I cannot *believe* I haven’t seen this movie yet!!

(Although it kills the “Must make enough money to see New York” dream.)
(…)
(I feel a need to re-watch old Woody Allen movies.)

[Monty standing in the men's bathroom, talking to himself in a mirror with a "FUCK YOU" written on it]
Well, fuck you, too. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin’ and dealin’ and schemin’. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin’ parade in the city. And don’t even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, ’cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their, Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos. Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You’re not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don’t want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child’s pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you’re at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin’ Otisville, J! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky, whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend’s ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, cheering the Bronx bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.
[pause]
No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

- Monty Brogan (Edward Norton)

25th Hour

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/31/AR2008103101138.html

The AccuWeather.com gadget/widget on my iGoogle page informs me that today, Delhi is “Smoky”.

It’s fairly disturbing to note that an international weather site has a “Smoky” descriptor.
It’s also *fairly* disturbing to note that the city I live in fits that description.

Ironic, considering this is *after* they banned smoking in public.

…

Yesterday was CAPS LOCK DAY.

However, there are some groups (i.e. 1 group) that feel(s) that the correct and true CAPS LOCK DAY is on Aug. 19.
To read more about this (don’t pretend, I’m sure you all want to ), please visit

• http://capslockday.com (propounders of Oct. 22 as *the* day. Do take a look at the picture of a potato), and
• http://caps-lock.blogspot.com (striving for Aug. 19, ever forward, ever upward)

(Incidentally, today’s Mole Day. No, not that kind of mole; the 6.02 x 10^23 kind of mole.)

…

Suzanne Vega is apparently The Mother of the MP3.
The format we have all come to love and cherish could not have come about without Tom’s Diner.
Or so it says in the article, Ich Bin Ein Paradigm Shifter in Business 2.0.

For Suzanne’s point-of-view and general Vega-n insight, go here.

(The original article is no longer available online, ergo the Wayback link.)

I had no idea how much I have to thank Suzanne Vega for. Must remember to download everything she’s ever done.

…

We’re trying something new (well, for us, at least) here at The Rant Reader. In order to incorporate a bit of uncertainty/randomness into the mix, we’re opening this to other contributors. Hopefully, some of them will actually write in. Anonymity will be their choice, so please, refrain from prying.

Aside from this, we’ll probably be opening up to random entries from random people. If you want something  posted, but don’t want to bother about signing up with wordpress, write in to rantreader@gmail.com, with your choice of pseudonym (The random-er, the better). Or if you just want to write and don’t want it to necessarily be attributed to you, send it across to us. Try and keep it un-offensive and, preferably, not terrorism-inspiring, and we will probably put it up with your credit. We can’t assure you responses, but hey, what the heck, what do you have to lose?

With much love,
Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and The Other Guy.

I have been tagged. By somebody I know. I have written elsewhere before, and have been tagged by strangers. These people have included an argumentative evangelist, a teacher and a chap who posted rare krautrock. My primary concern has always been to make myself sound interesting to these people and therefore I have written slightly embellished posts, embarrassed by the dullness of my imagination and life and being quite stern with myself about being boring. Now really.

I suppose random habits or ‘things’ are those that a statistically large portion of the population would not share, or think about, or care. I suppose wrong. That it is random simply means that it has a probability attached with its occurrence; whether this probability is high or low is immaterial. Now boys, what did I tell you about being tedious? All I am saying that if I tell you about how much I like to read don’t go a-cribbin’ about how I never really did tell you anything random and that I cannot marry your sister, and so what if no one else will have her. All post-hoc probabilities are exactly one.*

Right, so a few random things about me.

1) I would not be averse to a little bit of cross-dressing. Now, I probably need to qualify this a little bit. I love women. Beautiful women. I am an imbecile to beautiful women. A fool. Crack, pop, fizz. Dan Rhodes.

“My girlfriend is so pretty that I can’t get over it. Every week I celebrate the alignment of her features by parading a giant photograph of her lovely face around the town center. I’ve written the words “pretty face” on the picture’s border, and drawn an arrow to direct people’s attention toward it. It’s not bragging, because it’s her that’s the pretty one, not me. I’m going to parade every week for as long as she lets me be her boyfriend, and probably even longer. Nothing’s going to put me off, not even the shouts of “Had her” or “Been there.” “

What legs? Where musk? So why not see what it feels like to be a woman? The object of your own obsession?

2) Stance on physical violence. Last night I was speaking with (a slightly inebriated gorgeous hunk aka Millennium Hand) , and I happened to mention that while I was an intellectual coward, and would not ordinarily take up an argument which was challenging, I have never in my life and never intend to shy away from, a physical confrontation. This surprised Millicent, and he asked incredulously (like almost everyone else) whether I had been in a brawl. I have been. And I enjoy it. I have (to use a verb little used in this sense anymore) fought, with cricket bats, stones, tennis racquets, sticks, fists and metal rods. And I am not afraid of taking a beating.

3) I write things on my thigh. Nothing more to this really.

4a) My favourite comic-book hero is the Phantom.

4b) My favourite cricketers were Mohammad Azharuddin, Saeed Anwar, Andy Flower and Gary Kirsten.

5) Treasure chests.

6) I love the night sky. I can stare at it for hours and hours. I work nights (I leave the house after dark and try to return just as dawn is breaking). If I get done early sometimes, I walk through town and Jesus Green. And one thing you know is that when there is a breeze and the skies are clear, you never want it to change.

>> Edit: A few more tags have come my way so I can ramble on for a little longer using nouns as place markers. Do these make any sense? I change my mind about these thigns a thousand things a day. I forget and remember. Should it be different?

1) Last movie seen in a theatre: Auf der anderen seite (The Edge of Heaven). Now this reminds me that to most people my list is not going to make any sense because I live in a place where it is easier to watch a movie no one has heard of than it is to watch say Spiderman 95. Anyhow, I persevere to document my days. The one I saw before that was There Will Be Blood. And the one before that was a movie called Stellet Licht. A word pf warning. If you are the type who gets easily bored then the first and the second are not for you. The first does have some scenes of lesbianism to (fairly good (I can tell the difference))Euro-techno.

2) Books reading now: The Glittering Prizes by Frederic Raphael. It is about a group of ennui-stricken Cambridge undergraduates in the 50s who produce wit at the rate at which I produce verbal cowpat. Fredric had a new book out a few months ago and it was reviewed in the Spectator. Read the review (if you can find it) to discover what the hallmarks of Fredeirc’s writing are. Georges Perec, LIfe: A User’s Manual and the latest Iain Banks: The Steep Ascent to Garbadale.

3) Favourite Board Game: I was never one for board games. Except. Scrabble. I can be exceptionally annoying to my competitors in Scrabble games. I know some very vague words, and unlike other people recall them just when I have th right tiles. I am a member of UKSCRABBLE and have been for two tourneys around Cambridge.

4) Favourite Magazine: Spectator and Mojo (I keep saying Mojo because it sounds cooler than saying Uncut, but Uncut has more reviews and is generally better presented). I have not missed a week of the Times Literary Supplement in almost 2 years even though some issues are so dense that I have to give up reading them.

5) Favourite Smells: I love women who smell good (even if the perfumes are cheap and cheerful. Well, not cheerful maybe). I could name perfumes but who cares.

6) Favourite sounds: Silence.

7) Worst feeling in the world: None.

8 What is the first thing you think of when awake: Am very vague in the morning. Don’t think of much. Float around. Watch a little TV to settle my thoughts.

9) Favourite fast food place: Dojo. Van on Newnham Road.

10) Future child’s name: Ain’t gonna make none.

11) If I had a lot of money, I’d buy a lot more books.

12) Do I drive fast? Hahahaha….. Not really.

13) Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? For the longest time.A dog. It had the most pitiful eyes. I loved it.

14) Storms? Never paid much attention.

15) What hair?

16) Favourite sports to watch: Snooker.

17) Would you be born again as yourself? No, as a blindingly, I can break your geek heart just by being there, hot woman. Intelligent too.

18 Favourite places to relax: My room, a book, a tv on mute. Something cold to drink.

19) Favourite pie: Treacle tart.

20) Favourite ice cream flavour: Butterscotch.

3 things I am passionate about:

1) Maths

2) Music

3) Books

Things to do before I die:

Absolutely nothing. Learn Swedish maybe.

Things I say often:

Dude.

Huber-White sandwich estimator of the variance-covariance matrix.

Songs I can listen to over and over again:

1) Last Goodbye – Jeff Buckley. 3000 odd plays on my *new* Winamp (it is not more than 6 month old)

2) From this Moment On – Shania Twain and Bryan White. The whole album.

3) Deja Vu (album) CSNY. Especially Suite – Judy Blue Eyes (it is about Joni)

4) Which brings us to Joni Mitchell – Blue (the album). Especially River.

5) The FreeWheelin’ Bob Dylan

6) Bebel Gilberto – Momento. I play it in the morning on youtube and keep the tab alive till evening.

7) The name of this blog. AhaShakeHeartbreak – Kings of Leon.

8 Clem Snide – End of Love (album)

…………

I don’t understand how OneHandBand does this week after week. This picking lists is so depressing. I dig music dudes.

*Not really. Post hoc means in the past tense, after the event has happened. But probability conditions on information. If the happening of the event is not in your information set, the event might or might not have happened. Voila, probability.

“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper-cup; they slither while they pass, they slip away, across the universe”.

Everybody should watch “Across the Universe”. Even if you’re not a Beatles fan. Simple, sincere, and damn, such kick-ass music. This is everything you’d ever want from a modern-day musical, and yet, still manages to connect with the hippie within by being what I’d call, a *distant* cousin to The Wall.

(That is, unless you’re looking for a powerful story, and stuff.)

The story is pointless, more or less. I guess you could call it something of a love story, set against the backdrop of ’60s America (aren’t they all?). But what a movie. Stunning visuals. Very nice shots. Very trippy. Songs are brilliant – some incredible versions (you would never believe how deep a song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is) that you would never imagine. Lots of tongue-in-cheek uses of Beatles songs in the dialogue too, which is very amusing (to a fan). Look out for cameos by Joe Cocker, Bono and Eddie Izzard (someone who I would have never bothered to notice if George hadn’t force-fed me a slew of stand-up comics in Chennai; Thank you George – you made me feel smarter for a day). And some of the arrangements are fantastic – “Come Together”, in particular, really stood out, as did “I Want You (She’s So Heavy!)”.

What I really liked was, amidst all the psychedelia and the ’60s counter-culture movements and anti-war protests, the movie stays true to the Beatles; maybe it’s just my opinion (probably influenced by the fact that I’ve always wondered if it was possible to make a short story out of Beatles song titles), but it’s really impressive how they managed to weave an *entire* story out of song lyrics (a testament to which is the fact that the main characters were named Jude, Lucy, Max, Jojo, Prudence and Sadie; heck, there’s even a Dr. Robert and Mr. Kite!) and still have it make sense! I mean, sure, it was a little trite, and some things were a little too convenient, but it’s such fun! And the director doesn’t limit herself (I think it’s a “her”, can’t remember now) to just the songs either – Jojo is plainly inspired by Hendrix, Sadie by Joplin, Dr. Robert by Ken Kesey; there’s even a rooftop concert, man!

Watch it, man. And if you can, try and watch it on a big screen (I had to watch it on my laptop). You won’t regret it.

*goes off humming the end of Hey Jude*

It is ironical that I said not a few days ago that I reserve my fiercest hatred for Hindi movies, and truly believe that people who watch contemporary Hindi films should die. Horribly.

Forget all that. Watch this. Preferably in a theatre.

So, seven random things about me.

I don’t like these games.

1. The second toe on my left foot (the one next to Big Joe) is bigger than my big toe. Not the one on my right foot, however. That’s the same size as Big Moe. (Just so’s you know, Moe’s usually right.) In itself, that’s not so strange (or random). But it *is* strange when you’re 15, and trying to find a pair of shoes. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to go back to the store and buy a size bigger because my right shoe fits perfectly, but my left one is very uncomfortable.
(Yes, it took me *quite* a while to realize that I need to try on shoes with my left foot. What can I say? I was young and stupid.)
(Yes, I said “was”.)

2. I name things. Anything around me. There’s no thought behind it, and definitely no structure. I always have. But when you have a big brother, you learn to suppress those tendencies. Especially since *everything* was a good reason to pummel me. (“Navin, come here; I’m happy!” *Pow*; “Navin, come here; you’re happy!” *Pow*). I still refer to my bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup as Jim. And you’ve already met Big Joe and Big Moe up there at 1. I stopped naming things (or at least, hid them better) after Castaway. Damn Wilson. (It’s no fun anymore when *everyone* has a name for things, and you get into arguments about how your name is stupid.)
(Incidentally, I’m typing this out on Sideshow Bob. He tends to get cranky if I don’t appreciate him enough.)
(He does not like to be called “Sidey”.)

3. I miss being fat. (Well, okay, maybe “obese” is the right word.) I *really* loved it. It was so nice to be expected to do nothing because of my weight. And when you’re growing up, everybody appreciates the fact that you eat all the food on the table.
(It was nice to be appreciated at dinners.)

4. I got attacked by a rogue swing when I was a tiny tot. It left me with a flap and parts of my skull showing. Now, all I have for memories of it are stories my brother’s told people. And a scar that was disappointingly un-cool.

5. I enjoy bad old hindi movies (By “old”, I mean before everything became sex-obsessed). Hell, I even enjoy watching bad English movies dubbed in Hindi! (I love how they keep playing Mortal Kombat 2: Annihilation on Bindaas Movies. Such fun!) I used to own a copy of Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya (the one with the infamous Salman Khan “O o jaane jaana”, um, hit?) and I used to watch it *over* and *over* again. Even after I stopped liking it. It was like a weird friend, who had very limited dialogue.

6. My school was a semi-all boys school (we had shifts; girls in the morning, boys in the afternoon). This led to a lot of ass-kicking. We had this whole phase in class where we used to randomly pick anybody, and, um, “celebrate their birthday” by beating them up, kicking their ass, bouncing them off tables and chairs, then just tossing them high up in the air, and watching them land on a bunch of wood-metal tables and chairs. After a point, it became an unofficial rule for everyone to wear their steel-toe boots to school because you want to cause maximum damage when you’re *not* on the receive end.
(Yes, we were slightly insane.)
(Trust me, you don’t want to know about our *other* “fun games”. *shudder*)

7. I used to pretend to cut school in my senior years. My friends were always looking to pretend that they were going to school, avoid the bus, then head to the nearest mall and change into regular clothes. Unfortunately, I was pretty honest with my folks, and so, I couldn’t really cut class in all good faith. So, I told them I’d be skipping a day, and they were pretty cool with it… so long as a> it wasn’t too regular a habit, b> I didn’t get caught and c> I wasn’t doing anything “bad” (ie: smoking, and then, drinking.) But you can’t really tell that to your “cool” friends. So, every time, I’d go along with the ruse, pack a bag with books *and* clothes, tell my folks I’m going to hang out at so-and-so mall, and go hang out with the gang. It used to be fun pretending that I didn’t want my parents to catch me, because then “I’d be so screwed”.
(Ah, peer pressure.)

*sigh*

Please don’t stop being my friend.

Seven random things about me. I suppose that ususally bloggers would look at a tag as a nice tool to break that bloggers block. Truth betold, I’m actually dreading this post. What if I don’t have seven random things about me? What if they aren’t random? By no stretch of imagination was my life (and my personality) anything but dry and boring. But here goes…

1. My third toe (whichever side you count from) on both feet are quite oddly shaped: they curve inwards; in addition I have a unibrow and a very irregular hairline. The latter two being more noticable. I always wondered whether they would just become normal with the passage of time. It really bugged me when I was in school but in college, I realised that my personality more than made up for it!

 2.  Since about sixth grade I’ve had this massive sneezing problem. It would creep up on me all of a sudden and then I’d sneeze 15-20 times in a row leaving me quite drained. I still suffer at the hands of my nose to this day.

3. I just love Bob Dylan. Most poeple say I overdo it. Udayan introduced me to his music. One day, sitting in his room, he played Like a Rolling stone from the 1966 Manchester concert (the “Judas” concert) and it was electric (in more ways than one). The experience wasn’t dampened by his (Udayan’s) off-pitch sing-along.  Picture if you will, two guys sitting next to a music player and screaming “how does it feeeeeel?” with a lot of soul and contorted faces.

4. The two humorists I idolize are Woody Allen and P.G. Wodehouse. They epitomize the two strains of humour I enjoy the most. That quick talking, full-of-smart-references, New York variety and the tongue in cheek, absolutely-perfect-choice-of-word, descriptive variety.

5. Right from school, my ambition was to be able to do nothing. Nothing at all (though I told everybody that I wanted to be a banker- I figured if they would be the ones with all the money). Just sit around and watch TV or something. If I could do that, I would consider my life a success. My dad has achieved this goal (at the ripe age of 60), though he makes tall claims he is going to do this and that and it frightens me how we all secretly want the same things.

6. I have a fetish for wooden furniture. I really like looking at and figuring out designs for study tables in particular. I used to carefully scan the stacks of Ikea brochures we had as a kid and I just couldn’t stop myself. My grand-dad used to design furniture in his spare time (which in those years seemed to be quite abundant) and we still have a lot of it at home and they are some of the cleverest designs I’ve seen.  

7. If I like something, I overdo it. If I like a song I will listen to it for months together. This is true of movies as well. I can repeat them and not get bored. I am yet to however re-read a book.

Ok Navin, Thankar you’re it..