August 25, 2005

one flu over the cuckoo's nest

stage 1 of the f'lu (yes, i know the abrobriate location of the abostrophe, thag you bery mud)
pounding headague ad burning eyes
can't sleep
lose appetite
feel pathetic but look hale ad heardy, so get zero symbathy

stage 1.2 subtibes sgibbed
feverish, hot and confused
general feeling of moonlit fiends, albatrosses and glittering eyes

stage 2
sleep hurrah!
nose flows unabated
voice acquires rita hayworth type husky undertones that nobudy abbreciates (although rita's voice was dubbed when she sang)

stage 3
rasping cough brings tears to the eyes
voice reduced to a croak
other people in the office fall ill and the finger of suspicion is pointed at one
strained atmosphere
sick of toast and lemongrass tea, the sufferer flings herself bodily onto a pile of samosas

event horizon approaches

August 17, 2005

the daily bugle

i don't know what the latest starlets are wearing. i don't even know who the latest starlets are. i am klueless about kidman and kruise. and i have no idea which country bangalore fashion consultants have carried pot to. (but don't they have bathrooms in dubai? oh, not *that* kind of pot)

and why is that, you ask, in your discerning way. surely i read the newspaper everyday! i should, yknow. (fingers wagged in my general direction)

elementary, dear w., as sherlock didnt say, cos it was merely meretricious (which he did say).

i don't subscribe to the rag any more. i get a real newspaper! they dumbed down the content further and lower, until i finally left pune, moved to bangalore and started reading the hindu, which seems to skip from page 2 to page 4, without a break.

things i like about the hindu-
not knowing about stuff (see 1st para)
no radio mirchi style english
they maintain the sanctity of the byline (ma said)
3 pages are not devoted to cricket
good listing of local events
lots of local and state news
broad selection of literary, theatre and music reviews
plenty of quirky-whimsical type writers
general air of having a warm tightly knit community of readers

there's probably a little too much of southern (including sri lankan) politics.. but then, am always surprised when they say "dharam singh, karnataka CM" and i do a double-take*. shouldnt he be the CM of haryana?
which shows how much i know of the politics of karnataka and haryana.

*i cant really do a double take.

August 08, 2005

heard at the end of a half marathon

electraljunkie: did you hit the wall?
carboloader: naah, dravid's not all bad..

just read a good article on bonking
no, its not what you think, pervy perverson.
it's the mutiny of the whole body!
there's the muscle-glycogen bonk, where the brain works fine but the legs up and quit. Then there's the blood-glucose bonk, where the legs work fine but the brain up and quits. Let's not forget the everything bonk, a sorry stewpot of dehydration, training errors, gastric problems, and nutrition gaffes. And then there's the little-purple-men bonk... more here

no more hitting the wall jokes from me, am suitably chastened by the gravity of it all (and sort of looking forward to the lil purple men)

August 03, 2005

annona squamosa

making sitaphal milkshake could be a metaphor for our times.

first, a brief description:
you take a ripe sitaphal and try to cut it. if raw, you can curse the fruitman, but curse you never so shrewdly, the fruit will refuse to be cut.
if ripe to the correct extent, it collapses squashily in your hand. then you pick out the skin. a lot of the fleshy stuff is stuck to the skin, so you ooze it out. then comes the real test of character- separating the flesh from the large seeds. you could sit there tediously getting lil bits of the flesh. or, as the shastras suggest, you pop the whole thing into a particle accelarator and get centrifugal forces to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

but the particle accelerator (ok, its a blender) breaks down from chopping too many seeds and you return to manually oozing. 17 back breaking hours later, you are donne, but find that most of the good stuff is splattered across your hands. some judicious mopping and licking (why waste?) later, you are left with a few grams of sitaphal essense. by this time, the milk has long curdled, you have lost your appetite and your mind.

it says a lot about the lack of free will, doesn't it? nobody asked you to make it. you prefer chikoo milkshake anyway. so then why? sheer bloodymindedness?
or ... a suprasitaphalmilkshakeauthority? a pied piper of sitaphamelin? that gets hold of you and won't let you go till you make it?

from mina harker's journal, 4:00 pm
the blogger was found in a state of gibbering rage and taken away for further observation. the only hint of what could have brought about such madness, was the shards of a mug, belonging to the office juice bar. the liquid splashed around the area suggested milkshake. juicebarman confirmed selling it to the blogger's colleague for rs. 10, shortly before the attack.
we will need all our strength and garlic to fight this demon.