Same Old Story

Well, I suppose you've all seen this by now. Some noteworthy points in the video -

• Apparently it's standard practice for security guards to chuck out people who ask scary questions.
• No answer was given to either allegation, of course.
• Note the look of surprise on Rumsfeld's face when the questioner shows knowledge of exactly why Zarkawi was in Baghdad. Not such a good liar after all, eh?

Ah whatever. Nothing surprises me any more, you know, you could tell me tomorrow that W's basement was discovered to be full of goats used for sexual perposes and I wouldn't bat an eyelash. Well, maybe one, because a scandal like that seems to be about the only thing that ever manages to unseat an elected official in this country. Killed ten thousand people? No problem. Spent ludicrous amounts of tax money on self and cronies? No problem, just hush. Proclaimed yourself personally commanded by God to attack Iraq? Shout it from the rooftops! Have questionable taste in mistresses? Out you go! Impeached! Oooh, SCANDAL!

I feel about sixty years old, that's how cynical I'm getting. Tell me, was it always this way, or is politics getting worse? It seems elected officials the world over have begun to aspire to bigger, better things - even Indira Gandhi in all her power-crazed, emergency-declaring madness didn't rush about waging war. She had the decency to loot for personal gain, not maniacal theocratic agendas. Thank god for socialism, eh?

ETA: Looking for a laugh?

The Happy Dance

Yes, there have been no updates lately, but that is because - well -


With a view towards relaxation and general surfing, I trolled LJ for funny icons, and came up with quite a crop.

Yummy

... AND has acting chops. Finally, a Bond I can get on board with!

Boots To Kill For

Look, drool, covet, kill self.



Aaaaahhh. Calvin Klein, $153. I'm just not the type that spends that much on a shoe, no matter how perfectly it would go with the little red dress I plan on wearing to an upcoming Christmas party...

Or am I?

Ratings

It's official. My TV tastes run opposite those of the general public. :P

(Neilsen Media Ratings Table Excerpt)

Rank........................Program.......................Viewers(millions)

7.......................Dancing With the Stars...............18.15

10.....................CSI: Miami................................16.80

19.....................Deal or No Deal..........................14.67

22.....................Two and a Half Men....................14.48

23.....................Heroes......................................14.47

31.....................Old Christine..............................11.47

44.....................My Name Is Earl..........................9.13

51.....................How I Met Your Mother.................8.22

54.....................The Office..................................8.05

Well, almost, because Earl is SUCKY this season, could be used as a case study of how quickly a great show can go to the dogs. Ugh. But if I give Earl credit for last season then the ratings are in fact exactly the opposite of my taste.

The universe is trying to tell me something here, I am sure of it.

SQUEEEEEEE

Two tests

You paid attention during 86% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Letters To Mostly Imaginary Entities

Dear Perpetual Mower Of The Lawn Outside My Apartment,

I wonder if you are aware that -
(a) We are currently well into the month of November
(b) All this cursed grass is three-quarters dead anyway and
(c) What's left will be under six inches of snow before the month is out.

If you will insist on making that bloody racket, kindly consider this your official three-minute notice for impending manual strangulation.

No Love,
Your Neighbour

Dear Mystery Gift To My Husband On His Birthday,

Why so shy? It's all right to make yourself known to me. This game of hide and seek is getting old, and it's no use hinting to me that you're somewhere in my mind. It's a big place, you know.

Come out, come out wherever you are!

love,
Wendelin

Dear Chapter 14:

You wanna play hard to get? Go ahead. I'm up for it. It's on, baby.

Sincerely,
Your soon-to-be-author

Dear Secret Stuff I'm Making For The Birthday,

You'd better turn out good, OR ELSE.

Regards,
Your Maker

PS: pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease... come on...

Dear Other Work I'm Supposed To Do This Week,

You know you're screwed, right? Just checking. I don't like it when either one of us is deluded.

Best wishes,
Wendelin

Question

Has the phrase "UNDER WATER" a secondary meaning I am not aware of? I was trolling Orkut for funny personal ad-type profiles, and came across one that is rather cryptic:

about me: hi,there everything in world is cause of UNDER WATER,so i fight to get a marvelous one
books: under water system
career skills: desgning under water stuff
career interests: only under water
first thing you will notice about me: under water man
five things i can't live without:
1)under water
2)job
3)sport
4)family&relatievs
5)food

The man is intriguingly specific in one particular area -

ideal match: a girl her height is average about 170 cm and her weight is about 55 to 58,her behaviour must be cool&calm, her hair must be black and long, eyes dark brown, she may work or not

Remember how we used to laugh at matrimonial ads? "Wanted: Beautiful, fair, modest bride from good family for tall Telugu brahmin boy, well educated, government job, Rs 10,000/month." Those were the days. :)

Benga-screw-you

WORD to this article. Thank you, Economist, for saying it better than I ever could.

I can just hear the speeches about hanging on to Our Glorious Heritage... what bullshit! You know, India had the chance to educate me about OGH, mould my mind, win me over to its way of thinking. What it did was try to fill my head with cheap propaganda, incorrect maps, blind faith in sainted personalities and next to no real understanding of our history or our society.

I had to leave India to find out the meaning of socialism, the diversity of thought and philosophy among the people always lumped together as "freedom fighters", the true extent of cultural and ethnic differences in the subcontinent, even the real boundaries of my own country. I had to read and find out for myself what my history text books should have taught me about the various kingdoms that governed us for centuries, because all the text books ever held were meaningless platitudes about "good kings" and "bad kings". They lied to me all along!

When I was three years old, my mother explained to me what colonisation meant: "The British stole our flag, little Wendelin." So the kids in my neighbourhood, we made up games where the objective was to steal their flag. My dad went to London on a business trip, and I remember thinking he was a traitor. I'm a total Anglophile now - love their movies, their brand of comedy, their old-school noblesse-oblige culture that probably doesn't even exist any more. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, of all the conquerors we might have had, we really lucked out that it was the British. Imagine if it had been the Japanese that took us over, or the Russians, or (horrors) USA! I doubt these others would have made India their home the way the British did, put in judiciaries and transport systems and schools...

Now you're all going to dump on me talking about rights and atrocities and Jallianwallah Bagh and whatever, but this post is about things that don't get said enough, or at all. Every success that India enjoys today in the world marketplace can be traced to systems that the British set up in our country, and it seems it's not cool to acknowledge it.

What's cool, apparantly, is to identify a rich, vibrant, thriving metropolis with an abysmally dull story of questionable authenticity about - of all things - boiled beans. Boiled beans! By what demented standard is that stupid story greater than the real birth of the city of Bangalore - the English cantonment town, its parks, its courts, its roads, its train station?

You "purists" can go stuff yourselves. It's always going to be Bangalore and Bombay and Calcutta and Madras to me when I'm speaking English.

Winds of Change

Hey, Rumsfeld's out! Democrats are in! Will they pull out of Iraq? Will they flounder and fripper and do nothing much? Ooooh, the suspense is unbearable!

Today I brought in a guy with a pearl-studded gun into the blasted novel. Will the girl he shot die? Will she live? Will she breathe her last jusssst as she's about to spill her dark secret? Ooooh, the suspense is unbearable!

And hey, hanging chad jokes may be on their way back in. Do we celebrate? Do we groaaannn? Oooh, the suspense is unbearable!

Bail Me Out!

My need for self-flagellation is immense. Must be. Why else would I do this? Climb mountains just because they're there, get inspired by the words "One giant leap for mankind", dream up stupendous air castles and then try to build them. I put the Priori of Scion to shame.

Ah, who am I kidding? I've gotten so lazy these days that the least effort sends me on these flights of self-pitying fancy.

You guessed it, I'm in trouble with my book. Bloody book. Stinking, mucky, pathetic, pretentious, sorry-assed excuse for a book which isn't worth the electrons it burns out as it sits on my computer screen. Oh, shitty book.

I don't have writers' block, OK? Read this post. Hullo? I am writing. OK? These are words and they are coming out of my fingertips. My left brain is not suddenly bereft of words or barren of thoughts. Bereft! Look at that! I haven't used that word in years, but it just dripped off my keyboard ... effortlessly. Like rain from a thundercloud, only with a clattery sound rather than - you know - thundery.

This is clearly not writers' block.

What this is I don't know, but you gotta help me. I don't know what to do next with my novel... I am completely stuck, and so you have to pick something for me, and I will write it into the book and that will give me a way to move onward. Vote on something in the column on the right - this is stuff I have mined randomly from the dares flying around on the NaNoWriMo forums.

Ready? Set... vote!

Reconnecting

Orkut has put me back in touch with people I haven't even thought of in years. An exhilarating if somewhat unsettling experience. Very like a roller-coaster.

It's surprising how little they've all changed. The freaks are still freaks, the stuck-up ones still can't be bothered to have a meaningful conversation with lowlifes like me, the friendly ones are still chirpy and happy, the weirdos are still strange. One unbelievably airheaded female is more full of it than ever.

Makes me wonder, you know?

I was a complete mess when I was a kid. On one hand, I was needy and pathetic and a slave for approval, and on the other I was haughty and judgemental and convinced of my superiority. In 6th std (6th grade, whatever) we had an election for class monitor. As a teacher's pet, my nomination was no surprise, but I ended up with one - count 'em - one vote out of sixty. (No, I didn't vote for myself - the nominees were all sent out of the class while the others voted.)

I haven't come very far, have I?

You tell me. I created a Johari window for myself to aid in this stock-taking.

Free Fiction: The Weaveling

I must pause in my marathon session of make-up-bullshit-about-pearls to recommend an astoundingly good entry to PBW's free e-book challenge.

Dean Cochrane's The Weaveling is dark, atmospheric, real and haunting. I'd be raving about this novelette even if I'd bought it, but free fiction doesn't get much better than this.

Back to bullshit factory mode. Over and out.

Ack! Pearls!

You people are crazy to have picked that, I know nothing about pearls. Or Hyderabad. Shit. I've only been there once, and that was when I was 3!!

They're big in Japan, right? OK. Evil Japanese conglomerate attempts takeover of local Hyderabadi pearl-seller's business and bodies - Hyderabadi bodies, Japanese bodies, oyster bodies - shall start to accumulate.

Oh, I don't know. I'll think of something.

Word count: 3,580 (NaNoWriMo servers are clogged, I can't update my counter)
Body count: 0
Chips consumed: 0 (I didn't buy any, BWAHAHAHAHA!)
Mary Jane toffees consumed: 18 (Halloween leftovers :| )
Weight: Pre-NaNo-pounds + 1 (le sigh)