lives there) could strike it big in the movie collection scene. Which he did, surprisingly. I had never seen so many foreign films in one place before, not even at a video store. They were all DVDs; movies of all sorts of languages. There was Russian, French, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Persian, Chinese, Japanese; you name it, he had it. Oh, English too. Entertainment, there was.

We (my uncle and I) decided that the best way to pass the time would be to watch as many movies as possible without enduring starvation or sleeplessness. And that's what we did.

Here's what we saw:

Solaris (Or Solyaris, 1972, Russian) - Directed by the talented Tarkovsky. My uncle, being a cinematographer, liked this movie for the camera work. That was pretty much the only good thing about the movie initially. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller after reading the blurb on the DVD cover. I hadn't seen the more recent George Clooney version of the movie. There were long and, in my opinion, unnecessary scenes involving clever transitions between black & white and colour on highways. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to a space station which orbits around a weird planet called Solaris. The planet's weird because it can read the minds of people around it, and is able to create sentient beings from the memories of the people. Kelvin is sent because the people on board were assumed to be under severe mental stress, i.e., mad. The story is a more philosophical one than a thriller, though it does have subtle instances that thrill. It's definitely worth watching if you have the patience.

Dead Man (1995, English) - I couldn't believe I'd missed this one. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, it stars Johnny Depp. Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop and Alfred Molina have short appearances. Music from the guitar of Neil Young. A Western flick (Black & white) where William Blake (not the poet, Johnny Depp) is wanted for murder. He meets a Red Indian, Nobody (Gary Farmer), who mistakes him for the poet William Blake. What ensues is a humorous adventure, in a dark sort of way. I personally liked the menacing Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen), who has a few violent but funny scenes in the movie. Knowledge of William Blake's poetry can be useful while watching this one.

Knife In The Water (Or Nóz w wodzie, 1962, Polish) - This is one helluva film. Directed by Roman Polanski, it has just three actors in the whole film - two men and a woman. A fantastic play on human emotions, it's a brilliant psychological thriller with snappy dialogue. A hitch hiker joins a man and his wife on a boat ride, and the two men compete for the woman's attention in dangerous ways.

Kwaidan (or Kaidan, 1964, Japanese) - A film with four different stories in it. The stories are simple, Japanese ghost stories. Not the scary kind. To look at, this movie is beautiful. A lot of work has gone into it. The artwork and backdrops are stunning. And the lighting is fabulous. But the stories are too darn simple to be interesting, in my opinion. This first one is about a Samurai who ditches his wife for another and then returns to find her ghost. That's it. The second one's a bit better, and I kind of liked the third one. I wasn't patient enough to watch the fourth story in the movie. Unless you're a fan of art and Japanese folk stories, don't watch this one.

The Third Man (1949, English) - This one's often considered one of the greatest films of all time. I couldn't figure out why, though. The plot was pretty easy to guess during the movie. Perhaps because it's the first of it's kind. It's set in post-war Vienna, when the four powers occupied it. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a writer of cheap Westerns, is invited by his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) to Vienna. Upon arriving, Martins learns that his friend had died in a car accident, and also that he was a racketeer of sorts. He feels that it was not an accident but murder, and conducts an investigation of his own. A touch of humour here and there makes the movie enjoyable.

Close Up (or Nema-ye Nazdik, 1990, Persian) - Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, this is a kind of documentary. All the actors are people who play themselves, and it's based on a true story. A poor citizen of Iran, Hossain Sabzian looks a lot like a famous director (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), and he takes advantage of this fact and tricks a family into thinking he's the director, and stays with them. Later, he convinces the family that their house would be the perfect location for his next film. The movie also deals with what happens after he's caught, and the courtroom scenes were shot while the trial was actually happening. The real Makhmalbaf also makes an appearance in the film. A unique movie experience.

Underground (1995, Serbo-Croatian) - A film that starts out to be a raunchy comedy and ends in drama, directed by Emir Kusturica. It's set in a broad time period, starting from WWII and ending with the war in Yugoslavia 50 years later. A very long film (167 minutes), it's divided into three parts. Two friends, Marko and Blacky, are Communist rebels in German-occupied Belgrade during WWII. They're black market weapon manufacturers. Marko, being the smarter of the two, tricks his friend into staying in an underground bomb shelter till the war is over. And he never tells him when the war gets over. A very entertaining movie.

8 1/2 (1963, Italian) - Ah, this one's a classic. A brilliant film by Federico Fellini, it's about a movie director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who tries to take a movie which, for a change, would be pure and honest; a movie about his life. But he fails miserably, as he doesn't know what he wants. There's often a mix of fantasy and reality in this movie; Guido daydreams a lot about his childhood and his love life. He gets the actors for the movie but is still confused what to do. I really liked this one.

I borrowed a few movies before I left on that second day. The Killing by Stanley Kubrick, Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love' and 'The White Sheik' by Federico Fellini. No, I won't be writing about them.

Off The Record - My Morning Jacket: An Observation

For the uninitiated: Off The Record is a song in My Morning Jacket's last album, Z.

I seem to have a knack for recognizing English when spoken backwards. I guess repeated viewing of 'The Exorcist' was the cause for that. Anyway, I've never been wrong in recognizing it. Except for that one time when I thought the lead singer of Sigur Ros was actually a woman singing in English, but backwards. It was just that one time.

Coming to the topic at hand - I recently acquired the aforementioned album, and happened to notice that this particular song had instances of English spoken backwards, towards the end of the song. Tried Googling it, but surprisingly, nobody else seemed to have noticed that. Even lyrics sites didn't mention anything about it; they just had the main song's words.

I had my doubts. Perhaps I just made another mistake. But I had time. Lots of it. And also some version of Audacity(an audio editor). It's pretty fast when it comes to reversing songs. Soon I found myself listening to the singer speaking random English words, or that's what I thought it was. The music was louder than the singer's voice during that part, so I couldn't make out much of what he was saying. Some of the phrases I happened to hear were - "Here's a clue", "Burn burn burn" and "Oh my Jesus", not in that order. Reminded me of an episode of 'The Simpsons', the one where Bart forms a pop group that sings "Ymra eht nioj", which is "Join the army" spelt backwards. So, I'm going to make a totally misinformed and probably wrong statement - My Morning Jacket is a band that spreads anti-Christian thoughts through subliminal messages in their songs. Clever chaps.

In other news, I was listening to my copy of Radiohead's 'Pablo Honey' in the living room for change(I wanted to know how they sound on 5.1 speakers), when my mother came in shouting "What happened to the speakers?! Those noises sound like a mixie's!". She was referring to the distortion guitar riffs in 'Creep'. Sigh...