Hilarious quote from a thread on Slashdot:

There are no women on the internet! Everyone knows that! It's the place where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents.

I've read the first chapter of Dubliners and I can tell this is going to be a difficult read. I will finish it.

I just had a long conversation with a friend.

I bought a new phone. It's my first flip-top. I usually buy candy-bar phones so I feel dirty. Although I spell it flip-top with a hyphen, I'm not sure what the correct spelling actually is.

There was a tornado watch today. I would never take these watches and warnings seriously until my car was damaged with golf ball sized hail. Now I stay indoors whenever there's a problem. It's nice and sunny now though.

There's ivy growing on my windows. It goes.

Stupid France let South Korea equalize. Zidane got a yellow card. Now, this could very possibly be his last match. It's such a thrill watching football on the telly! It won't last for too long though.

They've already started advertising for the fall TV season. Too early according to me.

I miss Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy.

Do you know who Jim Woodring is?

He's crazy. He makes comics. He has a blog. If you ever get your hands on a Jim Woodring comic, be afraid, be very afraid.

It will swallow you whole.

A surfeit of reading. That's what's happened in the last couple of days. I have read more than 15 graphic novels! Let's begin shall we:

The Golem's Mighty Swing: Set in America in the 1920's, this stark black and white piece is the story of a Jewish baseball team that tours smalltown USA. As a gimmick, they decide to include a 'golem' on the team - the sole black player. Things go awry. Read the excerpt. (Click on "Search inside this book" under the picture.)

Love and Rockets: Created by the Hernandez brothers, Gilbert and Jaime, Love and Rockets is a series of about 15 graphic novels originally published over a span of a decade. Jaime writes about Locas (crazy women!) and Gilbert writes about Palomar - a fictional village in Central America. I could go on but it's easier to link to one of them on Amazon and let you read an excerpt yourself. (Click on "Search inside this book" under the picture.)

Also, currently valiantly trying to read Dubliners by James Joyce.

I finally did something I should have a long time ago. I created a technology only blog on which I can go crazy and spew out as much techy stuff I want without boring the regular readers of this blog.

So here's to Surfin teh Interweb!

Seeing as how I seek to convert more and more people to the church of comic books, here's an excellent list by J.D. of Graphic Novels for People Who Hate Comics.

As I note in the comments, the only significant omission is Will Eisner.

Just watched this on Conan tonight.

SAT Analogies

Warren Buffett's favorite stock pick :
Johnson and Johnson ::
Clay Aiken's favorite sex position :
Johnson on Johnson

...
One and one-half wandering Jews
Return to their natural courses
To resume old acquaintances
Step out occasionally
And speculate who had been damaged the most
Easy time will determine if these consolations
Will be their reward
The arc of a love affair
Waiting to be restored
You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones
And they won't come undone
...

-
Hearts and bones
Paul Simon
1983

Sometimes, I think that the only thing I seem to persistently follow through with in life is this blog. It's the only thing I have been doing for more than a couple of years with no extended breaks. It's true that quite often the content has suffered (too much nerdy stuff or comics) and in recent months it has turned into a place where I end up recommending things to readers but all in all, I'm just happy that I'm still doing this.

Now talking about recommending things to readers. A couple of hours ago I watched half of the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. The other half is to be televised tomorrow. Grey's Anatomy is one of the three shows that I seem to be regularly following. And it's not because of all the emo stuff on it (though that's done well too), it's because of the medical stuff on it. Makes me want to wish I had got better scores in biology and become a doctor myself. Though knowing my fragile memory I wouldn't have done too well in it anyway. Yeah that's me. Smart enough to be a doctor but with a memory only good enough to be an engineer. Because a doctor wouldn't inspire too much confidence in his patients if he kept needing to look stuff up in his programming manual on the Internet!

The other two shows I watch are Farscape and Scrubs, but I've said too much about them already.

Now changing the topic to books, I am struggling through the third book in the Ringworld series - Ringworld Throne. Perhaps it's because there is too much going on at work and other fronts. Perhaps, it's like the reviewers on Amazon said, it's just not as good. Hopefully I'll finish it. I also have with me a signed copy of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, but I haven't ready more than a few pages of it. I guess since I own it, I feel I can probably read it whenever I want.

I can't remember which comics were on my list this week, which is not a good sign, as it means they weren't interesting. Haven't heard anything interesting for a while. Except for Baba Lagin. Don't ask.

(Yes, my grammar seems to be deteriorating. I can't seem to put the commas in the right places. I need my copy of Wren and Martin again.)

Alan Moore is a genius. I've read a lot of graphic novels. And I've read a lot of books. And even if I consider and critique all of what I've read at once, the conclusion remains the same, Alan Moore is a genius.

If you get a chance you should read everything he's written. It's not so much that Alan Moore plots and writes a good story. It's that he plots and writes a superlative story and then makes it all seem so easy. Neil Gaiman creates a magical place in the The Sandman. Warren Ellis fleshes out some plausible yet terrifying science fiction in Transmetropolitan. Grant Morrison moves us to tears in We3. And yet, Alan Moore finesses them all, in everything he writes.

Some of what he writes is difficult reading. His prose is profuse and calculated. Not a word is used unnecessarily. But he brings out the best in the artist illustrating the story. I've yet to see a badly drawn Alan Moore story.

So what's the tragic bit in all this? He's retired.

And what have I been reading?

Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven. Classic science fiction from the Seventies which stills reads good today. And adds great new words to my vocubalary like tasp and rishathra!

My regular quota of comics which hasn't contained anything good for a while. I did buy Superman Chronicles which is surprisingly good for a comic book made in the 1930's, but which I haven't had the patience to finish reading.

And what have I been watching?

Finding Neverland and Final Solution. The latter has been one harrowing ordeal to watch. It was banned in India for a while, but the ban was lifted in October 2004. Indians should watch this. (But be prepared to lose your lunch.)

So Jim Emerson came out with this list of 102 movies which you should watch if you want to have a meaningful discussions of any kind about movies. Like the words of a language which everyone should know to understand each other.

I've seen 16, half seen 7. I saw The Godfather while growing up in India. Not having cable while you grow up sure sucks. i-me-moi, Saket, Jean Valjean, Vikster, Là¢ke¥, /<0usik, bluegreenflysplat, I hope you guys do better.

Legend:
* = I've seen it
+ = I've seen maybe a quarter or half of it (hangs head in shame...)

List:
+ 2001: A Space Odyssey
+ The 400 Blows
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
All About Eve
* Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
Blowup
Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
Carrie
Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
Chinatown
+ Citizen Kane
+ A Clockwork Orange
* The Crying Game
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
Double Indemnity
+ Dr. Strangelove
* Duck Soup
+ E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
* The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
Frankenstein
The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
Halloween
A Hard Day's Night
Intolerance
It's a Gift
It's a Wonderful Life
Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
North by Northwest
Nosferatu
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
Schindler's List
The Searchers
+ The Seven Samurai
Singin' in the Rain
* Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
The Wizard of Oz

For those who came here looking for the congested Indian street video because the original blog (It Rocks Everything) seems to have reached some bandwidth limits, here is the direct YouTube link.

Dr. Kelso (to Perry): Oh Perry, you're so edgy and cantankerous, you're like House without the limp.

Scrubs, Season 5, Episode 18 - "My New Suit"

Scrubs: 2, House: 0

There's this Pakistani restaurant on Monroe Street called Campus Biryani and Kabab. It opened a little more than a year ago. The owner serves excellent chicken and mutton biryani, chicken haleem,and mutton chapli kabab. Also available is the ubiquitous chicken tandoori and mango lassi. And this weekend after much goading from me and his other regular clientele he served falooda.

Highly recommended if you hanker for authentic Indian/Pakistani food and are sick of the homogenized crap available in pretty much every other "Indian" restaurant in the US.

So I remembered what I had to post about. Playboy names UW No. 1 party school. And of course, Wisconsin Comes Back to Win N.C.A.A. Title.

See now, I knew I had to blog about something, but for the love of me I can't remember what!

Yes, I'm gay. It should have been obvious to everyone by now. The incessant obsession with comic books, television, movies, music, technology, food, poetry and just plain emo, should have been clues enough.

Actually to be precise, I'm a lesbian trapped in handsome man's body. So any hot babes out there suddenly gripped with a strong sense of pity please help ...

(Yes, yes, an April 1 post. What can I say, I'm still juvenile enough to make fun like this. Make fun, make more fun!) And mucho apologies already to my token gay reader.

It's 7 am. Why am I awake? Why am I at work?

New post for no rhyme or reason.

In other news, I am greatly gladdened by the fact that Aeryn Sun is alive and did not indeed die as I had feared. But the fate of Zhaan who brought Sun back from near death is still uncertain. Hopefully she won't die either.

Haven't heard from Rommie, Dylan or Tyr lately, nor from Xander or Willow. Hope they're all okay.

Also, Steve Rogers was freed from illegal imprisonment by Janet Pym. Clint Barton was able to free himself, and Tony Stark was able to save himself from an assassination attempt. These guys will bounce back.

(Bonus points to readers who can tell what I'm talking about.)