Move on, man!

I liked this ad a lot when it came out as it inspired me to really 'move on' in life in so many different ways. This time, I'm moving on to wordpress. I'm kinda surprised at how late I am in fact, to make this transition. Better late than never.

I'm kinda almost done with my new site, and am hoping to continue receiving the much appreciated comments of my fave bloggers here, on my new site as well. 

Come visit!- http://beatnikzworld.wordpress.com/

P.S. Do NOT ask me what's up with this pink page. I really have no clue.

Rawr!!

Do Dat Dinosawr(Rawr!)- Awesome!!!

Voila! Mission meme accomplished

This is the first time I’ve taken up a meme. When I read Tia’s post, I thought, why not take up the challenge myself? Memes are the best cure for a writer’s block as well. And then, she assigned me a V.

Quick trivia: Did you know that V is an English alphabet, and that there are words, REAL words, that start with a ‘V’ as well?
The last time I used a V was way back in kindergarten.

Anyhow. Can’t back out now. So well, here are 10 things starting with a V that I love. Or like, as the case maybe. In no particular order-

1) Victory: No, not the Hurman S Baweja dud, silly. The original ‘V’ for Victory I’m talking about. Success, triumph. (Thank God for KG :D )

2) Variety: I’ve an ADD. I can’t concentrate on things that get all repetitive and boring for long. (Okay, I don’t HAVE an ADD per se, but I still can’t put up with monotony!)

3)Valiance: What a turn on. And you don’t necessarily have to battle the lion to win my heart, the courage to follow your heart is more than enough.

*4) Voodoo: Nope, doesn’t fall in the ‘I love’ category yet, though I would love to try it out and poke a couple of a-holes with the biggest needles possible.

*5) Vermins? Viruses? V-day? Ugh! These are on my hate list. Focus, woman!

4) VCDs: Movies, music, wedding CDs.. anything. I love VCDs. The free ones obviously. I don’t invest in CDs, duh. But I love to receive them for gifts and stack up my gifted CD rack.

5) Venice: 10 years ago it was right there on the top my ‘dream Honeymoon spots’; the list has been revised and re-revised since then, but Venice is still a dream get-away.

6) Violet: The color, the flowers. See, I’m so not girly!

7) VFX: Seriously, what would the world be without some visual effects!

8) Vocab: I’m a sucker for words. A guy with an extended vocab can have me in his pockets!

9) Van Helsing: No,actually, I meant Hugh Jackman, but unfortunately his name doesn’t begin with a V. Cut me some slack now. I got a V for Chrissake!

10) Vodka: ‘nuff said.

Now, try this challenge out, peeps. Don’t ask me to assign you a letter, though. I’m a sadist, I’ll give you a Z or an X for sure.

Monday Morning Blues

If I remember correctly, this was the title of a small story we read in class 7(or 6 or 8). The protagonist was a kid who hated Mondays. Once, he got some homework to finish over the weekend, but due to his habit of procrastinating, he didn’t do it and realized this only on Sunday night. So then, it struck him to take help of the android his father had built, as the android was very smart. The boy asked his android to finish off his homework and went off to sleep. When he woke up next morning, all smug about his great idea, and checked the homework book, he was left terror-struck. The notebook was filled with random lines and indecipherable figures. He summoned the android and asked for an explanation. The android told him he didn’t know how to write. “So why didn’t you tell me last night itself?”, the boy cried. “Because you didn’t ask me this question.”, was the android’s simple reply. Then the story ends with the boy’s father lecturing him on something. I don’t quite remember the moral, since I hate being lectured.

Of course the above story has nothing to do with what this post is about. I was just wondering generally why Mondays are the most hated days of the week. Why not, say, a Wednesday or a Thursday? I could think of the following few reasons. Feel free to add more.

1) You hate your work to death. Monday is just a bad start for the upcoming dreadful week.
2) You love your work to death. This means that since Monday is already here, soon the dreadful weekend too will be around that’ll make you take a forced break from work.
3) In between. It means every Monday morning when you wake up, you wonder why you’re still in the shitty job that you’re in. You wonder about how long you’ll be stuck in that shithole, whether you’ll ever get a raise and whether you’ll die because of Global Warming or because of your job. All these thoughts will come to you only on Monday morning since after that you’ll return to your zombie mode and stop using your head for the rest of the week.

Possible reasons of why some folks might actually look forward to a Monday morning:

1) You hate your work to death. This means that since Monday is already here, soon the beloved weekend too will be around that’ll make you finally take the much awaited rest.
2) You love your work to death. Monday is just a good start for the upcoming and exciting, work-filled week.
3) In between. It means that every Monday morning when you wake up, you wonder if the cute girl you pinged last Friday will still be interested in chatting with you, whether there’ll be a free company sponsored dinner that night or whether you’re one of the lucky few who’ll escape the 10 hour load shedding during the day. All these thoughts will come to you only on Monday morning since after that you’ll return to your zombie mode and stop using your head for the rest of the week.

Lemme just say I share a love-hate relationship with MMs.

If pictures could kill..

… I’d be dead a 1000 times over by now, courtesy my friends’ photos on FB. I have no idea how someone with a sane mind can not only think of clicking such vague and crappy pictures, but also to add insult to (my) injury, give totally unimaginative and downright drab captions to the same. In one word, these pictures are sheer ‘torture’.

Take for example, a hypothetical situation where an acquaintance of mine has returned from his first foreign vacation. Understandably, he’s ecstatic and wants to proclaim it to the world that ‘Hey! I’ve been abroad too!’. Fine with me. I’m not jealous, I’m going for a ‘foreign trip’ myself soon. And I too will be shouting about it from the rooftops once I return. But at least I’ll spare you guys the agony of having to go through my 60 odd photos, which are either blurred, have the same person posing in the same way and shot from the same angle thrice, or simply provide the information that I was standing under a tree.

Seriously, tell me what’s the point in going to that world famous Bird Park in um.. Hong Kong(?) and NOT taking pictures of the rare birds, and instead, in posing yourself in front of some fountain that has ‘Bird Park’ written somewhere? Pose with the birds you fool, not with the fountain! Did you go all the way to the Bird Park in Hong Kong to get the shot of your ugly mug in front of a fountain? Or, how about a shot that has one dude standing on some road (a real famous one I reckon), hands on hips, in the middle of an ocean of people, with no information whatsoever about where exactly he’s standing. If it were not for the white faces in the crowd, one couldn’t be sure if he took it on some busy junction in his hometown. God.

When you’re visiting these awesome places with beautiful skylines, you obviously give taking their pictures a miss, ‘cause well, you were busy taking pictures of you while sitting in the lounge of the international airport, right? If you’re so obsessed with having your close-up shot in every single of the 1000 photos you’ve clicked on your trip, at least try and make the backgrounds interesting.

Anyway, let’s talk about captions now. How does this sound- ‘Me drinking vodka’, under a silly pic of you drinking from a glass at some random hotel room? Or, ‘X and me’, ‘Y and me’, ‘Z and me’, in a row in the same album, while you’re posing with three different friends sitting at the same spot? Or ‘Friends and I posing on the highway’- under a photo that has, well, you and your friends posing on a highway for some goddamn unknown reason?

Kill me.

On a serious note..

Recently, a close friend of mine, about the only person who knows me personally AND reads my blog told me- 'Beatnik, why have you filled your blog with shallow posts? Trying to be funny when you're not, making a fuss out of the most insignificant issues and in general wasting time on meaningless ramblings? Why don't you ever talk about the current issues or something more deep maybe?' To which I told him that I'm like a fish in the ocean. You don't go telling a fish that it's showing off its swimming skills or 'making a fuss out of nothing' while hiding under the nearest coral rock to save itself from predators or wasting time making bubbles while it's actually breathing. Simply put, I told him- 'Go screw yourself and don't ever read my blog again.' Or something to that effect.

Although, when he was gone, I did some introspection and realized that..well... you know.. he might be a wee bit correct in saying all those things. I wasn't exactly the joke-cracker in a group anywhere, ever. Everytime I was asked to tell a joke, I would start off with the 4 elephants story. Wanna hear it? Well, there were 4 elephants who were climbing up a pole.. no wait.. there were 4 elephants walking down the road when one decided to climb a pole. The others also decided to climb. Some shit like that. I can't really recall. Who cares now that it's out in the open that I'm nowhere close to being funny. Anyway, let me desperately try and talk about some sensitive issue today, other wise my blog will seriously NEVER have anything meaningful to be remembered for(AND my friend will be proven right which I certainly don't want to see happening).So well, here I made a list of the few current topics that seem to be everyone's favorites for dissecting(which I wouldn't normally touch with a barge pole). Let me get my scalpel too.

1) Slumdog Millionaire: Muhahaha. You knew that was coming, didn't you? Even before the movie was released in India , Rehman had won the Golden Globe and the world was rolling at Danny Boyle's feet. Praises galore were being showered from the rest of the world, and loads of brickbats from India. You all know the controversy. Anyway, I'd almost made up my mind not to watch it, thinking, oh what the hell, I don't need another topic to shake an already shaken up poor moi's brain. But obviously, I went and watched the first day 3rd show of the movie, and at the risk of drawing brickbats myself for saying this- I did not understand what was so great about it. Nope, apart from the child actors and Rehman's music, I seriously couldn't find one amazingly different, living-upto-Oscar-hype material in the movie. In fact, try developing a temporary 3 hour amnesia when you watch this one(if haven't already), forget all about the Oscar hype, forget who directed it, and then watch it from a neutral perspective, like say, when you went to watch Chandni chowk to china(before reading the reviews) and then let me know if the movie still impressed you all that much. It's so Indian Film-type(substituting for Bollywood to avoid Mr. Bacchan's wrath) that I don't understand WHAT is so outstanding about it. Leaving aside the kids' performances, the others weren't even that great. The climax, so Hindi-filmy. I mean, I've already seen it all in the past 24 years of my movie-watching experience. Salaam Bombay, Bombay and even Satya were different and laudable. But this one, I don't know dude.

But know what's funnny? All those controversies surrounding this movie. I mean, if you ever happened to read Rediff's reviews(there were 2) and the discussions that followed in the public forums there, you'd be more amused than amazed. What Amitabh Bacchan said, what the world is saying, what the 2 foreigners sitting in the cafe somewhere were dicussing when the Indian who overheard their comments decided to blog about it, whether or not Shahrukh Khan's presence at the Gloden Globe was at all required, should we, Indians, be proud of the movie or ashamed of it, should people call it 'Bollywood's recognition by the west' or not.. man oh man.. the list goes on. But in all honesty, I'm glad that 'Slumdog' happened- for Rehman. Whether or not he wins an Oscar is not something I'm bothered about. He's done us all proud a hell lot of times already and I'm as proud of him right now as I was of myself after winning my first trophy in LKG. Yeah, that I'm comparing him to me- speaks for my love and respect for him. Go Rehman!!

2) Sanjay Dutt's latest comment- I can't quote him verbatim cuz I really didn't bother about what he'd said, but decided to write about this one for it makes a very interesting topic to dissect. He'd said something like 'after marriage, a girl should take on the husband's surname instead of sticking to her maiden surname, as a mark of respect for the husband. I'd be offended if Manyata had chosen to keep her father's surname.' My first reaction after I read this was,
'Yawn.' before I decided to move on to the next article. But since I'm talking about sensitive topics today, I might as well quickly form some opinion and write some bull here in order to appear smarter, more prudent and more aware than I actually am. So well, according to me, what Dutt said is totally crap.
You know what I really think should be done? Once a woman gets married, she should get an altogether NEW surname. A surname she always dreamt of getting after marriage. Like in my case, I want a powerful surname, something like a Birla, or an Oberoi, or even Ambani.. a surname that has a deep clink to it, you know. But anyway, if you can't do that, rather do what else you want to AND can manage right? Wanna stick to your father's surname, do that. Take on your husband's- feel free to. Or maybe hyphenate both- couldn't be more attractive. Like Aishwarya Rai-Bacchan. Personally, I'd go surnameless. Beatnik. Nothing's gonna sound kewler.

3) Patriotism:- Since today is our Republic Day, and since of late I've been feeling immensely and over-whelmingly patriotic, I thought I might as well dedicate a few lines to my beloved country. Funny how at times you need an external influence to make you realize that you DO in fact, still care about your country, and feel deeply about small small stuff when it comes to that. Let me tell you a recent incident. A month or so back, I went to this play. Now, since quite a while, the movie halls at my city(I'm hoping it happens everywhere else too) air the National Anthem, requiring you to stand up and show your respect to the country. Since the anthem is already being sung on screen, people usually choose to remain mum and close their eyes or just hum along. Only a few souls do actually SING it. You're free to if you want though, it's just that people(including me), don't sing out loud. Since I'd never seen that happening at a play, I was pleasantly surprised when we were all asked to stand up, and sing the anthem there. Yes, there was no recorded anthem and so the 100+ people in the audi actually sang it. Sounds like such an insignificant thing right? It didn't feel insignificant at all. I hadn't 'sung' the anthem out loud like that in over 8 years, and I'm sure most of people in the audi would also have decades of non-singing to report. I was actually smiling all throughout while singing the anthem, and once it was over, I looked around to watch people's reactions- everyone seemed so damn ecstatic to have gotten to actually sing it like we did way back in school. I love my country a lot.

A very Happy Republic Day to my fellow Indians!

That's about it. I can assure you I'm not talking about any more 'meaningful' topics again till next year. It's really, really taxing. Now, back to work on my 'how to cross a road' post on which I've been trying to work for so long..

This outcast doesn't care anymore!

Never underestimate the peeping-power of your male friends. They might not be as peep-y as their female counterparts, but they're definitely more harmful. Like just yesterday, I had this friend of mine come over for a while. Thinking he probably wouldn't notice my sad looking laptop, didn't bother to hide it 'properly'. I was sure he wouldn't take a peek. He didn't peep, he just took a good hard look.

I was in the kitchen(filling in my water bottle, not cooking! Duh.), when I thought I heard the very sound I was dreading all this while- the sound of keystrokes. Sure as hell F was doing something on my comp and before I could stop him from invading my privacy further, he looked up at me. It was a strange expression, like he was shocked.

"Hmm. So this is what you were hiding your lappy for,eh?"
"Hiding? It was right under the pile of clothes yonder. Why would I hide it anyway?" I refused to cave.
"No? Okay, but now I know what you watched last Sunday!", he said, smirking.

My legs became jelly. He might be my friend and all, but aside of inheriting the very dreaded feminine characteristic- peeking, he had also mastered the art of gossiping. I had no idea what would be the reaction of my male friends if they got to know of it. The girls all already knew.

"Out of all the things available on the net, Beatnik, why would you ever access OneManga?! I mean, how could you read MANGA! After all that we taught you after making an exception for you in our exclusive 'boys-only' club, is this what you do to us? Read Manga? Whatever happened to the sanctity of the anime!"

It was like a slap in the face. Yes, they had taken me under their wing, introduced me to the world of anime and even filled in my disk drives with unending Naruto, Bleach and FMA episodes. They just had one condition- do not ever read the manga. Although they'd maintained that the reason behind it was the very benefit of us all, that this would ensure that the pleasure of watching the fresh episodes everytime wouldn't be adulterated in any darn way. But I knew deep down my heart that they had an ulterior motive of making sure that I never got ahead in the series than them, that I didn't know how Itachi was not a bad guy after all before they found out, that I always begged them for more episodes and writhed and cried and begged until they obliged. That I was always on their mercy. Not any more though. Sure I wasn't as resourceful as them, and was perpetually challenged by the poor internet connection that never allowed me to download any videos from anywhere, but I had finally found a way out. The way of the Manga. So what if there is no inspiring background music, no over-the-top dubbing, no colors, no live animation? Manga at my disposal gave me something to look forward to everyday. Whenever I would be troubled with self-doubt, I'd simply treat myself to the boy-who-never-gave-up tale of Naruto. Or like when I had a whole week's wait ahead of me for the next chapter of Naruto, I'd hop on to Bleach, or maybe FMA. The Manga gave me a new lease of life, a life that was finally free of begging and living off the mercy of my so-called friends. It helped me while away countless hours everyday in a more 'productive' way.

I may be a 'elite anime group' pariah now, but I feel liberated, I feel empowered. I love you OneManga.