Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to one and all. May the new year bring you much cheer and joy.

More on this later.

The Weekend Roundup

Weeks are passing by way too fast. Here's what you should do, and should not do, one more time.

Things That you Should do

Read East of Eden, by Steinbeck. This is a seminal book. There are few novels that can convince me to sacrfice my sleep, my time and...other stuff. This was most definitely one of them. I stayed up till four at night to finish it off, and somehow managed to get myself out of bed at Seven thirty in the morning, to make it to my class. Without coffee. That's how good a book it is.
The book itself is a retelling of the story of Kane and Abel, but fatastically well done. It takes a 16 verse piece of the bible, and turns it into an epic. It's about family, and brothers, and most importantly about the freedom of choice. The defining theme of the book, "Timshel", or Thou Mayest makes the most brilliant of sense, that at the end of the day the choice of sin, the choice of your future, and the choice of happiness is yours and yours alone.

Read Cocaine, by Dominic Streatfeild. It's an amazing book. It's about Cocaine. Well, that's about it, really. But it gives a really incredible detailed account of the drug, and how it's shaped our world today, and the events that went into making it such a phenomenon in the states. For any of you college going chappies who're into experimentation, the brutality of the thing will also scare the crap out of you. This is the most addictive, scary and complex substance in the world. Read about it.

Switch to firefox, if you haven't already. Makes my life easier. Gets me a better grade too.

Things you should not do

Watch "Anchorman". A worse feat of cinema has yet to come out of hollywood. This is a terrible movie. If you thought "A night at the roxbury" was bad, you're in for a surprise. Will Farrel can be worse. If you thought Maid In Manhattan was cliched, you're in for a surprise, it can get worse. This movie is so bad, you actually want to watch it to the end, to see just how terribly bad it is. However, you are all busy and don't have time for this sort of thing. Therefore, this is definitely something you should not do.

Attempt Rock Climbing with Sandals. Just don't. It's a bad idea. You slip, cut yourself, and get blisters.

Attempt to win brownie points from your professor by calling her a hundred years old. Especially if the proffesor is female. Especially if you're telling her that she'll get nostalgic using a typewriter.

Horror and more

You know how it happens, when you read a lot of an author, and you go through like a graph of how much you like them. Its very sinusoidal in nature often...you'll really like some books, and your opinion will dip with others, and so on. Well, Stephen King just took a very abrupt downturn for me...He was, surprisingly enough, pretty mush rising with Carrie, and Dark Half accentuated that. Dreamcatcher got him crashing down.He was raised to god-all levels with Shawshank Redemption, and Plumbed with Apt Pupil(I mean, Eurggh).But you have No idea what disappointment feels like till you read The Shining.Youve heard a lot about the scariness, about the uber-cool Jack Nicholson movie and whatnot(and of course, that Joey is shit-scared of the book) and naturally expect there to be a good amount of thrills and chills. Well, in a line, it is the stupidest plot in a book I have ever read.There is a complete lack of anything close to sense in the book-and yeah, not much titillation, either:PHopefully the current book will deliver to expectations...

There Was a point to the above. Which was basically, to request All of you who are in the vicinity, or are in the mood for lots of fun event, take part in Legala.Advertising doesn't seem to be the norm in this blog, so I shall desist, but please do contact me if you wish to participate.

Decadance

Mid Term Breaks are wonderful things. They give you a chance to relax, take things easy for the shortest life and reorganise the priorities of your life. To put it simply, they let you eat, sleep and do not much else. "We see this as a good thing".

Well, I did exactly that in my break. I relaxed, I didn't wake up to smell the coffee, I tried not to wake up at all, in fact, but failed miserably. (No, I didn't try to commit suicide, you silly rabbits). There is a word to describe this lifestyle. It's called decadence. During the holidays, I found the Prophet of the Religion Of Decadence. The Decadent Cupcake.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, once priorities have been reorganised, this blog will now shift back to it's usual and primary purpose. The Description of Food.
For Two Dollars, from the College Seven Eleven Store, you get this monstrosity of a cupcake. Female Figures have declined politely, and impolitely to try it, citing reasons of acute calorie abusage. I can't fault them with that. The cupcake is largish, rich chocolate, and covered both inside and out with chocolate goo. The goo is thick, fattening molten chocolate. This is decadence if I ever saw it. The sad/happy part is that I am addicited to it.
This means, money I would earlier spend on such piffling concerns as meals and Ice Apple Tea will now go to the decadence fund. That's because I've reorganised my priorities, and boy is chocolate important.

Aller et Venir

My vacation time fast approaches its end.To sound nice and cliched, time flew-only yesterday, I was cribbing about having nothing to do and losing a Lot of balance messaging useless bums in the next compartment in my train because we crossed the ****ing state border and the network went into roaming.And after about two week of pretty much nothing but sloth(and meeting people. And How.)-I have-despite other peoples attempt to snatch the title from my rightful hands-perfected and mastered the Art of Sloth-its time to go back to the ol' rut.

A big fat furry friend of mine and I were discussing this once, the subtle but crucial difference between Coming Home and Going Home. Pretty much all of school life was about coming home after school, after coaching, after (extended) lunches, after vacations-home was the bedrock. And now, life has turned to going Back home, which involves planning and boasting for a week in advance, endless packing and repacking and the essentially tragic and shattering realisation that you'll be living out of a suitcase and your hold over your home has been weakened ever so much.You mighn't be Alpha when you get back...

Such questions are futile, of course. Hence, I gear up for the drudgery of US Budget deficits(SIGH) and endless classes-though perked up by the fact that Hutch-Hutch rates are cheaper:) and hope to reconcile the question topmost in my head. The name of the song/movie haunting me, of which the Only part I distinctly remember, is "Jhonka something somethng something, baarish bulata hoga na...". Its damn pretty and damn obscure. Ah well, such is life.

Dussehra

Hullo to all. I'm not dead, contrary to popular demand. I have been resting. The hell I have. I've had midterms, and then a very busy midterm break is in progress, where I sit around, procrastinate about project work, and watch movies. Lots of movies. This is I believe, a good thing and what college should be all about. Sadly, this is simply not true for the better part of my college existence.

Happy Dussehra to one and all. I miss home today, I miss home a lot. Dussehra is a time of togetherness, of family and most definitely of Poori Halwa, Poori Aalu, and Poori Chana. With all these things absent, a great gaping hole exists where once a heart flourished. Or in other words, I was willing to fork out five dollars to have pooris with aalu.

Time is of the essesnce, so once again a quick run down of things you should or should not do.

Things you should do

First, watch Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi. It's a brilliant, brilliant film, and definitely deserved an oscar nod above Paheli, and Swades. It's beautifully done, set in 70's India, has gripping characters and performances, and an ending that leaves a lump in your throat.
Next, watch Snatch. It's a good fun rollicking british movie, about a diamond heist. It's wonderfully crafted and for the lady folk, it has a topless Brad Pitt with a funny accent.
Do read Blink, by Malcomm Gladwell. It's a fun and interesting book about subconcious desicion making and will most definitely pique your interest, o discerning reader.
After you're done with this, thank whichever god you pray to that you are back home, and are capable of eating home food. If you are not back home, and eating home food, pray to god that some day you shall be.

Things you should not do

Do not, under any circumstances try to coherently write an email at three in the morning. It's "Not a good idea"
Do not, in expectation of a midterm, have 3 cans of red bull, and two cups of coffee.
Do not buy "Neuticles", for gods sake. What is wrong with people? Why is there a market for these things?
Do not assume I have done any or all of these things.

October The First

It's midterm week for me, at college. Starting monday, I have some hassle or the other all the way up to saturday, my last midterm. Following this, I have a week long break, where I intend to try to do little aside from catch up on movies, computer games, and other normal things you're supposed to bloody be doing in college.

That gripe dealt with, it's The First Of October. Let's all celebrate the start of another month, a new beggining. Well, I hope it will be a new beggining, but only time will tell.

Octopus Porn

In the very distinguished society of debators that I belong to, we bring up several topics of discussion and debate in our sessions, and argue them out in parlimentary style. We are polite, formal and I'm pretty much done lying now. The fact is, every so often we get bored, and need to find a really strange topic to debate on. For Thursday Training, The Motion Before The House was that Animated Child Pornography should be legalised. Suffice to say, it made for interesting argumentation; not often do the words hentai when senior members who shall not be mentioned at this point brought up the matter of Octopus Porn, much to general public's surprise, shock and well...disgust.
Surprise: Why in god's name do you know about octopus porn?
Shock: You KNOW what octopus porn is? What in gods name is that?
Disgust: THAT is octopus porn! My god man, what have you been doing?

This is of course a very sober and family oriented blog, so under no circumstances shall I be elaborating on what the mentioned act entails, although I will say that the Japanese are a bunch of filthy perverts. Certain other writers on this journal might point out to you that there are 233000 google entries for Octopus Porn, but then you'd have to take their word for it. Since they're now on vacation, and have free time on their hands, they might even be as kind as to answer your queries.

Hopefully, regular psychology will work at this point, and you shall all immediately be googling for the same. Suffice to say you're all filthy perverts.
Go away. It's october the first. I think I shall go to Pearl's Hill City Park and step on some frogs.