Nugget of brilliance that illuminated the morning

Stumbled upon this piece of sheer past-tensing (Norgay?) genius this morning,

” I put all my icons in my Quick Launch toolbar successfully. I then drug the Quick Launch bar from the taskbar to the desktop “

I imagine Messrs. Wren and Martin not only turned in their graves but, possibly sensing that such a refreshingly novel interpretation of their beloved work merits much more, have actually dug themselves out of their respective graves, smacked each other silly and are now turning in the other person’s grave.

Speaking of graves, I guess this blog is back.

She went that way

Megha’s latest post got me thinking about the whole eloping (elopement?) process. My ability to instantly zero in on the heart of the matter made me wonder – why do they call it running away from home? How do they know? Maybe the kids took a cab.

And why is it that running away from something is bad, but walking away from something is good? It is good, for instance, to walk away from a fight, but bad to run away from one. Why? One would think that, all things considered, running away would be better. In both cases, you don’t end up in a fight, but you burn more calories in the former, as an added bonus.

And while we’re being pedantic with our antics, why do they say “added bonus”? Isn’t the addition implied? Is there such a thing as a subtracted bonus? Do they show you the bonus and then take it away?

Remembering “Remembering the season”

Fall is a season I identify with a lot. It’s my favorite season by far, and I would have liked to pen something poetic about it. However, I re-read a post by Megha where she talks about fall, and decided to just link to her instead. It is an absolutely stunning piece and one of the best pieces of writing I have come across, be it on the web or otherwise. It turns out that she also has a ton of great fall pictures from around the time she wrote that post. Since she was kind enough to review the early posts on this blog and because I’m as big a fan of her photography as I am of her writing, I asked her to find me a banner from one of those pictures. Her kindness and skill are the reasons for that beautiful banner on top.

Thanks Megha!

PS: Looks like this brainwave is not only brilliant, but also has a judwa bhai, which, not surprisingly, got to visit a judwa behen.

Crisis of faith

Coming off one of the worst losses in recent history, bye-week for the Denver Broncos could not have come at a better time. Fourteen-year veteran and two-time Super Bowl winner, Tom Nalen was lost for the season with a bicep injury. Regarded by Mike Shanahan as the best center to play the game and by everyone else as a darn good center, Nalen was not only one of the veterans and offensive captains of the team, but also one of its best players. Not to mention the fact that he is the guy that makes all the blocking calls and knows the zone-blocking scheme like the back of his hand.

As if the loss of one of their best players wasn’t enough, the Broncos also faced an injury scare to the team’s unquestioned best player in cornerback Champ Bailey. The MRI on Bailey’s quadriceps came back negative (which, to steal an oft-used sports-reporting paradox, is a positive) and he states that he will be ready to play against the Steelers, but how much the injury is going to impact his effectiveness, one can only speculate.

While speculating at that, one can also contemplate the chances of wide receiver Javon Walker (knee injury) playing that game. In last year’s game against the Steelers, Walker ran wild and completely dominated the Steelers secondary. His absence has proved costly, particularly in last week’s game against San Diego, and the offense is noticeably less potent without him.

Running back Travis Henry is fighting the NFL on a possible suspension and at worst could be lost for the season and at best, is going to be a serious distraction for the rest of his teammates. Amidst all this, the loss of Nate Jackson (groin), the receiving tight-end and one of the hardest workers on the team, is probably the smallest of all worries due to the apparent recovery of Tony Scheffler, Jay Cutler’s favorite target last year. Scheffler has been bothered by a foot injury since pre-season and if he is back to full-fitness, could be a serious threat in the passing game, especially in the red-zone where the Broncos have been as ineffective as a fat, pimply, cock-eyed teenager trying to seduce Angelina Jolie while spouting anti-adoption theories. (I just realized that I hadn’t said anything remotely funny, so I decided to say something remotely funny.)

The situation is bleak and the morale is low. The Broncos still can’t stop the run and the special teams unit is still fervently hoping no one sues them for gross misrepresentation, because they are anything but special.

Hope, however, springs eternal. While all of Colorado spends the next week and a half (at least) focusing on the Rockies’ Cinderella-like run, Mike Shanahan will have to find a way to prepare his team for the Pittsburgh Steelers and put up a performance that will silence talk of a lost season and give Broncomaniacs a reason to believe in the team again. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how he’s going to fare. It is, atleast in recent times, unfamiliar territory for him, his teams having raced off to 4-1 starts in all of the past few seasons.

Shanahan though, has the one thing most important to face adversity. He has belief in himself, and by extension in his staff, his system and his players. He recognizes that his way of doing things has brought success in the past and the reason for present failure is lack of proper execution more so than anything else. A heartening sign therefore is his assertion that there will be no large-scale changes. The emphasis is going to be on constant repetition in practice, and the idea will be that doing the same basic things again and again will improve execution come game time.

As for the injuries, the Broncos always have talked about how every backup is one play away from being the starter. Now is the time to see how closely the backups have adhered to that philosophy and how prepared they are. The play of Chris Myers (Nalen’s replacement), Chris Kuper (Myers’ replacement at left guard), Tony Scheffler, as well as possibly that of Selvin Young (backup RB), Glenn Martinez (backup WR) and Domonique Foxworth (backup CB) will influence the outcome of the rest of the season.

Finally, what is the Bronco fan to do? Shell-shocked after the drubbing last week, frustrated by ineptitude in key areas, which makes the 2-3 record seem terribly undeserved, and disturbed by the loss of key contributors, an easy alternative is to resign yourself to a season of heavy losses, and make the choice to watch or not depending on your appetite for the same. Another alternative is to remain loyal, watch how events unfold, and see how the team navigates these tricky waters. Win or lose, I enjoy watching the Broncos play, and will keep doing that. Those who leave early when their team is down in the dumps miss out on the greatest fightbacks.

I’m staying.

Jack

What do you call a stalker from Boston?

A beanstalker!

Freedom of expression

It puzzles me sometimes that there is no alternative to the expression, “it’s not rocket science”. That it puzzles me sometimes and not always, has more to do with the fact that I have the attention span of a squirrel rather than with any let-up in the intrinsic puzzlement of the alternative-absence. It also puzzles me that squirrels are held up so unhesitatingly as sterling examples of distractedness. I mean, did anyone try to find out why the squirrel was distracted? Maybe its tail was getting less bushy with every wash and as it looked sadly at the strands of hair at the bank of the stream, it realized that without its tail, it was nothing more than a large rat with buckteeth. Maybe that’s why it was so distracted.

Anyway, as I was saying, the fact that there is no alternative to the expression, “it’s not rocket science” puzzles me. I mean, do we really have no other profession that we could use as an idiomatic replacement for rocket science? I wonder what happens when rocket scientists use the expression. Would they use it in the opposite sense? Then why do we think of these rocket scientists as such smart people, when they can’t even use an idiom properly?

I have an idea, which will align us closer with the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1969. Each person should be allowed to choose their rocket-science replacement. I came up with this list while walking around the office pretending I’m going somewhere important,

- juggling four eggs,
- parallel parking,
- getting a perfectly circular pencil-sharpener shaving,
- sprinting backwards in a straight line,
- guessing the number of tomorrow’s winning lottery ticket,
- actually finding the ticket with that number,
- turning a plastic bowl into a gold one,
- turning that gold bowl back to plastic (because you ran out of microwavable bowls),
- getting into the 9:21 am Churchgate local at Goregaon,
- living in Goregaon,
- getting a hole-in-one,
- getting another hole-in-one on the next hole,
- not getting beaten up by fellow golfers immediately after,

I’m sure each person has such a list, or would have if they were idle enough to think of these things. (If an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, surely he must have many workshops and a lot of work. Isn’t it strange that the devil himself isn’t idle? Also, if the devil is not idle, then being idle must be good, right?) And by allowing each person to indulge in their own list, we would be promoting individuality in an increasingly ‘dividual’ world.

True, there might be some issues with understanding each other. A juggler, for instance, may not understand me when I say, “Well, this isn’t exactly like juggling four eggs!”. After some careful and (knowing me) wordy explanations, he would bask in the realization that would have just dawned on him. “Ahhh! You mean it’s not exactly like peeling the sticker from the bottom of a glass bowl!”

But that’s a small price to pay for a world rich with diverse individuals. I mean, think of the possibilities. Along with a/s/l, chatrooms would ask you the “i” question – idiomatic leanings. Classy, earthy, graphic, etc. (read uptight, stupid, gross etc.) could be some possible answers. If you didn’t know which type you are, I’m sure Tickle.com would have a questionnaire that would give you the scientifically accurate answer. It might take a little while though. I hear they’re working on a “what kind of ironing board are you?” masterpiece right now.

2B or not 2B

I think one way to make a workday more interesting would be to carry a pencil-box to work everyday. Yup, just like the one you carried to school as a child. Okay, so maybe you thought very highly of Magellan and called it a “compass box”. I, for one, remember it being my most cherished possession and one of a select few things that made school bearable.

They, like the pancakes I make, came in all shapes and sizes. The really cool, rich kids didn’t even have pencil-boxes. They had pencil-pouches. They were pencil-box royalty. For the rest of us, however, a pencil-box was a box, rectangular in cross-section and of varying depths (trying in vain to instil in us subliminally the differences between the people we would encounter as we grew up).

Most kids’ pencil-box careers started the same way – excited parents keen to buy their optical apple a really cute pencil-box for said apple’s first day at school, largely because of the eons of time that had passed since their pencil-box tastes were engaged. The kid, wary of this new development in life called school, welcomed the arrival of the pencil-box with open arms (or rather open hands, the way any kid in the world welcomes anything new and shiny). My starter box was plastic, primarily because my parents didn’t trust my moronic brain to be alone with something metallic without finding a way to hurt the body it (the brain, not the metallic something, though sometimes the distinction was hard to make) was in. The box was single-compartment, good for two pencils and an eraser.

I then graduated to a slightly fancier product (my PB career was illustrious primarily because of my tendency to lose them very easily; I guess my sunglasses never really had a chance) – the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk pencil-box. Worst idea ever. I would look at it all day going, “Why the hell do I have this stupid thing and not a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk?”, and promptly demand one as soon as I got home.

The next one was a big step up. It was a partitioned, pencil-box, the first of its kind the world had ever seen (okay, okay, they were fairly commonplace and I was one of the last kids to get one). It made you really consider where each useless item of yours was going to go. This, ladies and gentlemen, was the Indian kid’s introduction to the concept of packing. Show me an Indian adult struggling to get his or her things in a suitcase, and I’ll show you a kid who didn’t get a properly partitioned pencil-box (well, except that the kid would… erm… be grown up now (I know that was lame, but I’ve always wanted to do a “show me and I’ll show you” thingy. Hopefully I’ll get better. Meanwhile, what’s up with these parentheses? My punctuation sucks!)).

It only got better (the box, not my punctuation). After the partitioned box, came the king of them all – the magnetic pencil-box. One that opened on both sides (which seemed very cool initially, but soon got annoying since you invariably opened the wrong side, no matter what you were looking for).

But you were still in the minor leagues. The kid-zone. The apparatus you boxed still contained only of pens, pencils and erasers. But you truly entered pencil-box nirvana, when you didn’t need a pencil-box anymore. You had to use a geometry set, complete with weirdly-shaped instruments and a couple of sharp weapons^* to poke other kids with.

With such a rich history of pencil-boxes behind me (I’m sure history would like to get ahead once in a while), it’s hardly surprising that I would like to usher them into the their rightful place on an adult’s desk. I mean, who are we kidding. Pens were never really meant to be placed in jars or paper cups. So, if a year from now the pencil-box you thought you had bid adieu to resurfaces on a desk next to yours, you know whom to blame.

^{* The divider always reminds me of a Star Wars joke a friend once told me – “Did you know that Darth Maul wasn’t really killed by Obi-Wan Kenobi? He just forgot that his lightsaber opened on both sides.”}

Three Strikes

One of the biggest regrets of my childhood has got to be my failure to meet a single wish granting genie. Now before I proceed any further, I should clarify that I mean a single wish-granting genie, not a single-wish granting genie. While I’m sure they are very nice genies, everyone knows that real genies give you three wishes. The rest are just strangely-dressed wannabes with a housing problem. I don’t mean to suggest that you would have had any confusion between single-wish and wish-granting, but I imagine that at some time in the future I will have to read this and my comprehension skills will not be what they will used to be are.

So, where was I? Ah yes, one of my childhood’s biggest regrets is my failure to meet a single wi any kind of genie. That is not to say that I did not try to. There wasn’t a single vessel in my house that I did not try rubbing, my eyes wide and mouth agape with excitement (looking up after rubbing to detect any signs of an appearing genie). In fact, such was my enthusiasm that my mom could well have placed a dish-sponge in my hand and saved herself the expense of a cleaning maid. I even tried rubbing dad’s trusty ash-tray (much to his chagrin). I thought that maybe a genie may have run out of smoke (what with the liberal amounts they use everytime they appear) and might visit the ash-tray for a quick refill. Better yet, a smart genie may have figured out that the available tools-of-the-trade make the ash-tray a great residence. But alas, no cigar. The ash-tray appeared to be generally content with housing only the ash that it advertises in its name, and didn’t seem particularly troubled by the absence of a genie of any denomination.

I guess it was just as well that all my efforts to find a genie were turning out fruitless. You see, I was also having a great deal of trouble finalizing my list of three wishes. It was a work in progress, where I use the word “progress” about as loosely as it was used to preface my “report card”. The trouble was that there were only three items allowed. So, you couldn’t go about throwing in something like “a lifetime’s supply of “Everest Extra Strong” peppermints” (which was good, but not great) on the list. You had to prioritize.

I was too young for the whole peace-and-happiness routine. My motivations were much more material. I thought about money, cars, mansions (things people in movies always seemed to want) and quickly came to the conclusion that I was too young to have a bank account, too short to reach the accelerator, and too stupid to do anything in a mansion except slide down the banisters.

The one item that was consistently on the list and never came off was the ability to fly, not realizing for a second that my fear of heights would have meant that I would be a weird little kid in a t-shirt, shorts, hawai chappal and a towel (for a cape) flying around at a height of about 10 feet – some superman I would have made! I briefly flirted with the idea of asking for magic powers (thanks to Mandrake the magician), but I quickly tired of the idea. I mean, pulling rabbits out of hats is all very well, but what do you do with the rabbits afterwards? And the hats? I got enough grief from my mom about not cleaning my room as it was, to have to deal with a bunch of hat-eating rabbits running around.

It was a lot more of the same. Things were either too ordinary, too adult or were things that on the surface seemed very desirable, but on closer examination were just littered with complications. I just couldn’t make up my mind.

The years, not having a history exam to deal with, passed. I gradually reconciled myself to the idea of a childish fantasy that I outgrew. Until I got my first paycheck! My first purchase as a member of the American workforce caused me the same amount of consternation and indecision as the creation of the wish-list all those years ago. However, since my paycheck wasn’t exactly as powerful as the genie, my choices were much more limited and a decision much easier to arrive at. I am happy to report that the kid in me has been very happy with his XBox for a few years now.

Don’t blame it on Rio

Many years ago, in a classroom at one of the more respectable junior colleges in Bombay, a bunch of last-benchers were up to no good. They were, blissfully oblivious to the fascinating English lecture in progress, engrossed in the perusal of a not-so-respectable gentleman’s magazine stolen from a careless father (or perhaps an indulgent one, you never can tell). The sound of the professor’s footsteps approaching brought them back to reality and they hastily tucked the highly educational tome away.

“You boys are up to no good”, remarked Mrs. Shastri, instantly divining the situation. Of course, this extremely astute observation on her part arose not from any particular clairvoyance in the matter, but merely from a long-held belief that seventeen-year old boys in the last benches of any classroom in the world were never up to any good. And the guilty faces of these four upstarts in front of her didn’t exactly suggest that they were in any danger of pioneering a departure from this trend.

She would have been content with a “Sorry, ma’am” and would have walked away pleased at having busted this latest batch of upstarts. However, one of the said bunch – let’s call him upstart no. 4 (for these were last benchers and you have to start from the back) – suffered from that most dangerous of teenage faults, to wit an inability to realize when he was in trouble. Instead of delivering the “Sorry, ma’am” with a mixture of contrition and reform, he came back with a cool “Not at all, ma’am. We’re just thinking about that exercise you gave us”. Big, big mistake. “Alright wiseguy” said Mrs. Shastri (in her head, of course) and decided that upstart no. 4 shall share his work with the class in about 10 minutes, seeing as how intently he was thinking about it.

Upstart no. 4, like most who suffer from his ailment, did not see that coming. Hastily querying around for the details of what this blighted exercise was, he found out that it was to complete a short story that had just been read in class, one that the author had deliberately ended on an open note, with loose ends left dangling all over the place. Without letting the idea of untied loose ends ponder in a mind recently enlightened by a gentleman’s magazine (for such was the extent of his dismay), he sped through the short story in question (having had read it before) and promptly started writing the ending most obvious to his simple mind, not bothering for a second to consider how ridiculous that obvious ending was turning out to be.

A minute before the allocated ten minutes ended, he looked up with the same impertinence that had already landed him in trouble a good nine minutes ago, and suggested that he was done and ready to be unleashed upon the rest of the class. This seemed to surprise Mrs. Shastri because she had yet to meet a student that liked his work being read out to the class. However, she hadn’t counted on the extenuating circumstances at work. When a teenager gets into trouble with grownups, the more outlandish his way of extricating himself from that trouble, the greater the respect he gets from his peers. This was something the professor couldn’t have understood.

So, it was with an awareness of being part of something unprecedented that she started to read the work of upstart no. 4 out loud. When she finished reading and looked up, her face had softened. She was looking at the upstart as if contemplating something. The kid himself couldn’t figure this out and was getting more discomfited by the minute as a few faces in the classroom turned (as they would have to) to look at him. After deciding that she had contemplated enough, Mrs. Shastri finally declared, “This is very well written. You should consider writing more seriously.”

That was then, this is now (no shit, Sherlock!). The upstart, hitherto the party of the first part, is now finally acting on that advice.

In case you’re one of those people who believe that it’s all about the line at the bottom, here’s the short version for you. I was complimented by an English professor on my writing and am using that as an excuse to litter this space with some absurd-ditties. Yes, that was the short version. What can I say, blame it on the last bench.