So I just watched Masoom (the Shekhar Kapur movie.) It was of course awesome.

Sadly the video quality on the DVD transfer left something to be desired. T-Series deserves some brickbats. And no subtitles! Terrible.

Mr. Kapur, your art needs a wider audience. And better DVDs.

The Driving Rant Post

I make no apologies about admitting to the fact that I don't like driving. I grew up in Mumbai with it's excellent public transport system. If I'm traveling somewhere I would much rather be doing something much more interesting with my time like talking to friends, reading a book, observing the city or just plain day-dreaming. Driving is a drudge. You have to keep your eyes on the road, and hands upon the wheel. (Apologies to Jim Morrison.) Still, seeing as how public transport in Madison is so crappy, and how I have to occasionally drive to places that you can't reach using a bus or a taxi without paying out of your nose, I drive.

My car is the most expensive thing I own. Obviously it makes me want to protect it. Keep that resale value high and all that. And there is also the little thing of me happening to enjoy the fact that I am alive and not dead. So obviously all the other idiots on the road piss me off. And this winter, with its constant shit... sorry ice-storms and record snowfall, things which would normally just irritate me a little, have turned into things that make me vewy vewy angry. Here's a list of the idiots who irritate me and their internal monologues:

1. Mr. I am going to drive below the speed limit in the passing lane
I'm driving. And this is the lane I have decided to use. The passing lane. It's a free country and I have paid taxes all my life and I have now decided to drive in the passing lane. Yes, I know I'm going slower than the speed limit but I'm an American and I can do what I want. You can use the slow lane and pass me from the right but then I will glare at you and cough violently. And keep driving slowly in this lane. My lane.

2. Mr. I am going to drive about 6 inches behind your car
Right. So I'm in a hurry. A real serious hurry. And so I have decided to drive as close to your car as I possibly can. Because no matter what speed you are driving at being close to your car makes me reach where I want to go earlier. Like a whole 20 milliseconds earlier. And time is money. Of course, I know it's snowing and the roads are icy and slick, and if you have to brake suddenly then I will rear-end you. But those are the risks we have to take for my 20 milliseconds.

3. Mr. I have suddenly decided to take a left turn
Hey look! It's a traffic light. Here I am in the left lane. Waiting at the light. Obviously, as you can see I intend to go straight, because if I didn't I would have turned on the left turn indicator so you could have moved to the right lane. But I'm going to go straight. I have decided to go straight. Look, the light turned green! Oh my God!!! A left turn. Look, I can turn left instead of going straight!!! Holy crap! This so exciting! I'm going to turn left now. Watch me turn on the left turn indicator. And crawl up and wait for the oncoming cars to finish going straight. Then I can make my glorious left turn! What's that you say? You are stuck behind me because you thought I was going to go straight? Aw, don't be a wuss. I'm making a left turn. Be excited for me. (And sometimes in my excitement I even forget to turn on the indicator. Who cares. I'm turning left.)

4. Mr. I am going to slowly turn right without moving to the right lane
I have to turn right here. Clearly, if I move to the edge of the right lane you'll be able to keep going straight from the left and we can't have that. It's my job to inconvenience you as much as possible. Making you miss the light will be a bonus. So from where I am in this lane, I am going to slow down, and very very slowly turn right. Look, I almost crawling. Do you think I can possibly go any slower? Let's try! Oh why are you waving your fist at me? I'm just doing my job.

5. Mr. I am going to build up the suspense about whether or not I'm going to turn right
There you are waiting at the intersection trying to get out. I'm close enough to the intersection that you have to wait for me to make a sign before you can make a move. But I'm driving slow enough to torture you. And yes I'm driving in an ambiguous lane so you can't tell if I'm going to turn right into the intersection or not. Look I'm turning right. You could have gone anytime! Fooled you! Haha!!

Why is the whole world so incredibly stupid? No, really, I mean, for God's sake people, why are you all so stupid?

You know what we need? We need more smart people. How can we get more smart people? Well, one plan would be for smart people everywhere to start making babies. Lots and lots of smart babies. Chop chop you married smart folk! More smart babies right this minute.

And all you stupid people need to stop meeting other stupid people. C'mon, snare a smart person, at least your kids will be halfway smart. Also, while you're at it, could you also stop reading safety labels?

Well, I guess it's another Tuesday rant brought on by reading this crazy post by Jean Valjean. And of course all the news from all over the world.

I wish I was more ambitious, then I'd rule the world with an iron fist. Who wants to vote for me and my iron fist? I swear I'd fix this place up good.

So remember, whenever you get a chance to vote for anything, vote for Hob Gadling!

Nice post Vicky.

But do you really think that a life in suburbia with a nice white picket fence and 2.3 kids and a black labrador is what you want? I'm not so sure because if that's what you wanted then why were you in love with Bombay to begin with? Unless you're really rich you ain't never gonna get a picket fence in Bombay. But you know that already.

A life in Bombay does unfortunately involve flooded streets, bus strikes and the kids begging on the trains. Those aren't the things that endear anyone to Bombay. And the things that do aren't really that easy to pick out. Maybe it's the thick black smoke that causes pretty girls' faces to break out into acne, maybe it's the humidity that makes summers unbearable and that standing bus ride from Churchgate to Borivali all the more hateful. Or maybe it's the first shower in June that catches you unaware, ruining your favorite expensive silk tie but still leaving you happier because it's cooler now and your nightclothes won't stick. Perhaps it's the claustrophobically closely spaced buildings, that make open spaces seem special and sacred. Maybe it's khau galli or perhaps it's the little transistor radio's that everyone carries on the day that India is playing Pakistan. Maybe it's diwali chakli and besan laddus and shankarpali and chiwda or all those crazy kids running after those damn kites during sankranti. I don't know.

But I do know that if you choose the picket fence your life will never have that. It will be one day after another with the man of your dreams, in the same house, in the same neighborhood, attending the same cultural events, raising your kids and tolerating their bratty friends. It will sure be safer. But somehow I get the feeling you'll spend those years when your kids go off to college sitting and remembering Bombay. Smelling the smoke, tasting the garlic chutney in the morning vada-pav.

I don't know. Maybe I'm saying this because I'm safe here in Madison and I'm that much younger than you. Maybe it's because I miss Bombay, miss all those things that you take for granted. But on that Tuesday morning when I got an email from my brother telling me "everyone is safe" I never felt more helpless in my life. And when my mom got home at 10 pm and told me that she had been in the next compartment from one of the bombs, I swear I couldn't think straight for the rest of the day. I just wanted to hug her. But I couldn't and won't be able to for months. Because I'm safe here in Madison.

I guess I've rambled on. And probably not very coherently too. But really, don't make a decision that big based on a random act of terror pulled off by morons who don't value anything that decent people live by. If you are going to move, make it for something else.

Spring is slowly sneaking back into Madison. The days are longer now, than what I remember them to be. Trees are still leafless and nude but many are sporting the beginnings of leaf buds. It's still cold. My hands still freeze and mornings are still an unwelcome affair, struggling to stay under cozy blankets as time marches by. I have to be patient. Summer will come soon.

Creativity is dead. If it's alive I can't find it anywhere. Not in anything I write, nor in what I read. It decided to leave movies and music a while back, I know, but I am left wondering, if there's anyone left, who can really spends time with it. Everything that's been written or said recently has roots in something more seminal from the past.

The end of the world is nigh. The signs are all there. Strangely enough they've been there for decades now, but Armageddon refuses to come. I think it's scared of us. I don't know why. We're a generation of pushovers and nervous wrecks. Maybe that's why.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? I know.

Yield.

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slow-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in the corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
But don't cry, baby, don't cry, don't cry.
-The boy in the bubble, Paul Simon, (remembered from off the top off my head, there might be mistakes).

And we wonder when quoting stopped being plagiarism and turned into literature. Standing on the shoulders of giants.

Another Tuesday.

I realized something about myself today. Things break around me. Watches, cell-phones, the little rubber legs on laptops, shoes, shoelaces, slippers, zippers and a lot else. Somehow molecules seem to lose adhesive and cohesive properties when I'm near. Sometimes structural integrity itself decides that it doesn't prefer my company. And magnetic and electric fields generally find me annoying and leave. This is not a happy realization. I like things, pay good money for them and I don't like them breaking.

Things that annoyed me today:
1. My reliance on numbered and bulleted lists.

2. The absence of a good Gimp port on Windows. Ideally one that doesn't cost money. Because, if I had the money to spare now, I might have bought Photoshop.

3. Finally accepting the fact that I'll never get a computer fast enough.

4. The death of good music.

5. Feigned political neutrality.

Another Wednesday awaits tomorrow.

After a brave attempt at some real blogging, I'm back to gimmicks.

Things that annoyed me today:
1. The weight of my backpack after I stuff it with my laptop and a couple of books. What's more annoying than the weight itself is that it reminds me that I'm all out of shape. How will me dream of becoming a super fearsome avenging detective ninja ever come true if I keep this up?

2. The fact that I can't read From Hell. I have the time. I have the book. It seems interesting enough. But I can't get myself to read it. Just like anything by James Joyce, it's an incredibly hard read. This isn't good news. I might end up adding this book to my list of books which I began but couldn't finish. That list already includes Ulysses, 1984 and The Doors of Perception. Cheer up Mr. Moore, you seem to be in excellent company.

3. The fact that I don't seem to enjoy music anymore. Any music. Ten minutes is the most I can do, before I look for the stop button.

4. Stupidity. And stupidity coupled with stubbornness.

5. Impatience. My own.

6. There's more but see item 5.

Anyway, having got all that out of the way, I'm happy to note that I finished reading Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson yesterday. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Transmet is a comic chronicling the life and works of Spider Jerusalem, your friendly neighborhood paranoid foul-mouthed freshly-bald investigative journalist who works for The Word, a newspaper publishing in a future that is unlikely yet familiar. I want a bowel disruptor.

Everyone's got a gimmick and it's about time I got one too, hence:

Things that annoyed me today:
1. Brain dead line wrapping behavior in Thunderbird 0.5. Lines seem to be neatly wrapped at 72 characters. Then you send what seems to be a neatly formatted email, and lines aren't wrapped at all at the receiver. The situation is worse if you're composing from a template. The template itself seems to have line wraps. Unfortunately, any edit you make that involves deleting a newline (basically pressing backspace at column 0, and going to column 72 on the previous line) makes it seem that that particular line is wrapped when it's not. So the receiver gets an email, which has some sentences wrapped at column 72, others not wrapped at all. Receiver then doubts your IQ.

There is a rewrap function in the edit menu, but we need an option to automatically rewrap all outgoing emails.

Better yet, we need Thunderbird developer's to look at the jEdit project, and take inspiration from their concepts of soft and hard line-wrapping.

2. On again, off again, on again, off again-right-in-the-middle-of-a-transaction-with-the-bank wireless internet connections.

3. Self censorship again.

Its 2am and I'm waiting for Windows XP SP2.

This post was actually going to be about a fairly controversial topic, but then I realized that this blog is publicly viewable, and I'm not really ready to wear my opinions on my sleeve. Yet.

Another interesting phenomenon of the liberating weblog subculture. Self censorship.

Or maybe it's just me and my paranoia acting up again.

So. Each and every knob in the world which controls temperature has only two settings - `Too hot' and `Too cold'. Choosing between them is an art that one learns to master only after spending multiple nights either like a leg of lamb in the freezer or a chicken carcass left to bake in a clay oven. Why are essentially all temperature controls created so that you are either charred to a crisp or quick frozen to a state of suspended animation? Why can't I find a single bathroom fixture, which does not consider me its bitch, and decide to alternatively boil me or flash freeze me? All the time when it knows that the soap is going to come to life and leap out of my fingers again and make another desperate attempt to secure its freedom by escaping down the nearest drain. I probably shouldn't get started on soap reanimation and save talk about it for some other time though. Right about now, I wish I could come up with a catchy slogan for those oppressed by temperature control devices, but my brain's overheated so they'll have to wait.

On a side note:
Why are rants always such interesting reading? Is it because we as rantees commisserate with the ranter, or are we simply enjoying the spectacle of someone else breaking down in frustration (or anger or envy or whatever emotion the ranter is channelling at that time) ?

On a side side note: (If such a thing exists)
Rantee: I'm fairly certain no such word exists in the English language, but it means `wild' in Marathi!

Dumbing down. Their doing it to the newspapers. Television is already a victim. Radio died a lifetime ago. The Internet will be next. They'll come one day, soon, with their scalpels. Full frontal lobotomy. What a way to go.

Why do I have to suffer a world of idiots?

These are strange days. I hope I'm old before I die. (Thank you Robbie Williams, you manipulative thief of a singer)

On a side note:
Why is good literature always about despair, hurt, loneliness, pain, cruelty, torture, defeat, animus and such else? Modern good literature in particular. Why do people have to die, fall ill, break, kill, rape, vomit and choke to get us all a good read? What happened to stories about happiness and honour? Heroism? Love even? I guess I need a change in library.

The good old days are gone it seems. More than seventy channels and nothing to watch. Comedy Central doesn't cut it these days. Cartoon Network even. And too many bloody commercials. TV needs a revolution.

Maybe they can have a reality show about viewer disillusionment with too many reality shows.

They'll tell you it's a time of gentle flakes, floating through the air; a million tiny artists, painting a beautiful blue-gray picture. They'll tell you it's a time of warm fires and cozy beds and snuggling up. They'll tell you it's a time of fun in the snow, romping and prancing like goats on a hillside. They'll tell you it's a time of dazzling sunsets and crisp morning air. They'll tell you it's nice.

Don't believe them.

(Madison, WI -- Currently -14°C(6°F), feels like -19°C (-3°F))

Winter never fails to frustrate me. It's too stuffy indoors and too cold out. We had our first flurries yesterday - little clumps of flakes, floating down, and melting on your face.