A post on blogging (aka this title sucks)

Ok, since I could not think of anything else, I might as well blog about..well..what I blog about. I see that my posts overwhelmingly lean towards humor. It's not that I don't attempt other areas but I prefer humor for a few reasons.

Firstly, a blog should and will invariably capture the personality of the blogger. Blogs reveal the domain of comfort of the author and for me that domain is humor. All of us have an opinion on everything and blogs are a way to express them but does the reader really care about what you feel about rising interest rates (unless you are the RBI governor blogging) or how you analyze core dumps on BSD unix ?. So I might as well keep it light and fun. If someone tells me that they blog only for themselves and don’t care if people read it or not, then I think they are just full of it. Those guys are better off writing a dairy. The very fact that someone chose to put something out on the internet shows an interest in having it read by somebody else. I only want to make sure that in case that somebody else bumps into this blog, they will stay here for a second longer before bouncing off. That’s not to say that I will not write about serious stuff. I have and will blog on other issues if I feel strongly about them. But more often than not I just let them be, which leads me to the second reason.

A blog post is typically under 600 words, any longer and it will be difficult to sustain the interest of the reader. I need to think of something that is interesting enough and short enough. Humor is one way to do it. And in the 'short stories' stuff, I usually go for something that has a shock value or fun value. One can achieve that in a short post. A serious story, on the hand, requires considerable situational setting and mood build up which would be difficult to fit into a blog post.

And lastly, blogging is therapeutic for me. Some people smoke, some drink, I blog. I know it’s probably a poor choice over the other two but hey, no fines on blogging in public and you can drive after you blog.

So there, I have managed to get one post in, this month. So long folk(s), I will be back when the next idea strikes me or when it’s time for therapy (that should be soon).

Till death do us part

“Ouch, there are the cramps again” Anju moaned as she sat down on the chair clutching her stomach.

Jai looked at her with a scowl on his face “Well, I have been telling you to go see our doctor but you never listen to me”

“It’s not a big deal really, must be acidity or something. You better finish shaving and get ready quickly. You are already running late for work”

“You have been having these cramps pretty frequently these days. Let me take an appointment with Dr.Vasudha for this evening” said Jai as he dabbed some cologne on his face.

He stepped out of the bathroom and stood still for a moment holding on to the wall for support.

“What is it, Jai ?”

“I don’t know but my head spins sometimes and I feel like I am about to throw up. It must be an attack of Vertigo”

“You have complained about this the past few days. You need to see a doctor as well” Anju said.

“I guess it is due to all the stress at work. It’s been hectic lately as I need to close this tender I am working on as quickly as possible. Hopefully, it should be over by this week” he answered as he picked up his laptop to leave for work.

“Alright, you take care ok ?. And try and come home soon” said Anju as she saw him to the door.

Jai got into his car and started for work. After a few minutes of driving, he stopped in front of a clinic. After having parked the car, he entered the clinic and walked into the doctor’s cabin.

“Hi Vasudha”

“Jai, what took you so long, I have been waiting for you !!” the lady in white, replied.

“Looks like it is working” said Jai “she has been having them more frequently over the last few days. How much longer will it take ?”

“Another couple more times and it should be done” said Vasudha

“I am bringing her to you this evening. Give her the same stuff you gave her last time. I just want to put an end to this as quickly as possible. I can’t stand being away from you for long.” Jai said.

“Don’t worry darling, we will have to wait for another week or so. After that, it’s just you and me” said Vasudha.

“By the way, what is the stuff that you have been giving her ?” enquired Jai

“Thallium” replied Vasudha

Back home, Anju put on a pair of gloves, went into the bathroom and came out with the bottle of after-shave lotion.

“Eight years in this hell hole being married to a control freak…” cursed Anju under her breath as she unscrewed the cap of the bottle.

“At least the bastard has insurance worth 50 lakhs” she continued cursing as she carefully poured some white powder into the cologne.

“A few weeks of this stuff should take care of him and it’s already been a week. A couple more and I shall be single, free and rich” Anju screwed the cap back on and replaced the bottle back on the shelf.

“Thanks to whoever discovered potassium cyanide” she told herself as she walked back to the living room.



[Epilogue: Well, what started out as an attempt to write a tale of romance ended up being a dark and slightly creepy story. See, I just can’t write romance. But then, this isn’t so bad either]

Kudos

Time for some good news and bad news - first the good news, ISRO scientists have made the nation proud with the successful launch of chandrayan. The bad news – they forgot to put Mamatha Bannerji onboard.

On inquiring with ISRO on this omission, the spokesperson’s response was “Not far enough”. Apparently, ISRO plans to start work on an even grander space shuttle and will make sure that Ms.Bannerji gets on it. The intended destination for the new shuttle is the Sun.

Until then let’s rejoice this milestone that India has achieved in the realm of space exploration.

Ps: I am currently suffering from a disease known as 'Writer's Block' and words refuse to flow out. I hope to get out of it soon. I may be a little irregular in my blogging for sometime to come. So all you people out there who don't read my blog, you can continue to not do so.

Spirit of science lives on

It is that time of the year when people with two or less brain cells are rewarded for their outstanding achievements in science, (‘outstanding’ that is, like a baboon’s bottom in a Miss Universe pageant.)

Yes, dear folks, the Ig Nobel prizes for the year 2008 have been announced.

Ig Nobel 2008

Check out the prize for work on cognitive science, a Japanese research team showed that slime moulds can find their way through mazes. This is something we Indians have known for a long time. The slime moulds found in India are way smarter than those in Japan. Leave aside mazes, the moulds here find their way right into parliament. Let’s see you top that, Japanese goo !!!

And now to the ground breaking work in Biology where a team showed that fleas on dogs jump higher than fleas on cats. After having completed this momentous task, the team has decided to spend the rest of the year scratching themselves.

The research that concerns me most is the one on Coco Cola. Two teams were awarded the Ig Nobel in Chemistry. One team found that Coco Cola was an effective spermicide while the other team showed just the opposite. I don’t even want to think about how they went about researching this but my bet is that they worked very closely with the team which was awarded the Economics prize. Anyway, I believe that as long as men stick to just drinking coke, they will be ok.

The physics award went to the research which showed that heaps of string and hair will tangle up in knots eventually. Personally though I feel it would have been a lot more useful if they tried to find out if heaps of string already in knots would eventually untangle themselves and if it works on tongues too (that would surely help me)

Of course, there are awards given away in other areas as well. But I dare not mention all of them here because you may find it hard to resist laughter.

And that could be dangerous if you are drinking coke...


[In case you missed my last year's Ig Nobel update, here it is -
Pushing the frontiers of science ]

Complimentary Insults

Everyone loves compliments and I am no exception. But there are some compliments that I believe are designed solely to make you feel good for the moment but are actually insults in disguise. And I seem to be getting more of these as time goes by.

“Hey, you look great today” said a colleague and I felt nice about it and thanked him.

But then I thought “Wait a minute, I look good today ?. As opposed to what ?, all these years when I looked like crap, huh ? !!!”. Now I don’t talk to that colleague anymore.

I really feel sorry for the ladies who get far more compliments than guys.

Remember, all compliments are always in comparison to your normal self. So if someone tells you “Hey, you look lovely in that dress”. It may sound nice but what it actually means is that you normally look hideous in all other outfits but somehow this particular dress makes you look lovely which is so surprising that I actually had to tell you about it.

This is when you slap the person who said that.

Infact, I think it is better to make a frank insult than a deceptive compliment. For example, a few days ago, I was showing a few photos from a last year’s trip to a couple of people at work. And one of them with all seriousness said “You look good in those photos, I can’t believe that you have changed so much in one year. What happened ?”

As surprised that I was by this unfiltered expression of opinion (‘truth’ would probably be a better word but I will stick to ‘opinion’, alright), I was still able to have a good laugh at it.

Thankfully, the uglier I seem to have got, the better my sense of humor seems to have become. Extrapolating it further, this means that the day people begin laughing uncontrollably at my blog posts is the day when I shall have to start walking around with a towel over face

The moral of the story is that compliments are far more insidious than what they seem. I would any day prefer an honest insult to a sinister compliment. It’s another matter that most of the times, I can’t even tell the difference.

So if you really want to make me feel good, just tell me something like “What’s wrong with you today, this post is so ordinary”. Now, that’s what I call a compliment.

But if somehow you actually think this post is funny, then I guess it is towel time for me...

The silver lining

“Oh, your hair is turning grey. I think you should get married now”

I am beginning to get this comment increasingly these days. I really don’t understand what the connection is!!. Ok, so I get married and my wife is somehow going to turn my hair black again ?. It’s as if women have these amazing remedies that they are going to tell you only after you marry them.

“Dear, now that I took the advice of people about my receding hairline and got married, tell me how to grow it all back ?”

“Sorry honey, I just know the secret to making your paunch vanish”

“Damn, I should have married your sister instead”

And do you know what’s worse than being single with graying hair ? - Being a single * Indian * with graying hair. Because in India, if you are single then it is a free pass for everyone to ask you about it without any hesitation. Marriage and money are the two most common questions that you have to deal with, the only criteria is that the other person must be older than you. I have been asked by total strangers on the bus about how much salary I make, whether I am married and why not. Unfortunately for me, none of these strangers were good looking, single or female.

The other big trouble is when you have to attend social events like your cousin’s wedding. Here everyone and their aunt (especially their aunt) would want to know when you are getting married. And this being the land of arranged marriages, each aunt knows this one girl who is ideal wife material (whatever that is). I usually tell them that I would not want to marry any girl who is willing to marry me (come on, that’s poor judgment right there and I am looking for someone smarter than that). But that does not deter the aunt one bit in her efforts to convince me and more often than not, I am on the look out for an escape route like the door, the fire escape, the kitchen sink...whatever. I just want to get away from there. These are some of the times when I desperately wish for a telemarketing call on my mobile.

“Hello Sir, this is Manjula calling from StanChart bank, would you be interested in our credit card ?”

“Thank you, thank you so much lady. Oh boy, Am I glad to hear your voice. You are a life saver. You are my guardian angel. I am so luc...”

“Umm...Sir, on second thoughts, I don’t think we want you to have our card and we won’t call you again” [click]

I wonder why I don’t get too many telemarketing calls these days. I suspect Manjula has probably told all her friends in other call centers about me. So that makes me the only person who has officially been blacklisted by all telemarketers. I can understand that but I do feel somewhat offended that even the male telemarketers have stopped calling and that is just plain mean on their part. After all, who knows I may need that credit card or that personal loan sometime, in case I do get married.

But until such time, I need a remedy....got dye, anyone ?

Click Click

For many years now, I have had a burning desire to discover my latent photography skills. Ok, maybe ‘burning’ is too strong a word; let’s say lukewarm tending towards hot. So I bought a digital SLR camera last week. My inspiration has been these fabulous shots of birds that I find on the net. I have always wanted to shoot pictures like those. Of course, being an avid bird watcher with a keen eye for spotting birds, it makes even more sense to buy one.

“Ah !!, that’s an adolescent Greater Coucal or...a crow. Darn it, that’s a cow”

Alright, my bird identification skills need a little more work. A few more days and I will be able to figure out the birds from the animals. But that is no way a reflection of my need for a camera. Like I said I finally bought one having saved enough money over the last several years and having promised the shopkeeper to do his dishes in lieu of the rest of the cost as the damn thing costs a fortune. And for that money, every bird photo I shoot bloody well look like a hot chick.

“Hey you said this was a picture of a scaly breasted munia but what I see here is Elizabeth Hurley”

“Yeah. Same thing”

On Sunday, I took the camera out for a little spin to see how it would do. For a guy who has only handled a 1984 model Yashica camera which had like three moving parts (that’s including the photographer), a DSLR can be a daunting experience. I spent the first ten minutes practicing taking the camera out of the bag and putting it back in. The next few hours were spent in pouring through the user manual. Having finally found the ‘click’ button, I decided to try some shots.

So standing in the balcony of my house, I kept shooting everything in sight – leaves, stray dogs, mud. Quickly, I realized that the secret to great photography involves three steps -Firstly, invest in a good camera which I did; secondly, know how to operate it which I had spent time on; finally, and this is the crucial part, find a good photographer.

Because, looking at the photos I clicked, I knew I could have used a cheap pencil and drawn them all better by hand instead. And I am terrible at drawing. Apparently, buying a DSLR camera does not automatically make you a great photographer. When I think about it, it does make sense – you know, just because you have a calendar, it does not mean that you are going to go out on dates.

That was a deep philosophical moment of introspection for me. But as in the case of all men, I refuse to learn from philosophical insights and shall continue to slog on with my camera (and keep buying calendars, for that matter) until I can finally take decent pictures. I shall work on it mornings through afternoons.

But not in the evenings because that’s when I need to do the dishes at the shopkeeper’s

Tips on humor writeups

[I had posted this last week but just realized that it is missing, I must have deleted it by accident. So here goes]

In this post, I shall put down my thoughts on how I go about writing humor. If it seems gratuitous, that’s because it is. I just could not think of anything else to write this week and hence I thought I might as well jot down a post on how I approach the ‘Laugh Out Loud’ posts that I write. Here are some of the rules that I have for myself

1. There is no such thing called ‘universal humor’ because humor is *always* context based and you cannot expect everybody to share the same context. So forget about trying to come up with a post that everyone will ‘get’.

2. Do not try to explain the context in detail. It kills the joke. Like I said, you cannot target everyone; people who get your sense of humor will keep coming back. At the same time, do not pick a context that is obscure and too specialized. For example, a pun that goes “Mary had a little lamb…for breakfast” would have a lot more people chuckling (except a few vegetarians maybe) than something like “Does Pavlov’s name ring a bell ?” which probably very few people would get.

3. Assume that your readers are at the same level of intelligence that you are – no more, no less. If you don’t have too many readers, then you are a gifted person...either way.

4. People ask me if the posts where I write about my experiences actually happened that way. Humor writing is to writing what caricature is to drawing. Is a caricature the exact representation of the person ?. No. If so, then is it false ?. No again. See, a caricature is an exaggeration of certain features that are slightly more prominent than the others. Humor writing is very much the same; you take a certain incident and then depict it with a different interpretation.

5. Humor is as much about the ability to get the person to ‘see’ what you are talking about, as it is about leaving enough to their imagination to complete the picture. Write such that it conjures up an image in the person’s mind. Then give just enough hints for the person to complete the situation in their mind. I use this technique the most.

6. Remember that the humor that you are attempting to put across should be something that made you laugh when you first thought about it. A forced attempt at humor is going to show easily. Some of my posts started off as a one liner in my head while driving.

7. Finally, the toughest aspect of humor write-ups is to come up with the right combination of words that will most effectively deliver the joke. This may seem trivial but I believe that certain word combinations can evoke a stronger response than others that mean exactly the same.

These are the rules that I work with. If you have any inputs on how you approach humor, do share them here.

Digressing a bit, it would be great to know who my readers are (other than a few who are forced to read my posts just because they happen to be my friends). Do drop a line to let me know if I am getting better or worse over time. Without feedback, it is difficult to judge if my posts have the intended effect.

And I am done with Olympics

The Olympic Games have ended. This post completes my blog trilogy on the Olympics which involved in-depth analysis and comprehensive coverage of the games which I followed diligently. Diligently, that is when ever I could find time to switch channels from cricket.

During one such channel flip, I caught some swimming action. There were these beautiful legs coming out of water and moving in perfect synchrony. Occasionally, the lovely ladies to whom the legs belonged would surface up and continue their synchronized swimming. It was such a delight to watch. I mean the legs; I don’t care much about synchronization, anyway.

This event got me thinking (here comes the in-depth analysis part), why don’t we have synchronized swimming for men ?. My guess is that the event would not really be popular. Think about it, a bunch of men sticking their hairy legs out of water. How many would pay to see that (apart from Karan Johar, that is) ?. Thankfully, men don’t insist being on parity with women here.

On the other hand, women would not want to be a part of some sports. For example, sumo wrestling for women isn’t all that popular. Not because men don’t want to see it but more so because the sport demands that women put on weight deliberately. And how many would want to do that !!. But the toughest act is for the husband of a sumo wrestler, he always has a minefield to dodge.

“Dear, do I look fat in this dress ?”

“Yeah...umm...No...umm...It does not matter...umm...I think I will just shoot myself instead”

The poor man is in for trouble no matter what. And you don’t want to piss off a sumo wrestling wife, do you ?. Good thing that sumo wrestling is not an Olympic sport.

Coming back to the Beijing Olympics, I must admit, China did put on a grand show. It would be a tough act for England to follow. I have a dream when one day India will host the Olympics. Of course, I also have dreams of being the most admired man in the world, going on a date with Charlize Theron and winning the Nobel Prize for blogging. The Olympics dream will have to get in line.

So the next blog post on sports will be four years from now. I would like to conclude this post with the Olympic motto “Citius Altius Fortius”

I could translate it but it’s all Latin to me…..

Swimming to glory

This being the only blog in the blogosphere that has officially been authorized to bring you the inside secrets of the Olympics (all the rest have been banned access by China), it is my responsibility to keep you abreast of all the sensation happening behind the scenes.

My investigative journalism has led me to this starling discovery.

Michael Phelps is the love child of a sailor and a mermaid !!!.

Well, how else do you account for his incredible accomplishment at swimming, huh ??

The bigger question though is how does a sailor, or for that matter anybody, mate with a mermaid ?. The logistical difficulties are overwhelming. But that topic is beyond the scope of this blog

Coming back to Phelps, if you think my theory is far fetched, do you have a better one ?. Yeah yeah, you will probably come out with some incredibly dumb explanation about his stamina, skill and training also known as blah, blah and blah. But tell me, how can you explain the fact that he has webbed feet ?. Now you are probably shouting “Those are swim fins that swimmers wear. It is standard gear, you moron”. Exactly my point. See, nobody has seen Phelps’s feet and under those flippers are the webbed feet that came from his mother’s side. That’s my theory and I am sticking to it and if you have a problem with that then get your own blog.

But apart from that, it is still unbelievable that this guy won eight individual gold medals while we a billion people in India could only come up with one gold so far. It is shameful, I tell you, absolutely shameful.

Michael Phelps ought to be ashamed of himself, amassing all that gold when there are people out there in other parts of the world who struggle to even spell goald (I am sure he wastes a lot of food too)

We cannot be complacent about our Olympic performance anymore. We need to win more medals next time around and I have a surefire plan for that – India should adopt Michael Phelps. Pay him what it takes to get him to be an Indian citizen. It will probably cost a huge amount of money but we can make up for it by selling all the gold that he wins. If money does not work, we could try threats

"Hey Mike, you better play for India next time or else...."

"Or else what ?, try your third degree methods ? they don't scare me"

"Or else you will be abducted and made to watch Reese Witherspoon movies over and over again”

"Ok ok, where do I sign up ?"

Well, that’s my plan and I am sure it will work I hope you agree that this is the best shot we have at more medals at the Olympics.

Otherwise, we better start searching for mermaids...