Pot Pourri
October 15, 2012 at 9:21 pm | Posted in arbit | Leave a commentTags: Cosmic Jiggling, Mythology, Psychology, Religion, Travel
But surely you must worship The Holy Rat. Where would we be without him?
The other gods, – The Worm, the Bat, and the Anteater, I can pardon you for ignoring them all these days.
They are, how do I put this, low-maintenance Gods. Gods that don’t demand your attention on one designated day of the week, or some sort of ritualistic aerobics.
I wouldn’t dare cross the Rat though. No Sir, most definitely not.
The Rat belonged to one ancient family of Gods. Legends say that, (unlike other sundry Gods with their 9-to-5 peaceful Godly businesses in such a manner as Time applies in Godly contexts), He had severe emotional and anger issues.
Back when that world was full of Gods, and everyone had some function to dictate in the universe, The Rat was a Vagabond.
Powerful, Angry and Arrogant. But Jobless.
He fought with others . He made up, and then He fought again.
He decided that He needed a change. His recklessness and their stupidity, His anger and their fake professional smiles – there was a subtle mismatch. He needed to be away for a while, think things through, become a better God.
He decided to live a Hermitic life.
Carving out a 7x7x7 chunk of the universe for himself was the start – 7 dimensions, 7 galaxies, and 7 jinkotes* wide.
Is wide a correct term here?
Sorry, These multidimensional things make me woozy.
Nice, cosy place to live in and start afresh – He thought. There were no borders to this mini-universe. Everyone was welcome inside, and could leave as they please. No conditions apply. Ok, maybe just one. Just don’t fail to be awesome while you were in there.
But who am I?
Well, I suppose that’s always been THE question isn’t it? One of them at least. We – You & I – are quite different.
I am God.
I am The Rat.
TTYL.
*1 Jinkote = 3 Tiblinxes, an ancient confused system of measurement that ends up being recursive after 5 stages, but everyone knows what and how much they mean. You should have figured it out by now. If not, refer to the asterisk sign.
The smalltalk we could do without
August 29, 2012 at 2:15 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentSo here’s how you have a thoroughly useless conversation in french.
Something that we’re all well versed to, in English.
———–
• Marie: Salut Jean. Ça va ? [ Hi, Jean. How are you? ]
• Jean: Ça va bien, merci. Et toi, ça va ? [ I’m fine. And you, are you fine?]
• Marie: Pas mal. [ Not bad] – snootiness starts. Not bad is as useful as hmm in a conversation >
• Jean: Quoi de neuf ? [What’s up?]
< Ah. what’s up. pages and pages could be written on whats up. The only thing ever to come out of whatsup is the inspiration for that texting app.
The only correct response to whatsup is whatsup. anything else, and you seem over-committed to a conversation that involves a person who uses whatsup. Ah, the grouchiness of Social Life. >
• Marie: Pas grand-chose. [ Nothing Much] < ever so annoying. Yes, you’re trying to shield your hollow shell of a life and we need to probe further to get your attention. But if you wish to converse, speak properly. >
• Marie: Au revoir Jean. [ Bye, Jean ] <Bye, Let’s do this fun thing tomorrow as well>
• Jean: Au revoir, à demain. [ Bye, See you tomorrow] <See you tomorrow, I can’t wait>
——————————
Anyway, the whole point of this post is EHHHH, SEXYYYYYY LADYYYYYYY
Oh wait, not that.
The point of this post was to, if possible, remember these few lines – AND Delete it from your mind.
never ever use them in a conversation. As an advanced species, we can do better.
And quite obviously, I am learning french, and need to show off at every possible occasion.
Fire in Babylon – Caribbean Carnage
June 13, 2011 at 4:43 pm | Posted in Movie Review, Politics | 2 CommentsTags: Bob Marley and the Wailers, Clive Lloyd, Cricket, Fire in Babylon, Malcolm Marshall, Vivian Richards, West Indies
If you follow cricket even remotely, unless you have been living in a cave ( the ones that come without cable and an Internet connection) for the past few months, I assume you’d have come across much fanfare and hoopla around this movie, ” Fire in Babylon”.
The resurgence of West Indies Cricket by adopting a vicious pace strategy in demonic fashion, is the stuff that legends are made of. And rightly so, many of them figure in this slightly offbeat masalafied documentary, backed by much awe-inspiring videos, anecdotes, and of course Bob Marley and the Wailers. The movie, as a testimonial to the mojo of the 70s and 80s team was very much overdue, and is really enjoyable to watch as well.
If you were around back in them days, ( or are a cricket tragic like me, and have peered at footage in xyz sports channels and the internet), you damn well know that the West Indies Pace quartet did deliver some sweet chin music, reducing batsmen to miserable lumps in the middle of the pitch ( which by then would’ve acquired a shade of red ). Yum Yum. And to think that we currently ban pitches and stadiums which are even slightly threatening under the arbitrary “awkward bounce” category. I WANT TO SEE BLOOD ON THE PITCH, DAMNIT.
These deliveries were regular sights back then. The one that whizzes past your face, the one that was directed at your head, A quick fiery jab at the sternum, One at the unmentionables if you were being careless and duck-footed. And finally, when they were visibly bored of this playful waltzing – a lethal yorker to finish off the business.
Does this movie deserve all the lavish praises thrown at it? Is this a sign of well-made cricket documentaries to come? Was the screenplay/story right in choosing to make this an overtly political movie including distinct tones of blackpower struggles, Rastafarian movement and anti-apartheid observations?
No. Hopefully. Not so much.
Michael Holding and Colin Croft have this to say. [ source ].
“What the film does well,” reckons Holding, “is show how what happened on the field affected what happened off it.” What he and the other players are less comfortable with is Fire in Babylon’s suggestion that the reverse was true as well. “The film is political,” says Croft, “but I don’t think any of us were playing political cricket. We were just playing to win.”
—————–
Read that whole article, to get an assessment of the cricketers’ opinions about this movie, and views from recent cricketers like Chris Gayle.
—————–
This in itself is an astute, but simple observation. A motif that is seen even when the Windies players supported Kerry Packer’s initiative. There was an inner drive, mostly motivated by Clive Lloyd, to take the sport more professionally. This coupled by the fact that they were being paid peanuts by their own cricket board ( rings a bell? ) was indeed one of the factors behind them pulling up their socks. This is not to reduce the romanticism and the devilish zeal behind the resurgence. If anything, it adds the concept of the working man’s struggle into the mix.
Racism is a tricky beast to handle. Many changes were happening in the Caribbean political climate around this time. The film makers, in an act of sensational overkill, decided to attribute almost all those factors to the cricket regime, and with a healthy dose of feel-good feedback to the political struggle delivered by the resounding victories.
I believe that the words that were exchanged by Aussies ( fans and players alike) could’ve been of racist nature, and smacks of arrogance . But what seemed irrational was portrayal of the bowling acts of Lillee and one of my personal favourites Thommo as wicked colonial oppression, white man’s violence yada yada, while the very same strategy being picked up by the west Indies was proclaimed as a Blackman’s victory ( with a proud inflection), by one of the loony old men narrating along.
To put it in an laymanish manner, You can’t use the race-card twice. And more importantly, when you discussed cricketing strategies, bringing political bias into it was just plain ignorance.
I’ve read on numerous sites, that some of the footage used was inaccurate/ wrongly timed. This again isn’t acceptable from a documentary point of view. It speaks for itself that the moviemakers paid more attention to the “Fire” outside the cricketing field, and didn’t get the basics of the sport right. A large audience for this movie would be the cricket-savvy folks, and this doesn’t go down well with us.
Now, to my last and a critical objection with this movie. Apart from Marley and the Wailers, and some key BGM tracks, most of the musicians chosen for this film were of the “so bad it’s good” category, selected mostly for upping the #kvltness of the movie, and for gratuitous usage of cricketing lingo in the lyrics. Horrible selection, and severly offputting in the context of the movie.
To sum it up, What the movie lacks in overall common-sense and bad choice of sensational matter, it more than makes up for by including delicious ( if i may say so) video snippets of raw and awesome fast bowling *.
Also for multiple reasons like the ominous Moustache of Clive Lloyd ( wah wah ), The camraderie between Bob Marley and Viv ( which increased my respect for both of them), Vivian Richards’ casual swagger along with the incessant chewing of gum, girls swooning over him, the rhythm and enjoyment on the field that was shown by that team knowing very well that they were invincible , and that terrible desire to win by any means necessary while still honouring the rule books.
[* not Agarkar fast, not sissy fast, not medium fast, but something that the batsmen feared to face for the tiny annoying reason to not have their heads knocked off ]
The present west indies team is in a sorry state, it’d do them well to draw inspiration from this movie. Sure, the joint of the Rastafarian movement has long since died down, the blackpower struggle isn’t a big motivator anymore, Aussies aren’t the champions they used to be, but that’s still no excuse to not get your sorry asses moving and reclaim the honour and pride of the idols you look upto.
Some random Bible passage has this to say, almost prophetically,
“and Babylon will become a heap of ruins, haunted by jackals. She will be an object of horror and contempt, a place where no one lives. ” .
May there be a revival of Caribbean Carnage. Some of us still love fast bowling the way it should be. Merciless.
——————
P.S : I was terribly disappointed that the movie talked about Malcolm Marshall for only around 5 mins. Terrible injustice, but I’ve been informed that in the context of the movie this was necessary.
The man’s a legend, a bowling stud beyond description, and provided hope for aspiring short-in-height bowlers ( relatively speaking) worldwide 🙂 .
Here is a better documentary about him, which I thought was more inspirational than this movie itself.
Need some Moti-vation?
March 15, 2011 at 1:39 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsIt’s been a while. Sorry 😦
I give you this, happy now?
Greeting Card/FauxMotivational Poster/ Collage
using Some Old notebook’s educational info about Elephants + Picasa + “First I was like X, then I was like Y” meme.
How / Why did Rakhi trend – A case study
August 3, 2009 at 11:55 pm | Posted in arbit, criticism, fakereviews, humour, Internet, spam, Technical, twitter, Visions | 10 CommentsTags: average tweets per second, beer summit, bob saget, cash for clunkers, elesh parujanwala, geekiness, gul panag, indian reality show, indiavotes09, mass hysteria, ndtv imagine, pritish nandy, rakhi ka swayamvar, rakhi sawant, review, shark week, snowball, statistics, trending topic, twitscoop, twittebrity, twitter, twitter trends, whatthetrend
I assume that most of you are still recovering from last night’s events. Totally surreal stuff, I must say. Triple Baaraats, 3 grooms , 2 idiot MC’s and of course the multiplee talented Rakhi Sawant. A by-product of this whole ruckus was that India witnessed yet another trending topic [after #indiavotes09 etc ]
This was a pretty interesting experience to watch, as well as to participate in, as one could clearly see the effect of opinion snowballing, and mass-hysteria eventually taking over.
This is all I can say about ‘why’ did Rakhi trend. Well you see, ‘ The human mind is a complex system, and…”.
Oh, ditch that. It’s the ‘how’ that’s explainable.
So, how did Rakhi Madamji muster so much mojo?
Well, the obvious answer has to got to be – “due to a lot of tweets in a short timeframe”.
For the uninitiated, I’ll provide the same background that I wrote on http://whatthetrend.com/trend/Rakhi [ which incidentally, is a wonderful site to know why a topic is trending on twitter. So the next time you see something like “Cash for Clunkers” or ” Bob Saget’s gone bonkers” trending on twitter, you know where to look for answers ]
[ I’d throw in an image but for the fact that I couldn’t find a single decent picture, and even among the bhajan variety, there were none with a Creative commons license. Perverts, please search here ]
So, with this much info, lets dive into some statistics.
[ Note: ATPS – Average Tweets Per Second ]
The show started at around 9.00 p.m [ I.S.T], and for the initial 10 minutes the tweet flow was quite slow, at around 5 ATPS ]
Soon, some celebrities [or twittebrities, if that floats your boat ], joined in the action, and all hell broke loose. Some samples.
[ Ah, the marvels of good liquor ]
[ Sums up the nation’s opinion with this tweet ]
Soon enough, the twitter universe was flooded with retweets, ” what the eff ” ‘s, <brain explodes>, ‘shoot me. shoot me now‘ ‘s , on one end.
Not to be perturbed by this, the positive Rakhi Chee forces retaliated with tweets like ” Go Elesh“, ” I’d marry Elesh, He’s cho cute“, ” OMG, Rakhi Sawant looks so hot ya“.
But it was mostly the apathetic crowd that both cheered and jeered [ I know that doesn’t make sense on many levels, but work with me on this ], that was the peach of the tweetset. Sample these.
[ Witty that one ]
[‘Main is Desh ka damaad Hoon’, but in a canadian accent. Sounds vaguely familiar]
By this time [ around 9.30 p.m], the term was buzzing on Twittscoop at around 10 ATPS. The next best term was “Shark week” at 30 ATPS, which had already started to trend. So, on an a normal day with not much news happening [ no plane crashes, no celebrity deaths, no white police / afro-american professor drinking chilled beers with the U.S president ], we can make a decent speculation that there has to be atleast 30 ATPS for a topic to trend.
This by itself is no mean feat, so Kudos to Rakhi for keeping us glued to the telly. Assume that the average twitterer, even in the heights of their frenzy tweets about 1 tweet per 10 minutes.
[ The power twitterer does about 1 tweet in 2 minutes say, and the other twitterer who’s just an innocent bystander,just pops in to say ” Oh, why’s this topic trending”. say 1 tweet per 30 minutes].
In some universe with a favourable averaging scheme, the number 1 tweet in 10 minutes figures, and I’ll use that.
To achieve a critical state of 30 ATPS, for say about an hour, for the trend to be noticed, we’d need,
1 person can tweet 1 tweet in 10 minutes = 1 / 600 ATPS
x people need to tweet 30 tweets in 1 second. 30 ATPS
So, assuming an equal distribution of tweeting in the timeframe, we needed about 18000 people to start the trend, which is quite reasonable and achievable, since there around 25 million twitter users globally out of which around 2% are Indian, [1] [2], which makes it a potential 500,000 Indian users.
This was the tweet density for yesterday. This is what a one-time-wonder trend looks like.
So, as you can notice, ‘rakhi’ was in the limelight for around 2 hours[ mentally visualize chopping off the curve where the height reaches 30 ]
[ graph courtesy: Twittscoop ]
There were some obvious side-effects of this inane exercise. People not used to seeing their twitter stream getting littered like this, got extremely pissed off, and started issuing death threats in all possible directions. Sample.
[ My my, such strong emotions. Now you know how provocative Rakhi’s aura can be ]
So, in conclusion. Bah, easy peasy work. We can make anything trend, given enough determination, teamwork and resolute joblessness.
Hum honge #kaamyaab ek din. [ Loosely translates to ” May the #manForce be with you” ]
P.S: Respect to all the twitterers featured in this post. I come in peace. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Honey, I shrunk the Url…
July 26, 2009 at 10:30 pm | Posted in arbit, criticism, humour, twitter | 6 CommentsTags: bit.ly, bitly, deve gowda, idlyvada, karunanidhi, limca book of records, review, spamming, tinyurl, tooboredtotwitter, toolongtotwitter, twitter, veerappa moily
For numerous reasons, I don’t like bit.ly so much. Some of them being –
- They don’t have a middle layer which acts as a NSFW [ stands for Get Kicked Out of Office if you open This here] warning. There’s the append ‘+’ at the end of the link hack. But seriously, who does that usually? You barely have enough time to click on links these days, save reading their contents as well.
- They’ve a “This page has been reported to serve malware in generous doses” middle layer, but since it’s Mr.Twitter who’s one of their major link sources, this has to be more ‘realtime’. Depends on what realtime means, yes. But everyone’s using that word nowadays, so what the heck.
- They’ve a twitter monopoly. You’ve got to hate the leader. It’s a rule.
So, Should I plan to start my own Url Shortening service, it wouldn’t have all these issues. And just to humor myself, I shall call it id.ly
And since there’s no Country Top-Level domain with .da, I’ll have no competitors like va.da . Humour monopoly, FTW…
Pre-(Post-Script):
Is there a Mai Ka Laal, who can gift Mr. Veerappa with a moi.ly domain… He’d be the cool-kid on the block, instead of the peddler-like grumpy face that he flaunts usually.
You know, as genuinely awesome as the chap to the right, who’s currently booked under the Limca records, for the fastest fast in India. [ No, I’m kidding. Maybe]
Obligatory Show-off Post-script section :
Whate pity. Honourable Son of the Soil can’t get the prized gow.da. He’ll have to settle for de.ve , I guess.
Be there, or Be Squared?
June 4, 2009 at 11:51 pm | Posted in arbit, criticism, fakereviews, humour, Internet, Linux, Microsoft, narcissism, Politics, sarcasm, Technical | 6 CommentsTags: arnab goswami, bing, conspiracy theory, deve gowda, geekiness, google, google squared, kthnxbai, Linux, manmohan singh, notareview, prakash karat, tiananmen square, wolfram, wolfram alpha
In a desperate attempt to bridge the gap between WolfRam Alpha and itself, Google released something known as Google Squared. [ The service ] [ The official Post].
My conspiracy theory is that this is a majorly quadratic statement by Google in the light of the Tiananmen Square Incident Anniversary, which happens to be on June 4th[ i.e, Today ].
To all those crazy lunatics over there, let me fuel it further by saying that June is the 6th Month, and 4 is the date. Oh . Holy Moly, that’s 6 and 4. => 64? Get it? That’s a perfect square…
Go ahead, I’ve made your day. Send all those crazy forwards, and troll in all possible forums out there, because deep within your stupid hearts, you know it to be true.
With all due respects to Google, Wolfram Alpha still continues to totally arouse Geeky researchers ( and trivia hunters), with the same feeling that people used to [ and still get ], when randomly bouncing off wikipedia pages.
And in keeping up with my holy tradition of keeping the kernel of the post in the very end, and most often than not, missing it entirely, here’s them goodies…
[ Open the image in a different tab, if you wish ]
Well, there has been no editing absolutely. There in lies my integrity [ as well as differentiability, from other arbit meme creators out there ]. Don’t believe me, check it out.
http://www.google.com/squared/table/ageTYAeHzVe5UFezJFN2MFtg
Now, let me expertly dissect this information, as a certain annoying Arnab ComeSwami would.
Some Salient Features:
- Vajpayee proves why he’s still the best out there. He’s a DLF maximum, and a citi moment of success all rolled into one smooth package.
- Karat’s priced at 2 Dollars. he he. Take that you pseudo-communisty bleddy red-chaddis. No Marx for you this time. For all that dirty Lenin that you washed in public, serves you right.
- Advani’s priced slightly higher than Mr.Singh. That’s just the added value of viral marketing, and internet flash ads. And him being the Iron Man of India, to boot.
- Lalu foxes even Google. Even the mighty know-it-all search engine cannot figure out how much stash the Bihari-Bond is hiding.
- Sonia Gandhi – well, I refrain from commenting, in accordance with previously maintained policies. Respect mam, or as they say in fluent Italian, ‘KThnxBai‘.
In other search engine news : Microsofty released their new polished search service, which they call Bing.
which apparently stands for ” But It’s Not Google”.
Several scapegoats have confirmed this fact to be true, and have unanimously bleated out that a search engine so lousy, cannot definitely be a clone of Google.
But, do not shoo off this Bingy thingy so soon. If history has taught us anything, [ other than about one crazy dude pillaging through other another crazy dude’s city, and general voyeuristic/hedonistic activities of folks with lots of cash ] , it is this.
“Services/Movements/ Tools/ Softwares with recursive names might not be successful commercially, but will definitely end up being a major pain-in-the-ass of the opposite party concerned. ”
off the cuff examples being, GNU, LAME, WiNe.
So, watch out. Microsoft hopes for some Bing Bling soon…
Oh, and by the way. This happens to be my 50th post.[ Hurrah, yippee yay. Saavdhaan, Vishraam.]
Muchas Gracias to all of you for all this nice readership thing that’s happening so far.
Keep up the good work 🙂
If there was an award for the highest blogging throughput, an award for the most prolific and active blogger out there, you know, the person with all the witty regular posts, and amazing rapport with the readers…..
I wouldn’t have got it.
N-Blox Reloaded…
January 20, 2009 at 12:29 am | Posted in arbit, chappar, criticism, Ethics, Internet, nitk, protocol, Visions | Leave a commentTags: byethehost, flash games, geekiness, incident, nblox, paul neave, php, psychedelia, retro games, Sakkut, southpark, tetris
Not exactly a post. [ Ergo, something better.]
/***************************************************************************************************/
[Btw, My hiatus is surprisingly, not due to a writer’s block. This is your chance. Enjoy while it lasts…For be warned, Soon, I’ll be back. With my regular doses of textual – harassment. Phew, I can’t be booked for that] /************************************************************************************************/
My love for tetris has been documented pretty well over here. So I’ll not kutch further.
I discovered N-Blox some days ago, when chappar , wanting to get some cheap highs, was looking at psychedelic visuals on this site. And sent it to me.
Turns out Paul Neave is a brilliant Flash designer, with a passion for Retro games. Kewl. And I found Tetris. Blissh.
The gameplay is superb[ Considering that there’s not much scope for innovation]. But as it turns out, Neave is a bit of a N*gger [ Southpark fundaes]. With the sole intent of pissing off fans, he sets out and puts a score_reset which is called at the stroke of midnight.
I could think of only a few possible excuses that he could have.
- Probably to save on diskspace of the scores.txt file. [Wtf]
- To give every newbie a chance to figure on the highscore board. Turns out they already do. Through simple,stupid, “Injection” techniques. [Come on, Man you…]
- “It’s my game.” “Respect Mah Authoritah“…[ Awesome ]
Well, the third reason seemed the most logical, and we laud his spunk n all that, but we didn’t like it in principle. He could have at least given people the source code and allow us to tinker with it. But that’s his choice and we respect that.
But, we did want the game.
So, The php whiz from college, and myself, tweaked around the flash file for a while to send the scores to a different location. And the php to receive, process the scores at this remote location, and send back the results back to the flash file. No edits to the gameplay/graphics. Honest.
Did someone miss a beat? Never mind, Let me beat you again.
Me n php? Ha ha…
Well, truth be told, he did both of those. Great work dude, and btw, the Inci site rocks, as usual.
And me, with my stupendous Html skills, set up an oldschool website, which is approximately Web 0.2. So, enjoy Nblox on the site shown below ( while it lasts), and u get to post ur highscore as well.
So, without much ado, here’s N-Blox Reloaded peoples…
Phree Publicity: Check out http://byethost.com/ Free, and Hassle-free webhosting, with php support, and nice technical support as well.
Should have guessed…
November 17, 2008 at 12:20 am | Posted in arbit, chappar, humour, nitk, sarcasm, Technical | 10 CommentsTags: chappar, creepy tech, gender analyzer, google translate, hinglish, machine learning, text classification, uclassify
While riding on the internets, and surfing the tubes, I came across this nifty site called Gender Analyzer. Using free text classifier algorithms from a site called Uclassify, this site aims to judge whether a blog/website is written by a woman or a man. A very active research topic.
I tried out using some known standard cases, and here’s the goldmine.
Gosh, I didn’t know that Machine Learning had become so accurate these days. Be paranoid, very.
Incidentally, Chappar, when you were on wordpress, your manliness rating was 83%. Did anything special happen during the transition phase?
A thousand apologies, plus one extra, just in case.
And to those who might think of an oh-so-brilliant, “Look who’s talking !!!”,line. I’m at 71%. Muha ha ha.
P.S: Incidentally again, this is the 2nd in the chappar series of posts, the first one having been written nearly 2 years ago.[hyper-link to click in case you’re bored]
Update: Google Hindi translation of this post is too funny.
excerpt: जबकि internets पर, घुड़सवारी और ट्यूबों सर्फिंग, मैं इस गंधा साइट भर में आया जेंडर विश्लेषक कहते हैं
lol [link]
Vista – On the Rocks. Azure in the Clouds…
October 28, 2008 at 11:24 pm | Posted in arbit, criticism, humour, sarcasm, Technical, Visions | Leave a commentTags: azure, beijing olympics, blue screen of death, bsod, cloud computing, etymology, fakereviews, Microsoft, notareview, windows
Seeing this brilliant piece of satire by America’s Finest news Source – The Onion News, made me think.
With Vista having chosen the Red Screen of Death , as its official time-please message , the devout and loyal fans of a much peaceful colour were very disappointed. Having to see the altogether familiar shade just on special occasions like the Beijing Olympics, did take its toll on an XP zealot.
BSOD was ZOMG level in funnity. It was the zen in awesomeness. It unleashed previously unseen waves of creativity amongst the developers [ to use that time on a different OS, I must confess].
Anyways, here is the kinda froody things that you could do with them blue screens. [ Statutory Warning : Not safe for Work, especially if you’re at Microsoft]
All Brevity.No Wit
October 28, 2008 at 8:31 am | Posted in arbit, humour, nitk, travel, Visions | 1 CommentTags: asim thottumkal, beatles, birthday, chandrayaan, hillary clinton, peter griffin, raveena tandon, seth mcfarlane, vishy anand
It has been a phenomenal week.
We bludgeoned the aussies… Vishy is in a freakingly awesome form, having tricked kramnik through a queen pawn opening move that he rarely uses, and perfecting its nuances through various stages. ISRO made us proud by kickstarting the 2 year chandrayaan programme. This even got a prominent mention in one of obama’s campaign speeches. Which was lapped up by mr.nair, even though it was kinda meant to be in a derogatory context.
Sure, there are homegrown idiots who deny the importance of such an achievement.
Commies don’t want us racing with china. Most crankpots question the need to spend crores on what they feel is a non-practical space mission. See,this is just a scientific mission right? , is their argument.
STFU, is my counter argument.
I rest my case.
- Maharaja of Kashmir acceding to join India.
- Beatles were knighted.
- A kid got a heart transplant from a baboon.
- I can’t believe that the Ghajini female, Asin Thottumkal is exactly one year older.
- small pox officially chucked out of the world..
- I don’t have an entry in wiki yet, so can’t quote it…some time soon..
- Seth Mcfarlane – The creator of Family guy [A long chain of stringed WTF’s ] came into existence. This chap’s only valid work of art is probably modelling peter griffin to look like royan…lol
- chandrayaan didn’t launch on my b’day…sob sob.. Still, it’ll reach some prominent orbit location, and I’ll take solace with that.
- i’m typing this post on my cell phone hence can’t research more.
But i assure you, its been a friendly day in history. And as an ardent smoker of the peace-pipe, i welcome that.
Times of India – Bangalore Festival
October 20, 2008 at 1:25 pm | Posted in Bengaluru, Carnatic, Ethics, humour, music | 2 CommentsTags: Bangalore Festival, Bengaluru, concert, fusion, mandolin shrinivas, Palace Grounds, sivamani, steven, times of india, world music
I have been appreciative of The Times of India with respect to two aspects so far.
•Newspaper in Education (N.I.E)
•Providing hosting space for R.K.Laxman’s awesome offline cartoon strips.
I add one more to that illustrious list today. The TOI Bengaluru Festival.
The PR guys at TOI have been spot on, while conceptualizing an event of this scale. They have gained lots of public goodwill for sure.
Sunday evening featured a fusion concert by U.Shrinivas on the Mandolin, Steven on the Keyboard, and Sivamani on anything that could be remotely called as a percussion instrument.
This was my first visit to Palace grounds ( surprising, yet true ). I realised its ginormity first hand, by landing on the opposite end and doing a complete circumferential tour.
The only means of entry were the generous free passes given at TOI venues, which unfortunately I didn’t have. I was waiting for a friend who apparently got enticed by the Bangalore traffic, and would turn up late.
Seeing me wait at the gates, a kind Police Maama let me in. I assure you, this was not a security lapse. It must have been my very innocent looking face.
The free pass system only exists, to keep a certain degree of vandals out of the venue ( The ones who are really lazy not to get passes ). True audiophiles ( such as yu-know-whu) should be let in without such formalities.
The host, a Ms. Rachana Bharadwaj,was greeted in typical boorish fashion, as is now synonymous with beautiful emcees. A cultural evening, did you say?
Shrinivas took centrestage, Sivamani to his right, and Steven to his left. The spotlight however was to change directions in a while.
Shrinivas began with a smooth Jazz piece, with each passing note creating a delightful sensation. Mandolin is a classy instrument, and He, having reached the pinnacle of perfection, can do such fascinating gamakas on it.
The second piece was even better. He was forced,however, to make it an interlude, as Nature decided to improvise.
Intensely ironic, the rain did fall in torrents.
I, being, of the vertically challenged variety, wasn’t even able to see the artists before. The rain proved to be quite useful. Many Pseduo-interested people, and not-so-enthusiastic Old Uncle-Aunty pairs decided to flee. And I chose to use this opportunity to go to the very front.
The artists, being wary of their instruments, stopped playing. Finally paying heed to the crowd chanting “Shivu, Shivu”, Mani decided to show us a tiny subspace of his vast repertoire of Percussion knowledge.
He began with a huge Suitcase, and the audience went crazy. This was to be the defining moment of the concert, with audience demanding an encore at various times, just by shouting ” Suitcase, Suitcase “.
Deciding not to tease the audience further, he went back to the drums. This time, aided by a DJ playing Kannada songs in the background.
Songs, like ” Baanallu Neene,Buviyallu Neene”, etc. The crowd went insane when he started ” Huttidare Kannada Naadalli Huttabeku”, and rightly so. And by the crowd, I mean myself as well.
Some idiot deciding to be a supreme-idiot, hurled some obscenities about Dr.Rajkumar. The police took good care of him. Surprisingly, the chap was a Kannadiga. Troubled times, these.
We were absolutely drenched in the rain, and yet we were dancing to the tunes of Humma Humma. Such was the magic in Sivamani’s beats.
Many of my friends are majorly repenting for not having attended this concert. Poor Souls.
Eventually, it stopped raining. The artists started a three layered piece, with the artists trying to blend into each other by the end of each cycle. Shrinivas was wickedly quick, and it became kinda tough to follow, yet melodious to listen.
Steven’s keyboard was making majestic soaring sounds, that seem to balance the tempo created by Siva’s beats.
The last piece of the concert was an improvised version of Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, with mandolin being the ruling instrument.
Rachana seemed to have forgotten that there were artists other than Sivamani on the stage, but she seemed too excited to care.
Siva announced Shrinivas’s name eventually, and the crowd cheered in unison. He also thanked the audience in kannada, speaking about ” Raagi Mudde” etc, and we were naturally pleased.
Siva continued, this time with bottles, watercans, the Daayan of a Tabla, some pots, and everything else he could lay his hands on. It was just ama-jing. In the coming few days, if you find me percussioning random objects, don’t be surprised.
Too bad, I can’t make it to Shivkumar Sharma’s Santoor concert. Do visit it, if you have the chance.
The pass may be free, but the event shall be priceless.
Thanks again, to the Times of India, The Bangalore Police ( for letting me in, and for controlling the unruly crowd), and most importantly to the artists, for having given Bangalore a dreamy rainy evening to remember. ( and to Rachana, for being so pretty ).
Cheerio,
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The Full Monty Problem…
October 6, 2008 at 10:27 pm | Posted in arbit, humour, literary, sarcasm, spam, Technical, travel | 12 CommentsTags: bobby da dhaba, bournvita quiz contest, chintu candy, dasgupta, derek o'brien, full monty, himesh reshammiya, i respect sardars, iit coaching, jim morrison, karan johar, karzz, koffee with karan, monty hall problem, nigeria, phishing scams, probability, sardar jokes are funny, tata mcgraw hill
Monty Singh was a wise man. The brightest in the land.
On that eventful Thursday, he received an email. This was a mail like.no.other.
It was from a Nigerian King.
A real friggin rich Nigger Raja. [P.C version – Niger. But different country]
Monty Singh was a pyoor Veggie. He didn’t like spam.
But this mail had to be genuine. His IIT alumnian brain could sense it. It was authentic. Right down to the black fonted signature in Wingdings.
He glanced through the contents. He couldn’t believe it. He read it again, this time slowly, and only then did the weight of the matter dawn on him.
He was chosen to participate in a Game show. A quiz of sorts.
Monty smirked. He was an ace quizzer. How he missed those days.
Flashback : Brought to you by Chintu Candy.
It was in seventh standard. He had had his morning’s cuppa’ Horlicks.
Then he went to BQC, thrashed Derek O’Brien mostly left, and occasionally right as well. Pinky Singh was a proud mother that day.
Monty came back from his reverie. He had to think this through.
Monty loved Probability. He simulated a random bit generator. Lady Luck was with him. “Go to Nigeria, you worthless bastard!”, she bellowed.
The queue for the Visa was shorter than he had expected. There was just one local brown model visiting the country for a Fair and Lovely – Limited Nigerian Edition ad-shoot. He grinned as he saw the neighbouring ‘US of A’ Visa line, mostly consisting of bespectacled grad wannabees.
He was received in Nigeria, amidst a royal fanfare. He was led to the only 7 star hotel in the country – Bobby Da Dhaba. Monty felt right at home.
He woke up that morning, and got himself a beer.
Oops. Wrong post!!!
Monty was up and soon spiffily dressed himself. His father’s pink tie would go well with his lemon yellow shirt.
Karan Johar, the host, looked surprisingly hetero that morning. Must be all that Koffee, thought Monty. “Never mind his temporary non-gayness”. “Concentrate”, he said to himself, as he walked to the stage, which was lit by a thousand colour-colour LED’s. A sight to behold.
Monty raced through the questions like Usain Bolt on steroids. They didn’t call him “Monty Mastermind” just like that.
The final question. This was a toughie. Monty kept his cool. He worked it out. Ruddy Brilliant. He was dingchakkingly good.
“And now Mr.Monty. How bout a bonus round”, shrieked Johar.
“ A flirty car, or you lose it all…..”
No, wait. No one had told him about a bloody bonus round.
As if reading his concerns, Johar replied, “ Don’t worry, Its just a tiny game of probability”.
Gosh. Monty almost had a tiny orgasm.
“ Very similar to the Monty Hall scenario, I take it that you know about it”, asked Johar.
“Pfft. Know about it? Why do you think my dad named me Monty?”
“Oh. I thought that was because you like to….. Never mind…”
“Ok. All the doors are hidden behind this wall. Just for kicks”. “And…”
“Oh. Will you start already”. “I choose door no.2”. “Which car is it btw?”
“Premier Padmini’s hot friend, Diablo Lamborghini….” “ Whate joke . Whate joke. Ha . Ha.. I know . I can be a pain in the bottoms sometimes”, quipped Karan Johar.
“Ok. Mr.Monty. I’ll open door no.1 and… WTF…”.
“Damn you, Nigerians, stop touching my goat”.
Monty’s brain started working faster than a computer. All those nuggets from Dasgupta, and T.M.H, heck even some from Krishna’s came back to him in a rush. He evoked Bayes, and his conditional Probabilistic models. And in a jiffy, the answer was gambolling right in front of his eyes.
“So, Mr. Monty, what’s your call? Will you flip your choice, or keep it?”
“ Duh. Flip my choice. Obs”.
“Ok. Have it your way.” ……. “ “Hurrah, You win….”
…..
…..
…..
…..
“ the goat”.
“There were only two doors. Retard”….
All rise for the Nigerian Anthem.
P.S : Monty Singh was a wise man. The brightest in the land.
Update – 7-10-2008
Atul asked me whether this was a Himesh Reshammiya belting post? Actually, I am currently cursing myself for not noticing that Himesh is playing Monty’s role in Karzzzzzzz ( Did I miss a ‘z’? ).
Quoting Himesh – ” Rishi Kapoor is the best-looking Monty, I’m the worst” – We agree.
That, friends, is a different Full-Monty-Problem altogether.
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