Planning my vengeance that I will soon unfold…

Good morning and welcome to Classics Hour!

I’ve been in classics mode while sleeping (yes, I slept early tonight! I know what caused the insomnia now.)

The point is, my dreams were sponsored by a classic rock radio station. Because I have woken up with three songs stuck very distinctly in my head. Rather than just give you the title of the songs with the corresponding advice to “check them out! They rock! LOLZ!”, I’ve decided to do the even more annoying thing at this point; i.e. post these songs here. With lyrics, if you – like me – like to air sing and air guitar along with the song.

I guess anyone familiar with the significance of the title knows the first song.

And a bit of advice: If you are ever in the need to serenade Venom (who’s left a comment here after a 2-year gap?), NEVER use any of these songs. Trust me. Stick to “Words” by Ronan Keating or “Paint My Love” by Michael Learns To Rock. This advice applies across the board to all girls, I would assume.

But FUCK THAT! LET’S ROCK!

Song #1 that featured prominently in the soundtrack to my sleep: Iron Man by Black Sabbath.

Song #2: Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas (a.k.a. The song around which the South Park episode, Guitar Queer-o revolved. And to anyone who has thoroughly enjoyed ‘Rock On’, give this episode a watch!)

Song #3: More Than A Feeling by Boston. (This song refuses to leave my head. It’s been there for more than a day now!)

Why the sudden classic/prog phase? Who knows? A diverse and often eccentric taste in music is something that’s associated quite strongly with me. Tomorrow, I’ll put up a video of this cool Aria I found on youtube.

Till then, raise your index and ‘pinky’ while holding your middle and ring finger to your palm using your thumb. \m/

I don’t know what my state of mind is as I write this…

I haven’t slept or been truly awake in the last 3 days. It’s weird…

Insomnia gives you:

• Extraordinary focus on ONE central object with everything that’s in the periphery being blurred beyond distinction. Sometimes even the reverse happens.
• The feeling that you have a temperature when you actually don’t. You feel sick. Really sick. Yet check your temperature with a thermometer and it’s fine. Throat and nose still hurt like hell, though. Two major dust storms in two days and all my allergies are blooming like flowers in a Swiss spring! Yaaay!
• A lack of feeling in your body’s extremities. Especially your fingertips, I can barely feel the keypad as I type this. You are also assauged with a profound sense of weakness: physical, mental and emotional.

I want to sleep, but every time I try, I just toss and turn in bed. Time slows down. I thought I was lying in bed for an hour, turns out it was from 3:45 to 4 AM. You’re neither asleep nor awake and to make things worse, you end up confused about the visions you see. You’re asleep enough to dream, but still conscious of the world around you. Thus, dreams and reality collide in a weird, non-poetic and completely senseless way.

I need to sleep. I’m gonna try again. Problem is, even if I manage to sleep successfully this time around, I have to wake up in 4 hours.

Why I’d make a lousy dad: A webcomic

NOT trying to copy xkcd... It's just the simplest format.

Canon (and I’m not talking about cameras)

You know you love someone when not only their happiness gives you joy (cliched as it may sound, I believe it’s a litmus test to judge the emotion), but also when their pain hurts you. Of course, when you are the cause of the pain, it hurts MUCH, MUCH more. The expression “it breaks my heart” is not just a figure of speech, it actually hurts in the region around one’s chest. If you think about it, it makes sense. Your brain goes into overdrive, all kinds of chemicals are released and this calls for a sudden increase in blood flow which causes one’s heart to beat ever so fast with the result that it feels as if the internal structure of your anatomy is tearing. Well, the pain aspect is more of a neuro/psychological reaction as the heart beats very quickly during moments of happiness too; but then it feels more euphoric than painful.

The point here is canon. Thanks to a debate at KNC which is forever etched in my memory as the most profitable few hours of my life, I know it’s meaning quite thoroughly. However, the fashionable thing to do in a situation like this is give a dictionary definition andin homage to pseudo-intelligentsia chic, I shall do the same. (there were 14 definitions of the word divided by the context in which it is being used,  so I picked the ones that pertain to my point here)

can⋅on

–noun

the body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art.

a fundamental principle or general rule.

a standard; criterion.

The universal, fundamental principle I am talking about here is the desire to not hurt someone whose happiness is essentially the only bright spot in a dark and dreary world. And especially to not hurt them by doing something you misguidedly thought would make an interesting experiment. To quote the almighty,

“If I ever meet myself,” said Zaphod, “I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.”

The fundamental, guiding principle that it is your duty to be the cause of someone’s happiness just as they are the cause of yours’. People who defied the canon were heretics. And as we all know, heretics were burnt in village squares as sort of a matinee entertainment show, this was , of course, before the arrival of CGI.

So gather ye wood, villagers!

And to conclude… I’m taking a page out of the canon of the Fox News Network. Their fundamental principle is misquote and misrepresent. Their approach follows the tactic: Display images and videos that are grossly out of context to justify your point.

So, the first half of an otherwise hilarious (and, needless to say, depressing) Perry Bible Fellowship comic. Dedicated to: but of course…

Though in the original comic, the chap gets depressed by looking at the decisions made by the others... I'm not. SO THERE! BALLS TO YOU PBF!

can⋅on

1 // // <![CDATA[
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// ]]><a href=”http://dictionary.reference.com/audio.html/lunaWAV/C00/C0097000″ target=”_blank”><img src=”http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/speaker.gif” mce_src=”http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/speaker.gif” border=”0″ /></a> /ˈkænən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kan-uhn] Show IPA –noun

D-Day…

D is for Disgusting, Damnations, Dull, Dreary etc etc…

Why am I perennially irritated?

• I have had absolutely NOTHING to do for the last week. I was bored in bouts previously, but there were moments of salvation in between. Like the time I went to Morrison drunk with Venom’s friends. But since May 30th, it’s been an irrelevant existence. Wake up at any time, sleep at any time, eat, don’t eat, who cares! HAL Bangalore is killing me. Make up your mind! Please!
• Monisha of moated grange is having a great time… in Bangalore! Everyone but me is in MY city. Even Decay had a week in Mukteshwar amidst some eco-geeks! I haven’t done a thing! Except shave my head. A day after I do it, a friend of mine tells me it’s the latest fad. I am completely cut off from all current affairs. I wasn’t even aware that the World T20 Championship was taking place until a few hours ago.
• And this leads me to my next point. The World Quiz Championship is tomorrow. Great! More obscure trivia! Honestly, quizzing stopped being fun somewhere in my 2nd year. As I said on Twitter, the set of “things/topics I like” is a subset of the set “stuff which will never make it’s way into a quiz question”.
• I’ve been listening to a lot of Sum 41 and System Of A Down. I miss Radiohead. However, my system cannot sufficiently cool an AMD Athlon X2… so it shuts itself off before it can even boot. So I’m stuck with my roommate’s laptop.
• Started reading ‘India After Gandhi’ by Ramachandra Guha, but found it to be so accurate and non-partisan that it began to depress me. Were I not a member of this blighted race, I would’ve finished it in a day. Were my history bad, I would’ve finished it in a day. Unfortunately, reading the lead-up to the 1962 war is getting to me. I honestly cannot turn another page. And even assuming I skip that part, I’ll still have the war of ‘65, the war of ‘71, Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi Hatao’ election, the Emergency and Sanjay Gandhi, Janata Party and Morarji Desai, Indira part II, Operation Blue Star, the Sikh genocides, Punjab Terrorism, Morte d’Indira, Rajiv “the unwilling PM” Gandhi, Sonia Maino, LTTE, Rajiv’s assassination, babri, Bombay, terrorism strikes, the 90s and the rise of regionalism, Sonia Maino turns Gandhi, Atal’s 13-day stint in Power, H.D. Deve Gowa as PM (“-the fuck?”), I.K. Gujral’s highly useless and uneventful stint, BJP’s rise, Nuclear Tests… Basically, Indian history is interesting till the Slave Dynasty of the 13th century. I know, political intrigue existed back then too (Kanishka “The Great” was assassinated in his sleep by a Kushana General, similar to how Xerxes – of 300 fame – died. Minus the Kushana part). Summary: Can’t continue with India After Gandhi right now. Romila Thapar’s book on Ancient India: Pre-history to the 12th century ought to capture my interest more.
• And wordpress is starting to annoy me. The screen is lagging behind my keyboard by a good 2 seconds. And the spell check is astounding! Words that were underlined included “friend” (suggested change: “fried”), “with” (suggested change: “wii”) and… “wordpress” (suggested change: “worthless”)

And finally, an ad concept which  came up with. I won’t be surprised if someone else came up with it before this:

This has been a headache.

Poetry is a common feature on blogs. You see a lot of amateur poesy on yonder blagosphere… And when I say amateur, I mean crappy. I mean, really, god-awful, torturous, pompous, self-indulgent, moronic fecal matter.

Thus, I shall conclude this annoying (it has been so to write and I assume, shall be so to read) post with… A poem.

Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

I know, there’s been an underlying series of references. But I doubt anyone cares or will find it. Even with this text here and the bloody obvious last hint.

Shashee Tha-roar

I’m not a big Shashi Tharoor fan. The only times I ever mention the guy is when I make the statement, “Dinesh Kapur is the next Shashi Tharoor”. (Now that I’ve put that in quotes, the statement will pop up in Google searches about Decay. Thank me later.) I’ve read occasional bits of his writing, which is good; but not nearly Ram Guha level. The excerpts from “The Elephant, The Tiger and The Cellphone” that were published in newspapers showcase a chap who, in that book at least, is trying to portray an accurate image of India to the west in a very elementary way. Basically, his writings are sort of a Dummies Guide to India.

The title, is how Stephen Colbert (the alter-ego, pronounced “Coal-bear”) called him during an interview on The Colbert Report (pronounced “Re-pour”). This is one of the few instances that anyone has held their ground in a face-to-face with Colbert. And it’s one of the even fewer instances of an Indian guy holding his ground in any interview. Interviews here tend to be lame exercises in sycophancy, thus when someone goes on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report; they have their faces pounded. But Shashi was kinda cool. He’s an MP now, Stephen took credit for that – deservedly. Anyone in rural Kerala who voted for him did so because of Stephen Colbert.

Here’s the interview.

And in other news, my head hurts. I feel like an alien organism was gestating inside me and is now trying to emerge from my cranium.